I totally miss Fanfarlo yet again, along with another band I've been assigned to cover for CL because sleep has become increasingly scarce. Fortuntely, they're playing again tomorrow. Unfortunately, due to continuous running around like a chicken with no head and a small cold at the beginning of the week, I have lost my voice. Naturally, this is also the day my friend and I are playing host to a trio of Brits (Meat Katie, Kid Blue, & friends) who've come in to spin at various electronic parties. The no voice thing makes me sound a bit like Marlon Brando choking on glass in a library but I try my best to just keep nodding and smiling, knowing that come night fall, it won't matter anymore so long as I can still shake my can.
Lunch at
Iron Cactus begins the day with the tastiest spicy broccoli ever, then we meander with the Brits over to the swanky
Shangri-La on the east side.
Sugar Sugar Sugar
lays down some uber-heavy, melodic, Sabbathy, White Stripes-ish strangeness. A husky voice which sounds, oddly enough, like mine at the moment, growls out from a 'Cousin It' looking hesh in the front. The drummer is a smokin hot mess of sticks with a saucy red flower in her hair to match her red kit and lipstick. I make fun of them a little bit, mostly just because it's just too damn early for my fuddy-duddy brain to handle such noise. My prog-rock friend, Skippy however, loves them enough not only to buy a disc but also to buy me a t-shirt as a joke which I will later wear to bed if I ever find one..
Next up is
Emo's, outside stage, since once again, the whole max capacity thing prevents us from getting anywhere near
Neon Indian on the inside.
Japandroids, a two man wall of sound, start off their set by yelling "We're gonna tear shit up!" (or something along those lines). The Singer/Guitarist stands on the drum riser slamming into his guitar Who-style, and otherwise goes bananas, perhaps to compensate for the fact that the actual music itself really isn't all
that, but hey, maybe i'm just getting grumpy and critical from the lack of proper sleep.
My good friend Matt's band
Quiet Company, who I genuinely love and even have a little cameo spot in the back of their video for "
On Modern Men," has played three times during South By, including a showcase, and I've not been able to catch any of them so after he texts me to say that they are on the east-side (as am I), I exchange friends and make what turns out to be about a fifteen block trek only to find they played a short set and I've missed them yet again, dangit.
For the first time since moving to Austin, my tired, sick body demands a pedi-cab ride back downtown to
Club Deville; that is, until we get up to 6th St, at which point my friend leans over and says "You know we've lost all our street cred by staying in here," and we tell the guy to let us off early.
After enjoying a much needed "Stray Dog" at the
Hot Dog King, I catch
Tan Lines at
Club Deville, an experimental pop duo out of Brooklyn.
The singer says, "You won't hear music like this anywhere else at South By." He's right.
It's cool but not really my thing so I bail and realize as I pass
Stubb's that
Muse is playing tonight not tomorrow. Amazingly I'm inside within 15 minutes and though cams aren't allowed in the front half of the venue (just for Muse), the tail end of the show is an amazing array of epic arena rock with an entire venue singing along loudly.
I make a little gay friend in line and he offers to 'smoke me out' in his car after the show but seeing as how I haven't partaken in those sorts of festivities in about a decade, I pass and head for
Shakespeare's Pub where once again, I amazingly only wait about 15 minutes (thank you
Creative Loafing for the badge!) and score a spot dead center right next to the stage.
I may have mentioned, I got hooked on
Fanfarlo off
thesixtyone.com and have been addicted to their happy, infectious pop ever since. The singer sounds uncannily like David Byrne of the Talking Heads so for some reason, I'm expecting someone older but he's just a kid. A very talented kid with a Fanfarlo-astic band behind him.
This show is the highlight of my night. I dance hard to "Luna," the last song of their set and then hobble my broken carriage back east across the 6th St gutter mayhem to
The Independent, where my friend, Scott says "
Daedelus is
Killin It."
"It" turns out to be this insane sort of thrashing techno. I'm told he started with dub-step and lo-fi doo-wop and then worked his way up to the thrashing point but never the matter cuz I hit the wall about two hours ago and this is more than my brain can stand.
Walk back across 6th, find my bike amongst the insanity of drunk people, half eaten pizza slices, and general mayhem. Ride to the car, go home, soak, pass-out, rinse, and repeat again tomorrow if I can get out of bed...
Cheers,
Sasha Rae
See all Sasha Rae Photo SXSW pix here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sasharae7/sets/72157623521206993/
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