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.