Monday, April 3, 2006

First blog - south by southwest memories

Things to discuss.
So, I’ve had 2 recent monumental weeks mixed in with lingering depression that festered on the days that I was not doing those awesome things.

So, a few Wednesdays back, Marla invited me to a picnic in Zilker Park in the afternoon….and as
I’m a sucker for those kinds of things, I went. While there, we snacked on sandwiches, chips, and queso under a beautiful Austin sun as Marla’s multi-ethnic friends took pictures of each other, and me. This reminded me how much I miss pictures, and how I have few pictures of the last 4 years of my life

As I pondered this, Matt Baab called me.

“Hey, dude, you need an extra wristband for south by?”

I bolted to his work, and picked up the wristband. Over the next 5 days, I saw a ton of incredible music, and would have seen more had I not had to work at the Office Depot every single day.

As far as bands, and as far as my memories will take me (I hung with dan, so I spent a lot of this festival drunk), highlights included:

Pilot drift (a Texarkana indie rock band with somewhat of a progressive/flaming lips/pink floyd thing going on. They look like dudes I went to high school with. Metaphorically. But they actually have buzz, and seem to deserve it.

Aloha - twice - once at Emo’s Wednesday night, once at this strange irish pub on Saturday afternoon., before work, in which I had a few beers and came into work feeling a little off.

Gomez - at stubbs on friday- somewhat boring but decent enough show - met some cute girls in the line for the toilet who told me that nickel creek was great but I ignored them. I’ll probably fall in love with nickel creek in the future and regret this.

Devotchka - an awesome sea of sitar inexplicable beautifulness. Makes me miss theo even more.
Trail of Dead - isn’t it nice to accidentally stumble into a trail of dead show for free at 1:30 am? Yes, it is. I just remember that they were loud, and they rocked that “let it dive” song that I love.

Goblincock and My Education at Habana Calle on Wednesday night - strangest combination of bands in two rooms the same night. Goblincock is basically six dudes in black robes that prance around like morons with thick smoke clouds and grumble “WE ARE GOBLINCOCK” and then make the heavy metal sign in unison. They played to 200 people. My Education was an incredible instrumental rock band, probably the best thing I saw the whole festival, and they played to 20 people.

Deus - cool, full sounding Belgian rock that I listened to while looking for friends I met from a seattle radio station. Never found the peeps.

Linea 77 - an awesome Italian heavy metal band that screamed like crazy and grooved like Italians can groove. This music is what it would sound like if Pantera had joined the mob.

Ester Drang - awesome indie band with lots of guitar stuff and a projectionist - very full sound, powerful. I’ll be back for the record.

Hanging out with D Skar and his rambunctious ass was a pleasure as always. I want to write more about this, but i am too tired.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Woo! Welcome to the blogosphere!

Anonymous said...

Hi Brandon! Aren't you so glad I came to visit? I would like to extend a thank you for starting a blog so I have something else to distract me from school and finding something to do once I graduate.
I do recall going to the movies with lemondrops, but in my memory there was not much fighting and much more sharing. There was probably fighting about apples to apples though, that game is fierce.