Spoonfed's intrepid Music Editor Dom Haley boozed and cruised his way around Austin, Texas to find the hottest new acts at SXSW Festival. It's a tough old job...
Wednesday 17 March: Austin, Texas
The saying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions never rings more true than at a festival. I had some big aims for my first proper day at SXSW: hang out with cute Texan girls, eat a burrito and maybe catch Thee Vicars, Lovvers, Abe Vigoda and Strange Boys. Needless to say I failed on all counts.
Waking up jet-lagged and later than I would've liked, I headed down town to get acquainted with the place, grab some free beer from the conference centre and generally see what’s up. With nothing due to start for a few hours, Alex and I headed over to Jamie’s Spanish Bar (pronounced Haimay’s) for what we'd been told were the best margaritas in town. Grabbing a couple of $6 cocktails, we took a seat in the shady patio area to enjoy one of the more unique non-official showcases SXSW has to offer – The Beatles Ukulele Project. Originally from the cool cafe-bars of Brooklyn, this mad-cap scheme is basically an attempt to play the whole of the Beatles' back-catalogue over a 2-day period using a ukulele player, a cover band called ‘The Eggmen’ and a revolving draft of some of the festival’s many performers and famous faces. As an introduction to live music in Austin, it’ll take some beating.
After sinking a couple more margaritas, we’re starting to feel the pangs of hunger, so after saying our goodbyes, we head round the corner to Brush Park where our friends Canadian Blast are holding their 6th annual BBQ, with free food, free beer for us press types and some of the best bands from the Northern Frontier. Alas, we arrive a bit too late for the food, but we’re handed a couple of cans of Lonestar and a kick-ass view of You Say Party, We Say Die as they wrestle through a set of theatrical chamber pop.
It’s OK, but we’re still hungry. So sucking up our last ounces of strength we head down to the arse-end of 6th Street to a place called Death Metal Pizza, with the idea that a place called Death Metal Pizza can’t fail to be awesome. Pitching up just in time to grab a couple of slices of $3 pizza from a bunch of stoners listening to Slayer, we head out to the garden-cum-stage area to watch a band called Restavaunt play a set of ball-busting blues rock. Featuring a guy from a David Lynch movie on guitar accompanied by a maniac banging license plates whilst wearing a Ke$ha t-shirt, they have to win the prize for weirdest band of the day.
After meeting up with the rest of the people we were staying with, it’s decided that now is the right time to hit the town proper. We visit The Beauty Bar first, where we spend a couple of hours drinking Patron and watching Munch Munch and Jeremy Jay before stumbling through town to see Londoners Fake Blood and Annie Mac throw down glitchy electro with a bunch of drunken Americans doing this strange running on the spot dance. I swear to God, at one point I thought that I had been transported back to a Wednesday night chug-a-thon at Catch, but that might just have been the tequila talking.
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