bluegrass to lonestar

A belated post to recap SXSW 2010. We ate lots of free food and drank loads of free booze. The best had to be the pancake, nacho, deschutes party.

Wednesday
Bands
Brazos
Inlets
The Terror Pigeon Dance Revolt!
Titus Andronicus killed it as always
Torche
Fucked Up followed.

Thursday
Bands
Turbo Fruits
Surfer Blood
Small Black
Vivian Girls.
Kid Sister
Walkmen

Friday
Bands
Holiday Shores
Fergus & Geronimo
Inlets
Young Buffalo
Thoepholis London
Cool Kids
Frightened Rabbit
Man Man

Saturday
Bands
Sharon Van Etten
Garotas Sueccas
Slaraffenland
Natural Child
Andrew WK
Gwar
Beach Fossils

Friday Night was super windy and cold, pretty miserable, but we had tickets to GIRLS so we were forced to venture into the elements.  The show  was at The Parish, which is tucked away upstairs on 6th St between all the rest of the cookie-cutter establishments.  Hell on earth is 6th St between Congress and Red River.

We arrived too late to catch the Smith Westerns, but Magic Kids, were playing when we got there.  The singer has a good voice, but an annoying stage presence.  The sound in the Parish was terrible and the crowd sucked.  Half of them had no idea who they were seeing.  Apparently some “Alt-Rock” radio station was sponsoring.  Despite this, GIRLS played a great set, loads of energy.  The guy’s mom was even in the audience.

Friday night Black Heart Procession was in town. I have wanted to see them for years but never managed to. Turns out I wasn’t missing much. It was a huge let-down. The show was at the Mohawk as usual, but there weren’t many people in attendance. Those that were seemed to be completely devoid of interest. I felt bad for the band. They mostly played stuff off the new album, and the new songs were pretty terrible. Everything about them was just obvious. The few old tracks were great to hear live but it was just a disappointment overall.

Friday night was busy.  Our friend Arturo had a birthday party at his place that we attended before heading downtown to catch the Black Lips show.  They were playing at the Mohawk and we timed it perfectly, arriving right as they started their set.

The band wasn’t quite as drunk as when we saw them at sxsw which resulted in a better show music wise.  They were still plenty drunk, the rhythm guitarist puked at one point, but they sounded great.  The crowd was super into it lots of dancing and stage diving. A dirty pervert decided to strip down and stage dive naked. Surprisingly, people actually caught him. A managed to escape the mayhem with only a bruised foot.

Wednesday night Lauren and I went down to Mohawk to watch Titus Andronicus.  The doors opened at 8 so we figured getting there at 9:45 would be a good bet.  Wrong.  Austin and it’s stupidly late show times strikes again.  They didn’t go on until 11.

Luckily they were worth the wait.  The show was awesome.  The lead singer was drunk as hell and amusingly ranting about their broken down van.  Lots of guitar playing in the crowd and on the floor occurred and they ended with a free-for-all version of Billy Bragg.