So I just read Jen's excellent day 1 recap on Gothamist. The first commenter said, in a perfect un-capped/punct'd fragment, "nice recap but i am so over sxsw." Honestly, as much fun as I had, I kinda have to agree with Mr. Yael. I am over SXSW. At least till next year. It was insane amounts of fun, but regularly exhausting and frustrating. If someone told me I had to do it all again next week, I'd have to decline.
Actually, that's not true. I would go again in a second. But I'd do so even more begrudgingly than I did the first time around. I'm OK with it only happening once a year.
So here it goes. This is gonna be long and wordy and off the top of my head, so bear with me. if you don't wanna read it, I won't be offended. I won't even know either way.
Day 1:
One Week ago today (er...yesterday by the time this got posted) I woke up at 4:30 in the morning to catch the car to take us to the airport. I don't think I went to bed till 4:30 the night before. On any other occasion, I would have just stayed up all night and slept on the plane, but seeing that I had nonstop plans to be out till around 4:00 the next night, I took the chance to sleep as much as I could. Jet Blue rules, by the way. I can't imagine flying any other way domestically. The seats are comfy, the snacks are good and the TV is priceless. What more could you ask for?
Blah blah travel blah. We get into Austin around noon and are picked up at the airport by Justin who was great to us all week. I owe him infinitely for making an easy transition to Austin. We get to the Gothamist/Austinist show right around 1:00, but they're running a bit late, so we try to grab a quick bite and come back to catch Dawn's set. Of course, we take way too long and completely miss the set. I feel bad and promise to catch her at her show on Friday, which I completely forgot about by then. I feel awful about this.
After Dawn was The Brokedown, who seemed adequate enough, but didn't really do anything for me. Following then was recently signed Snowden, who absolutely fucking rule. They seem like such a blog fixture you sometimes forget how good they actually are, but every time I see them I'm reminded how talented and great sounding they are. After them I caught a few songs from Bravo Silva before hopping over to the Fader Lounge around the corner to get my wristband and see Field Music and Tapes n' Tapes, where I run into BV and Aziz who introduce me to Chris and Dodge from GvB and MoKB, respectably. Great guys, was always happy to run into them throughout the week. TnT were good...better than I remembered from The Delancey back in January, actually. The confidence from all the great press of late seemed to help.
Anyway, the rest of the day was spent running back and forth between these two spots. I caught most of Levy, who I didn't really love, save a few of their songs, won a $200 gift card to Guitar Center at the Fader tent for calling out (on instinct) Bel Biv Devoe to the question "Who penned the lyric "you can't trust a big butt and a smile?", missed the Ark and Asobi Seksu, but saw a good chunk of Chapel Hill product Cities, who I really enjoyed. They looked and sounded like Brandon Riley fronting Muse. I'm really excited to see them play a full set when they come to town in mid-April.
After them I rushed back to Gothamist for my favorite Rainer Maria, who got through one song before the rain started. They asked to do one more and were allowed to, and by then the rain went away so the kept going. It came back in and out in spurts, but they got through nearly a full set of mostly new stuff. I like everything they've got, but I do miss the heartbreaking awkward guy/girl harmonies from their older songs. Hearing Artificial Light live just makes me melt. And I'll tell ya, nothing increases the urgency of songs like this when at any moment the paranoid club management may pull the plug and take their soundboard inside. It never actually rained that hard, but after their set, they shut down the whole operation, leaving controller.controller out in the rain, literally.
After about an hour, local heroes Ghostland Observatory just said fuck it and started setting up their stage on the assumption c.c had already packed up and left. Turns out they hadn't. GLO tried to encourage everybody to stick around after them for c.c, but it was already late and I don't think many people stuck it out after them, so they canceled the set altogether. GLO was a trip as always. Played almost completely off the new album. While they were fun, I was seriously fading by this point and couldn't get into it like I wish I could.
Okay. So Fader is closed. The Gothamist party is over. I FINALLY get to check into the hotel room and unpack my bag. After about a half hour of sitting around, it was out to the middle of nowhere for the FOTP/Superalright party. I missed Valhala, who I didn't think I'd actually care about, but I got there to find out they were actually really good. I heard they did a cover of Danzig's 'Mother' which met the approval of the Misfits fans in the room. I got there for Grand National, who didn't blow me away, but were certainly better than I had expected. Cloud Room was next, who I've seen plenty of times to know what to expect. The Superalright kids had a great cloud montage video set up behind them that was cute. I was fading FAST, at this point, however. Was pushing being up for24 hours straight, most of which were spent on a plane or on my feet. Forward Russia was coming out next, however, and I knew I had to make it through them.
They were such a jolt of much needed energy for me. I've never danced so hard in my life. I wanna dub them Sparkscore. Say hello to your new favorite term. These songs have been the soundtrack to my life for the last few months and finally seeing them performed like was too much. SO much heart and energy. And they've got the songs. Epic songs. I ended up seeing them two more times that week. I feel sorry for the peeps who only got to see them at their Fox and Hound Showcase, which was plagued by a less intimate space, technical troubles, broken strings and an exhausted voice. Nothing the whole week beat that first set they did. They left everything out on the stage. I grabbed a set list, bought a T-shirt, took some pins and headed back to my hotel. I was completely spent. Was looking forward to sleeping in a little. Stereogum's party didn't start till noon.
Day 2:
I woke up without an alarm the next day from a restless, sparks-riddled sleep around 11. Quickly showered and grabbed a cab to pick up my pass to the Diesel-U show that night, then walked up to The parish for SXStereogum. I was really excited to see Aloha, but when I got there I was more interested in finding Scott and getting some of that famous free BBQ (by the way, the best food I ate all week.) Aloha and What Makes Milwaukee Famous both sounded good but had to serve as background music while I got caught up on the events of the night before from the various heads who I kept running into.
Thunderbirds are Now! received my full attention, however. Such an unbelievable live band. Unmatched energy, great sense of humor and killer songs to boot. After them I forced myself to dip out before Rouge Wave and Ted Leo to catch Forward Russia again at the Fader Space. It was prolly a better show performed by them than the night before and the crowd definitely seemed to take a greater interest as they went on, but it was impossible to match the way it felt to hear them for the first time. No matter, they killed, once again.
Following them was Jose Gonzales, who nice but it was a little tough to follow FR with a set like his. Surely I'll be able to enjoy it more tonight at Joes Pub (Update: I didn't, really). After that is a little blurry. I went to Emos to catch a bit of Of Montreal, but wasn't really into it so I left. Walking around, I ran into Aziz who was heading to Stubbs for the Secret Beastie Boys show. The line was already around the block, and prolly doubled in size while I was there. It appeared to be a badge-only affair and I wasn't sure when exactly they were supposed to go on. Didn't feel like waiting around too long to find out, so I bailed and got some dinner. From there I headed up to the Diesel-U party in this out of the way Traditional German Dance-Hall or something. Felt like a high-school dance. With an open bar. Missed Film School, but caught Spinto Band (no Oh Mandy! the Horror!), The Boy Least Likely To (didn't do anything for me) and Voxtrot (always awesome, but not their best). Left before Editors, assuming I'd get to see them at a party on Saturday. Tired, sick and sorta cranky for no reason, I went to a quiet bar where my favorite KEXP find I've never gotten to see, The Stars of Track and Field were playing. They had some major laptop problems that drastically cut into their set, leaving them to only 4 or 5 songs. I did like what I heard, however. Very Notwisty with pretty harmonies. They also rocked out a lot more than I expected them to. Not too much tho. It was still a very nice way to wind down the day. Passed on any late nite action and went back to the hotel on the early side.
Day 3:
The next morning was an early one. There was a blogger brunch at the Filter Mag space. Free food is something not to be passed up on a week like this. You forget to eat unless you're already somewhere and you see food in front of you. We all hung out for a bit, embarrassed ourselves in front of Scott's video diary camera and ate lots and lots of breakfast tacos. The bands were running late, so around 12:45 I headed back over to the Parish to see Stars and Track of Field again. Yes...last band last night, first band today. I wanted to see a full set from them and was glad I did. We need to get these three to New York. Soon, please.
From there, we decided to ditch Silversun Pickups and The Grates for the Pitchfork Party, where we walked in on Patton Oswalt being hilarious. Didn't mention him the other day, but seeing him tell jokes was absolutely a highlight of the week. We hung around there for a bit, watched Juan Maclean and someone from Ladytron DJ before Hot Chip came on. I wasn't impressed, tho people whose music tastes I value seem to love them, so i feel like I should give them another shot. I headed over to Emos to get there early enough to get in for Lifetime.
Unreal set. Classic crowd, complete reckless abandon, throwing themselves onto each other without a care in the world. Absolute bedlam. With the exception of Forward Russia, I don't think I enjoyed a set more all week. They were followed by My Chemical Romance. It was a tough one...picking them over Dirty Pretty Things, but I figured I like the band just enough to not wanna miss seeing them in a 500 capacity space. Dirty Pretty Things will be through New York soon enough, probably no chance I'll ever see MCR again. They were pretty good. I loved watching the sea of purple X's on the kids hands while they pumped their fists in the air. They played the all the hits, then came out for an encore and struggled through a new song that felt very unfinished. Good set tho.
After that we got some food and made our way over to see a band called Rapider Than Horsepower. Worst show of the week. SO by far. To be fair, the album sounded much different. Short, punk-hardcore songs that I could somewhat get behind. Live, it was a duo with a laptop (that i don't think was ever used) playing a couple chords on the guitar, shouting something into the mic, then stepping back and saying thank you. These songs were 7 seconds long. It was like a joke. Jon Parles was there to see them, for Christ's sake. We had all been had. Didn't make any sense. Once I found out that the Red Scoot Inn (where the Fiery Furnaces played) was closer than I thought, I really regret not going there instead.
Headed to the Red Bull House for the Stolen Transmission party after that. Wasn't feeling too great at this point, couldn't make it a late night, but toughed it out for a while and bagged as many sugar-free red bulls as I could. Saw a bit of Lady Sov, but wasn't too impressed. She's cute tho. Played a lil Halo on their multiplayer rig, watched some NCAA highlights, checked my email and my kinja on the computers and watched 90 pound kids draped in black clop around in their high-heeled boots and hurl basketballs over the backboard and into the yard next door. Classic scene.
Day 4:
Oh man...Actually woke up on Saturday feeling a lot better than I had the few days before. Went to get a real sit-down breakfast at some cute little place a bit out of town, then headed in to see Rainer Maria at the 710 Room (I think that's what it was called.) They played more or less the same set as at the Gothamist shindig...heavy on the new stuff, a few more due to not having the weather restrictions. No Tinfoil, however, either show. I guess they've moved on.
After them I walked up the block to the Stuff/+1 party at the Velvet Spade. 
The schedule was all messed up cause of the weather, but I got to see Tapes n Tapes play an ultracramped room inside, followed by an amazing set by Voxtrot (perhaps the best I've seen them, despite the length) and an extended set by Two Gallants, who are just about one of my favorite bands to see. Editors had to cancel cause I think their equipment got fucked by the rain, so I didn't get to see them, unfortunately, But the free burgers, beautiful space, and the most impressive open bar I've ever witnessed made up for it. I've seen em before, I'll see them again.
From there I went back to the Fader tent for Love is All, who were cute, but I didn't love them. I'd still like to hear the album. Following them I prolly made the biggest mistake of the week, leaving before Ghostface and heading over to the Fox and Hound to see Forward Russia again. By far their weakest set, unfortunately...big tent, tech problems, broken strings, worn out voice, the works. They were still very good, but wasn't worth missing GFK. The plan was to stick around for the rest of the show, which included Battle, Be Your Own PET, She Wants Revenge and We Are Scientists, but when I went around the corner to use the bathrooms in the restaurant, everyone was gone when I got back. 
Since my cell was broke all week (only txts, no calls), that was a major pain in the ass trying to get in touch with people to meet up. I stuck it out through Battle (who I think are pretty good) and BYOP (who I did not like at all, no matter how much that girl shakes her shit around), before going back to the hotel to get my roommates to head to the Vice Party.
We cabbed it out to some warehouse in the country for this party. Great DJs, free sparks light, a few solid bands and the promise of a 'suprise secret band' to headline. The Stills were pretty good, Wolfmother rocked, and the headliner was...a ZZ top cover band? Or was one of the guys actually in ZZ top? I don't know. Couldn't tell. Didn't really care, to be honest. Unlike the other bands, the DJs spun in the other room while the band was on, so they couldn't have been THAT special. Whatevs. Still a pretty fun party, but in the end it was just a party. Nothing especially memorable or legendary.
So that's about it. The next day we checked out of the hotel, went to brunch, ended up getting wasted and switching our flight back to the next day to stay in Austin another night. We played a big game of kickball in a park, got yummy BBQ, then went back to our friend's place and slogged around for the rest of the night. The day after I went home. The End.
So there you have it...3,000 words on SXSW. I've got more pictures on flickr. I'll do it again next year.
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