journal

18 march 2006

sxsw, redux

saturday

squid and deb

the last day! we started out at the nylon party, where we met up with deb, squid, dave, and several other friends. they had a completely open bar (yay!), so julie had jack 'n cokes for breakfast, while i had a screwdriver followed by beer. (yum.) there were two stages at the venue, the velvet spade (a really cool venue, i'd love to see it when it's not overrun by sxsw), and when we arrived, the kooks were playing at the outdoor stage, despite the rain (it had a roof, but it was still wet). we headed inside, where we got to see the rakes... the lead singer of the rakes is this skinny dude who sings all wide eyes and jumps around and does little dances and sort of acts out his lyrics... i.e., really entertaining to watch. ;) then tapes n tapes from minnesota played, who i'd been hearing about all week but had never heard before. they were really good, i'm glad i got to see them. voxtrot went next, my friends who are from austin, and they played a great, but short, set. squid *loves* voxtrot, so it was fun to stand next to her during their set. :) i got to meet ramesh's mom before they went on (i love meeting the parents!) last up inside was the two gallants, which, despite their being from san francisco, i'd never seen them before, even though i love their music. they were great, although i could hardly see anything. by this time we were drunk and silly, so we moved to the outside stage, where i'd caught a couple of songs by the heights between bands earlier, and the charlatans came out. i honestly never thought i'd see the charlatans. they played "the only one" and some of their other classics. the morning after girls and the editors were also supposed to play the party, but both cancelled because of the rain, which made me extra happy that we'd seen the editors the night before.

elise and the capitol years the capitol years the capitol years man man getting their set list together

quite clearly, we had to eat after a liquid breakfast, so we went to the sushi restaurant next door to emo's. feeling much better, we headed over to a party on the other side of the freeway with our friend robbie and his friend andrew, to see a band that andrew rose from montreal insisted was the best show he'd seen all week, called Man Man. (really dorky name, huh?) it took a bit of wandering, but we found the party... it was an off-sxsw party, and much to my delight, the band going on before man man was capitol years, who i've been emailing with for a year but had never met before. i managed to get a station id and a quick interview with them before/between sets (and they rocked, by the way), and then a quick interview with man man before they went on. i'd never interviewed a band before hearing them before... but i'm really glad i did, because they were fucking great. they're a six-piece, and they put the drummer in the center, and they all stand around him and then they all play off each other. they looked like a bunch of greasy gross dudes when i was interviewing them, i sorta expected them to be metal (after all, i had no idea what they were like!), but they were more like tom waits-meets-animal collective. they also put on these all-white outfits before going on, which i thought was an interesting touch. they gave me a copy of their cd, too, which i've been listening to, and they're good recorded, too. yay! how exciting to discover a new band like that.

we decided to go to the merge records showcase afterwards, which was kinda far away, but someone was getting out of a cab right in front as we walked out, so we hopped in it... altho just as we were getting in, a van pulled up in front of us, and a band jumped out of it, played one loud rock song, and then jumped back into their van and drove off. our cabbie was kind enough to wait, we were too fascinated to leave without witnessing the event. :)

we arrived in the middle of the essex green's set, which was pretty good, altho i have to admit, i wasn't paying much attention. superchunk came on afterwards, and i was bouncing around and singing along at the top of my lungs, which made julie laugh. they fucking rocked. we were standing behind a bunch of horrible frat boy types, because julie had hit some kind of wall and was seriously unhappy with the venue (probably cuz she couldn't get up front easily, like she did at every other show we went to...?), but i think seeing me freaking out helped cheer her up. camera obscura went on next, and even though i love them, i was getting rather drunk, and didn't pay nearly enough attention to them, esp. after our friends parker & amy showed up, followed closely by nick tangborn and ian moore, and then jim from spoon, and finally, my friend jimmy baluyut, who i'd been texting with all week trying to meet up with him. jim and i had talked about me doing an interview with him while i was in town, but it wasn't going to happen that night: i was already too drunk, and we were too busy goofing around. julie decided she couldn't stay awake any longer, so she left to go home (but got diverted by a hiphop club enroute, silly girl). i stayed to see robert pollard play, which was a decent show. pollard's *really* gray now. freaky. i hadn't seen him/guided by voices in over 8 years because of this thing that happened back when i worked at addicted to noise/sonicnet, so it was nice to see him play again. he didn't seem as drunk as i always think of him as being, but maybe it was because *i* was so drunk at this point. which would explain why a group of us decided it would be a great idea to go to a titty club. i think i might've disappointed jimmy by leaving so soon after he arrived, but the next thing i knew, we were all piling into a taxi. carlin and eric met up with us at the the yellow rose, which was really entertaining. :D i met some danish guys while waiting to hail a cab at the end of the night, who couldn't believe i'd gone to a titty bar voluntarily, which i thought was funny.

total bands seen on saturday: fourteen
total pairs of boobs seen: ...at least twenty. unsure.

total bands seen during sxsw: 43
bands we wish we'd seen, but couldn't make it to: innumerable

note: approx. half the photos in this journal were taken by julie schuchard.

**thanks to brent and trisha for putting us up, and listening to drunken stories in the wee hours.