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.