SXSW report (part 1?)

Whew! We're back. Actually we got back at 8:30am Sunday, but had some work (and sleep) to catch up on before attending to blogging duties. I (Allan) had brought my laptop along to Austin, intending to write up a few blog posts about South By Southwest while we were there, but never found the time! And besides, Andee was doing a good job of "tweeting" about what was going on, so there was that. Although, it should be noted that that in his Twitter posts Andee really only mentioned the stuff he saw, and while he was playing minigolf and taking naps and stuff like that, Allan actually was out catching even more bands...

So, first off, SXSW was a blast. Even Andee had a good time, and he (as he so often, and so vehemently, declares) doesn't like to go to shows. Our showcase with WFMU was a rousing success, it went really well if we say so ourselves! Big thanks to all the WFMU people who did so much work to make it happen (our pal Brian Turner especially, also FMUer's Diane, Trent, Scott, and I think there were some others I didn't even meet). Also to all the SXSW volunteers at our venue, and to the guys from place we rented the backline from, who were very nice indeed. And to the bands who played, you all were awesome, thanks for doing it!! And, of course, to everyone who attended. Hope you had a good time too!

So, for those who are further interested in a brief rundown/writeup of our SXSW experience, here you go...

Allan and Andee arrived in Austin on Thursday afternoon, and were picked up from the airport by our buddy Jeremy Devine from Temporary Residence Ltd. (thanks Jeremy!)

We immediately drove over to see Pinback's Rob Crow perform a solo acoustic set of all-improvised songs. Well, he eventually played some old Heavy Vegetable songs too. Andee was sorely tempted to sit in on drums for those, too bad the drum kit the previous band had used had already been broken down...

Then we met up with one of the bands on Jeremy's label, Young Widows, and had dinner at the fantastic Torchy's Tacos (fried avocado! yum). After that, Allan got a ride back downtown with the Young Widows guys, while Andee and Jeremy hit the (miniature golf) links, really.

So, while those two contended with giant dinosaurs and other minigolf hazards, Allan wandered about the craziness that is Austin's 6th Street area during SXSW, stopping at one venue to see a few minutes of Endless Boogie (who certainly lived up to their name). He then went and found Brian Turner at the Siltbreeze showcase, and they went back to the place where Endless Boogie had been playing to see Flower Travellin' Band, who were up next! Despite being pretty big fans of the legendary Japanese '70s psych band, we had fairly low expectations, 'cause the new, reunion FTB album unfortunately sucks, but they started off with a song from "Satori" and sounded pretty darn good, with the singer still hitting all the high notes. The guitarist had some crazy huge guitar thing with extra strings that he was playing, he seemed really happy about that. But after about 15 minutes things started to go downhill, so we split. It was cool to hear the "Satori" song though! Later Allan managed to see Oakland's Annihilation Time (who got a bit of a pit going) and, later still (about 1:30am) Priestess from Montreal, both of 'em kicked out the jams. And that was that for Thursday.

(To Be Continued...)