I’m starving. Starved. My fingers creak. My throat is dry. My knees wobble. My groin….(well that’s another story). But I’ve eaten already??
Dudes, I’m starved of performance. SXSW is about the live music and live music I did have. The past week has had me absorb a profound amount of live music…it’s gotten to a point where jealousy looms. Every stamp of my foot thumped jealousy deeper into my SOUUULL. I just wanted to plug into something……..an instrument………………………………a musical instrument. Or hit a snare or some shit.
So I’ll attempt to explain how SXSW operates as a festival. Back home your usual music festival (bar maybe Laneway and maybe Sydney Fest) is an outdoor setup with multiple outdoor stages etc. Lots of grass/mud/dirt, lots of sun/rain, diluted drinks, hectic macho shirtless roid boys etc. Austin is a city made up of venues, it’s backbone is music. Every corner there is a club with a PA and a little raised deck for a kit. Where Sydney might have 3-4 notable “indie” venues, Austin will have about 40. Sound desks are as common as beer taps at these clubs. Regular houses get transformed into venues during SXSW and the lines for these types of shows are enormous. The music schedule for SXSW is mind blowing. If you’ve ever complained about clashes, try look at the SXSW music schedule…fark. The beauty of this set up is that you can punt and discover and that’s exactly what I pursued.
I don’t think I have done this much punting in my life (I’m definitely not talking about the sporting term). Of course there would be misses, but when they hit, oh boy did THEY HIT.
You get an incredible rush from trying to scamper from one venue to the next. I’m so darn glad I had a bike on me or I would’ve been absolutely screwed over. Even then I’d probably missed a fair few acts I wanted to see. I’ve also missed acts cause of mega queues into things. SXSW’s queues consist of a priority badge, wristband and general public queue. I lined up to get into the Vice Magazine party for about 2 hours even with a badge. I saw a general ticket holder guy collapse to his knees screaming “Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!” to the sky <- That scene is stuff made of dreams, I never thought people actually did that in real life. I am pleased as a result.
6TH STREET
Most locals and SXSW veterans would say how cheesy and unsavoury 6th street (downtown) is, but as a tourist it’s fucking sweet. I won’t deny the existence of trashbags and lewd behaviour into the evening, but the fact that they have a street with 4-5 blocks (?) where every building is literally a live venue, is intense. Walking into this street day or night is a mindfaaaack of visuals and sounds. Sounds are everywhere…buskers line the streets like icing on top of all the venues which are already blasting the booms of kick drums and snarling solos from Teles. Venues play their music so loud from their open windows and rooftops that they bleed into each other, so while walking down 6th street, multiple genres blend to make this mental mash up of blues/metal/folk/buskers.
Austin’s unofficial motto is “Keep Austin Weird.” It isn’t weird. You know, there’s just a couple of dudes who’ve set up full sized beds and have slept in the middle of the road. Pop-up puppet shows can be seen on every end. Free-style poets are screaming at every passerby. Duelling pianists belt out their best chops. Men with signs with handwritten mantras walk up and down the street for hours. 6th street is absolute madness, but a thrill to absorb. It’s psycho.
Parades randomly come through the street and sweep you into them, making you walk loads of blocks with them…it was such a weird organic growth. I got pulled into a peace parade and ended up screaming “When the saints go marching in” at the top of my lungs for a good 30 minutes, all while thinking…are we those saints? Probably not, most of us were blind drunk and/or stoned.
So you’re probably wondering what acts I’ve caught in the past week. I kinda wish the scientific fact that drinking heavily correlates with short term memory loss was untrue. But here we go, a list of what my ears copped during SXSW in no particular order:
- Divine Fits (Los Angeles, CA)
- Wavves (Los Angeles, CA)
- Skaters (New York, NY)
- Japandroids (Vancouver, BC)
- Josh Rouse (Valencia, Spain)
- Jim James (Lousville, KY)
- The Flaming Lips (Oklahoma City, OK)
- Delorentos (Dublin, Ireland)
- Savages (London, UK)
- Jonathan Boulet (Sydney, NSW)
- Youth Lagoon (Boise, ID)
- The Black Angels (Austin, TX)
- Cloud Nothings (Cleveland, OH)
- The Polyphonic Spree (Dallas, TX)
- Team Spirit (Brooklyn, NY)
- DIIV (New York, NY)
- Alpine (Melbourne, VIC)
- Charles Bradley (Brooklyn, NY)
- Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings (Brooklyn, NY)
- Sugarman 3 (Brooklyn, NY)
- Menahan Street Band (Brooklyn, NY)
- Vampire Weekend (Brooklyn, NY)
- Pumcayo (Mexico)
- Mayer Hawthorne (Los Angeles, CA)
- Caitlyn Rose (Nashville, TN)
- Cold War Kids (Los Angeles, CA)
- The Specials (London, UK)
- Purple (Beaumont, TX)
- Solange (Houston, TX)
- Leopold and his Fiction (San Francisco, CA)
- Spindrift (Los Angelas, CA)
- The Holydrug Couple (Santiago, Chile)
- Camera (Berlin, Germany)
- Royal Baths (Brooklyn, NY)
- Charan Po Rantan (Tokyo, Japan)
- Lowdown 30 (Seoul, South Korea)
- Goonam (Seoul, South Korea)
- 3rd Line Butterfly (Seoul, Korea)
- John Talabot (Barcelona, Spain)
- Skating Polly (Oklahoma City, OK)
- Modern Rock Diaries (Oklahoma City, OK)
Charles Bradley & Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings were hands down my favourite performances of SXSW 2013. In fact the whole roster for the Daptones Showcase was phenomenal. I’ve never really caught soul music live before, but fuck I have to do it again.
-Chumpy x