Drunk By Drunk Drunk: SXSW Coverage of Days 3 and 4.

So after getting, you guess it, way too drunk on both Wednesday and Thursday, I’ve decided to combine days two and three into one entry because my memory is somewhat fucked. Anyway here goes…

Wednesday, Day 3.

I met up with some friends and headed out to Rainey street to drink free beers (as is the custom). We catch a 70s esque hard rock band from Austin. Their lead guitarist looks a little like Gary Moore in his latter years.

2pm- We do the 15 minute walk to Mohawk  in the searing sun to see Trash Talk, the hardcore band that hangs out with Lil Wayne and Tyler, the Creator.  The circle pit is furious, and people hurl cans of beer from the balcony. This pisses off the lead singer, who calls out a beer can thrower and leads the crowd in a chorus of “fuuuck yooou, fuccck yooou”. He then takes bong hit on stage and crowd-surfs to the bar to pounds a few shots o’ whiskey. Everyone is thoroughly impressed.

4pm- I am thoroughly sun-burnt at this point. We hit up FIDLAR’s set on the east side. The band is super tight and accomplished considering 90% of their songs are about getting fucked up on one substance or another.

 Along the way, I see a band play an entire set with the lead singer balancing a PBR on her head. The rest of the day is sort of a blur at this point, which transitions nicely into Thursday.

Thursday, Day 4.

2.pm I was anticipating Thursday to be my favorite day at SXSW, well, at least musically. I kicked off the day by catching “slob-rock” heros King Louie and the Missing Monuments at an showcase put on, oddly, by the Louisiana Board of Tourism. Beer was incredibly cheap, and they put on a kick-ass show.

4pm – We get in to Bass Drum of Death as they’re just about to play. Lonestars at Clive Bar are $6, which is completely unreasonable, and they should be ashamed of themselves. BDOD play well, but the crowd is pretty crappy and is clearly there to see somebody else.

5pm – On to The Thermals, who are, even after 10 years of playing non-stop, quite possibly the happiest band in the word. The drummer got out from behind his kit to lead fist pumping, culminating in a stage dive during bits of the song where he’s actually supposed to be playing.

This is where it gets a little hairy. I think we went to see the Eagulls at Cheer Up’s, but they were a no show. We ended up staying for Nu Sensae, the most 90s band at SXSW. Their singer/bass player wailed enough for Todd to buy their vinyl on the spot. How the vinyl survived the rest of the night is a mystery.

8pm – We go and see the Oh Sees at Hotel Vegas. I get talking to this German guy who gets me into the artists green room. We laugh at the fact that the only food left was this huge bowl of salad, as the Americans had stuck to the beef tacos. Seriously, the salad was massive:

My new friend then proceeded to load my backpack up with as many oranges as possible, around 25 or 30. 

Thee Oh Sees play and the marquee starts to collapse after some guy crowd surfs over to the support beam and does a pole dancing routine on it. I start to wonder if I’ve received brain damage at this point as I get a searing pain in my frontal lobe, which is apparently the bit of the brain that deals with personality and acting reasonable in society (no really, it does)

1am Someone gets word of a party happening on a bridge over the lake. We walk for what seems like hours and cross over some train tracks. A local guy tells us not to get so close to the tracks, as a container had flown off a moving train just last week. We catch some post-hardcore band playing and their PA system dies, leading to them screaming their lyrics sans microphone. This increases their emo-ness exponentially.

2.am- I finish the night drinking moonshine from a guy’s brown paper bag at the Barton Creek Saloon. Some guy tries to start a fight with Valadez because we all refused to give him a ride home,  because none of us had cars.

Fin.

Drunk by Drunk Drunk: Day Two SXSW Coverage

Tuesday was supposed to bean "off-day" as there weren't all that many day shows and I really needed to recover from the night before. But against my better judgement, I decided to forgo my daily nap and head straight downtown. Welcome to day two.

3pm Had a couple of busts trying to find free booze, but we stumbled in on Jim James being interviewed at a small bar on Rainey street which was pretty rad. Whilst gathering our bikes to leave, a cop, yes a cop, talks us in to going to the Blackberry showcase because there's free beer.

3.30pm We are offered a choice between Dale's Pale Ale (delicious) and Bud-lite (terrible, obviously) for free. I curse the amount of people drinking bud-lite. We pound a couple of Dale's and the worst tasting red wine I've ever encountered (hey, I was trying to mix it up). I felt bad drinking on Blackberry's dime considering how much money the company's lost over the last couple of years.

4.30pm.  We head over to Handle-Bar to hang out with Valadez's friend Andrew (of Mother Falcon). There are more free beers. We learn from a guy there to RSVP under several fake names to get more drinks tokens. It works, and he does it for the sixth time.

6.00pm We decided to cue up for Wavves and Japandoids at Viceland a full two hours before doors open. This proves to be a wise move, as the line soon wraps around the building. A bunch of jerks try to cut in line and succeed, all while my friends and I loudly tell them to fuck off.

8.30pm It looked like it was going to get ugly in the line, but the cops show up and everything settles down. We all get in. Within 10 minutes of getting in I have a beer in each hand and two slices of pizza. All animosity towards the jerks that cut the line dissipates. I was weary of the "complimentary drinks' moniker on the poster, thinking it was going to be one or two beers each. Turns out Vice knows how to throw down and it's an open bar the whole night.

10.30pm Wavves takes the stage after two hours of 500 kids and free beer. All hell breaks loose. The already thin security staff tries desperately to keep people off the stage. The head security guy, a 50 year old bespectacled African-American, has a terrified look on his face. He probably thought "it never used to be like this back in my day." He gestures to the other security staff to close the show down. I can see why he's getting worried, it was getting dangerously close to Hillsborough territory.

The sound is atrocious; Vice obviously spent all of their cash on beer and opted to borrow a PA system from a local Bar-Mitzvah. Nathan's guitar keeps cutting out, but no-one seems to mind. They play a few new tracks of their new album. Nathan starts shredding over some guy that managed to flop face down on stage. I managed to hi-five Nathan in between said shred.

12.00am. Japandroids are up next. Just like Wavves, they curse out the security and actually force them to leave the stage entirely, leaving two sound guys as the last bastion of security.  It's basically a house party at this point, with multiple fat guys crowd-surfing. Japandoids talk shit about the US (as they're from Canada). Everyone is hi-fiving. Brian king is on the sound guy's shoulders ripping a solo. They fall over whilst the other sound guy tries desperately to keep the monitors working. Despite the absolute pandemonium, no-one, not even the sound guys, are getting angry. Best crowd atmosphere yet. Everyone had been waiting in waiting in-line for ages, and was obviously there for the music.

Definitely a feeling that we were all witnessing something special. 

A nerd jumps on stage, takes a picture of the crowd, and is immediately thrown back into the mix, much to the delight of everyone.

I am soaked entirely in beer and my legs and shins are fucked from being pushed up against the stage. I spend the rest of the night talking Malort with a bunch of Chicago-ians.

Drunk By Drunk Drunk: SXSW Coverage, Day One.

I've decided to resuscitate the old Redcoat blog in order to bring you up to date coverage of SXSW from an Austinite's perspective. Forgive the poor spelling and grammar, this shit's straight from the source, and I'm probably still drunk when writing it.

Any-who, here we go, here's my first day at SXSW.... 

2pm Get off work and cycle down to the convention center. Someone is flying an unmanned drone in the Vice showcase thingy.

3pm. we start at this jabroner bar on sixth- my friend Dax knows the bartender so we get free shots and beers.

4pm Already 3 shots in. We get to Hotel Vegas because it says on the poster that there's free booze. turns out the free booze is whiskey shots for 10 minutes every hour. More shots are consumed. I mix my whisky with a PBR to make "bourbon aged PBR". This amuses me and my friends immensely. A 60s psych band plays. All of the members look like could have been in Urban Cowboy.

6pm. We see Driver F play at the T-Mobile stage. The amount of corporate branding is sickening. The band playing before are the most jabroni, corporatey band ever. We laugh. Driver F plays. They were good.


8pm. Johnathan Valadez and I ditch Dax and the others to find this secret Volcom party at an ad agency. We circle round where think it is for ages before some guy with a ponytail says that 'yeah, he knows what we're looking for". He looked official, so we follow him up this multistory car-park. I door guy says we need to be on the list, but our new friend just waves us in. Afterwards we realized he probably didn't work there.

They have this stage set up on the 13th floor overlooking the city. There are unlimited free Shiners and lo and behold, Thee Oh Sees show up and play a barnstormer of a set. My shirt gets ripped straight down the front, many beers are thrown.

10pm. We try and make it to Mohawk but Valadez falls off his bike just as one of our coworkers drives past. My phone is dead at this point and I lose the aforementioned Valadez so I decide to call it quits to go get some tacos. I get a flat tire on my way back.

And thus concludes day 1 of 7.

How an Entry Level Job Scam Had Me Almost Move to Nashville.

I noticed I needed to get a new job after my tax return indicated I made less than $18,000 a year. Which, according to poverty guidelines, makes me $4000 short of the poverty line (sort of). Well, this got me thinking; I could continue to be a college town bartender making 2.13 an hour and clearing up sweet smelling regurgitated margaritas, or I could get a real person job.

After a month or so of relentless internet job searching I have concluded that there are no real jobs on the internet. 

Most of the job offers I got were scams centering around the old selling steak knife sets to complete strangers ponzi-scheme. 

First of all, who the fuck buys stuff from door to door sales people now days? The elderly? The cripplingly lonely?

And to get around the fact that well, no-one has ever wanted to be a door to door sales person, they mislead accordingly. One trick is to use as many professional buzzwords as possible to spell out the most basic of information. For example, I received this email yesterday.

As an Insphere Agent, you'll be able to provide a consultative product approach to create an innovative solution that best fits the needs of each individual client. A multi-line product portfolio also provides an increased ability to cross-sell existing and new clients. 

What it's actually saying: You will be working in a call center. Your "clients" will be a bunch of fucksticks that can't turn on their computer without suffering a minor brain hemorrhage.  

Now that's talk about Nashville Business Consulting. They called me in for an interview. Luckily, I researched them before buying a plane ticket to Nashville. Here's what I found:

They don't pay you, and more bizarrely, they participate in terrible, terrible team building exercises.

Needless to say, I ain't goin' to Nashville.

Break News! American Ad Agencies are a bunch of racist, sexisit

After being exposed to American T.V for seven months now and enduring a stream of awful shows and truck adverts complete with huge manly letters falling from the sky, I noticed that interracial couples were completely absent.



This article does a pretty good job of providing examples to the contrary, yet something seems amiss. The TV we get down here is going to be different, and I bet advertisers up North don't have to pander to the lucrative racist Southern dollar.

This is where I get to say a big fuck you to the ad agencies and their clients.

Ever since Mad Men blew up, the perception of the ad (wo)man is that of a creative genius, combining a Machiavellian brand of psychology with the vision of an artist.

This is utter bollocks.

The ad agencies have been and will continue to peddle to the lowliest dregs of culture. For example, here is a hilarious Miller Lite commercial.




Oh, I get it. It's funny because he's a weak vagina-man for not drinking Miller lite. By the same logic, does drinking 20 Miller Lites give you cumulative manliness? If so, that time I drank a case of the stuff, vomited in a sink and fell down a flight of stairs was, in the perverse mind of the ad agencies, the same level of manliness as ripping a crocodile's tongue out and clubbing it do death with it.

This may seem off topic, but one has to really point out the absurdities to really show how fucking bad American commercials are. While the gender marketing and outright sexism of the commercials highlight the sleaze and bigotry of the ad companies and their clients, the lack of interracial couples in adverts shows their cowardice in challenging the remnants of Jim Crow. After all, why risk annoying the rednecks who swear by your otherwise shitty product?

Ad companies please stop insulting women, men, minorities and, my intelligence.

Business Class is the Perfect Marriage of American Isolationism and British Anti-Socialism

I had the pleasure of being bumped up to business class during my recent London to Houston flight. What I didn't realize is that amidst the pampering and cocktails (Yes Kanye, I have in fact drank champagne on the plane) is that business class is hilariously awkward, even more so than sitting next to a repugnant bloater in economy class. The reason- the optional screen that seperates you and one other person.


The problems start soon after takeoff. You are faced with a decision; put the screen up and look like an elitist dick, leave it down and feel like an invasive twat, or do nothing and see who blinks first. Fortunately, the other guy reacted first by pressing the button. The two seconds it took for the screen to rise were just enough time for him to give me a "Sorry, you invasive pleb" smirk. But I understand it! The screen serves as a physical barrier between two people that would only have the ability to make awkward small talk anyway. And everyone knows that the British hate talking to strangers in close proximity more than anything, especially so if the guy sitting next to you is potentially a Texan.

So I abandoned my quest at connecting with my business class travel mate and settled in to blessed isolationism. And yes I hate to admit it, but whacking that partition up after the stewardess brought me another flirtini was sort of gratifying in a Jabrone-Thoreau way.

The Big Easy

I lost all my money in New Orleans. No, I don't gamble and no, I didn't misplace my wallet (actually, I did - more on this later). I literally drank THREE HUNDRED dollars worth of TWO DOLLAR beers....IN THREE DAYS. This I believe warrants caps-lock shouting.

Because all of my time there congealed into one big bolus of drinking, I've decided to share my favourite memories of New Orleans. However, as I lost complete control of my quango stick at around 4am, I will leave you with a guest writer who was there, to fill in the gaps.

(Un)fortunately, few pictures survive of the evening and the ones that do don't make much sense. What we're left with is a skewed narrative......

We arrived at the hostel at around 4pm, drinking beers. We decided to attend a St. Louis Slim gig on Frenchmen Street. On the way, we decided to stop off and order wine by the pints. This was no ordinary wine; it was truly the piss of Satan that had been fermenting in his goat bladder for several weeks. During the stop off, one of the guys from the hostel tried to reach behind the bar and pour himself a beer. Obviously, this did not go down well with the bartender who clotheslined him off the stool he was sitting on. To emasculate him further, the bartender bitch slapped across the face and drug him out.

This was all fairly standard New Orleans behaviour as we begun to find out.

Fast forward 20 minutes and we're at the Spotted Cat Club. I'm doing shots with the bassist from the band. One of the girls in our party is on stage playing trumpet, although she's never picked up one in her life. This is where it gets a little hazy, and henceforth the baton gets passed.

------

Shortly after the trumpet solo finishes, we move on to the next club where Josh continues his devil-may-care pace. After bellying up to the bar a few times, he finally returns to the group with a pint. A pint of straight scotch.

Finally, drinking at a reasonable pace.

It is at this point that Josh then grabs the nearest girl (read victim) he sees and drags her to the empty dance floor where the zideco music completely takes his brain for the next hour. As the group trails out for the next bar, Josh goes too, leaving a trail of his own.

Credit cards, bits of cash, and oh yeah his wallet were just a few things left in the path.

I pick up his possessions and put them back in his pocket, but as soon as we walk into the next bar he repeats the fumble. A man noting Josh's drunk state then approaches (not knowing that I had taken Josh's wallet moments before) and this is the conversation that follows:

Shady Guy: You know man, you really ought to be more careful with your money many, people might try to take advantage of you

Josh: DRSHGaokgha....YEAH MAN.

Shady Guy: Well I was just looking out for you friend, here let me get you a drink. (At this point he hands him the drink in his hand) You can't really count so give me what's in your pocket and I'll count the change...

Josh: Chugs beer, reaches in pocket pulls out all that is in them-a bit of lint, hands it over and walks away.

A million pints in and still out hustles a hustler.

But its the walk back to the hotel where the real party began. At this point Josh is not so much man as he is drink, so while maintaining ability to bring glass to mouth, he has now left the less important functions, such as walking and thinking to Alice, Flavia and I.

At this point I should note that as you walk along Bourbon St all you will smell is piss and vomit because that is the cocktail that lines the gutter day and night. Upon hearing Flavia shout "Party in the puddle!" Josh proceeds to splash, frolic and soak in the gutter.

The novelty of this was soon replaced, however, with Josh's next drunken conviction-that "New Orleans is THE BEST TASTING city in the world." When I asked him to prove it, he then hurled himself onto the hood of a Jeep truck and licks it.

To complete the mental image, while all of these events are transpiring, Josh was constantly stripping off his shirt and chucking it at me, then moments later looking at his bare chest, then frantically asking what has become of his shirt.

Such ends our first night in New Orleans.