Sorry I didn't post this yesterday as I it was my first night at SxSW and we got back at around 330 after a night of catching Duchess Says [http://www.myspace.com/duchesssays] and Acid Mothers Temple [http://www.myspace.com/acidmotherstemple]. For free no less.
We left Houston yesterday at around 3 or so and after a quick and gluttonous brunch at Jack in the Box (known locally as Crack in the Box and Jack in the Crack) we set out through shitty backwoods highways until we reached our destination.
When we arrived in Austin, we found the address of the house we're staying at, which is where like 30 bands will be playing over the next few nights, was not exactly located on Austin's equivalent of St-Laurent and Prince-Arthur. Instead, the hood reminded us of something out of South Central L.A./Compton, with a dash of Mexican thrown in. But skeazy neighbourhood or not, we were in good spirits and even way out of the downtown core, we could feel the nervous agitation in the air. There were hundreds of shows going on around town at that instant and most if not all the American and European independent music scene had their eyes set on little old Austin, population 700,000.
When we arrived in Austin, we found the address of the house we're staying at, which is where like 30 bands will be playing over the next few nights, was not exactly located on Austin's equivalent of St-Laurent and Prince-Arthur. Instead, the hood reminded us of something out of South Central L.A./Compton, with a dash of Mexican thrown in. But skeazy neighbourhood or not, we were in good spirits and even way out of the downtown core, we could feel the nervous agitation in the air. There were hundreds of shows going on around town at that instant and most if not all the American and European independent music scene had their eyes set on little old Austin, population 700,000.
We met nice people like Nick from Philadelphia who's in this band Procedure Club [http://www.myspace.com/procedureclub] and Chris from Gape Attack! [http://www.myspace.com/gapeattack], as well as others. The house is really not very big and the room we're playing with is only marginally larger than my bachelor apartment.
At around 1030 we set out for the city. I tried calling every cab company in town but of course, all their lines were jammed. This is the first night of SxSW Music.
So after discussing between the Alien8 Showcase andhipster woodstock, which was where of our housemates were going, we ended up catching the bus of all things 15 minutes to downtown Austin. I'll talk about the buses here tomorrow, because we[rape faction]'re going on in an hour or so.
Duchess Says was pretty awesome. We semi snuck our way into the venue (door was 5 bucks *if* you weren't one sly fox) and ended up in the front row of a show that had maybe 80 to 90 people. They sounded in top-form and the band are robotically tight now after all their touring. After the song they were playing ended, we rose up in separatist chants and slogans (Vive le Quebec libre! Vive le Montreal! Cinq-un-quatre!) which seemed to amuse their singer Annie-Claude.
The concert just got wilder and dirtier from there as Annie-Claude stepped into the audience and proceeded to start moshing with Mike and Michaela. For their last song she lead the entire audience out towards the entrance and proceeded to fall on the sidewalk, dancing and writhing like a , uh, like a wraith.
So good show. After them, there was this three piece of local Austin hippies called Ya Ho Wa 13 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ya_Ho_Wha_13] who jammed for their entire set.
But for however good Duchess Says, Acid Mothers Temple fucking blasted the whole room. Was one of the best sets I've ever seen and already made this whole crazy trip worthwhile. Words I could use but then I'd sound like a music critic. I'll put this laconically - if they're in town, go see them. Trust me.
But for however good Duchess Says, Acid Mothers Temple fucking blasted the whole room. Was one of the best sets I've ever seen and already made this whole crazy trip worthwhile. Words I could use but then I'd sound like a music critic. I'll put this laconically - if they're in town, go see them. Trust me.
Ok, I gotta run and tune guitars and get set up. Catch y'all niggaz later.
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