SXSW - Day One

We arrived in Austin today after an uneventful drive from Fort Worth, noticing the urban sprall, and for all you planners, the lack of any advertising regs (40' illuminated flagpole signs and a proliferation of neon not seen anywhere else on earth).
Austin, to quote American's 'is, like, awesome!' I don't think I have eve been in a more relaxed and funky city. Again like Fort worth, trees line every street, sidewalks are wide, and people are very friendly. The culture however, is very different, being a college town, the population is a lot more liberal and younger.
After registering at sxsw (and picking up the biggest bag of swag, ie 10% good stuff and 8 kilos of junk!) We went to go and see the first of our band choices of the evening (unfortunately, we have yet to buy a new camera, so no pictures).
• Kate Tucker and the sons of sweden ***1/2 LINK are a pretty good band, if a little melancholy for my liking. We were expecting to see St Bernadette, however there was a last minute switch, and I was not disappointed. The gig was at Wave, which is a pretty cool bar on 6th street, done out like a surfer's bar.
• Moke ****1/2 LINK Are suprisingly from holland, although the singer is from Belfast (and has a similar vocal style to the late Jim Morrisson). They had the entire place rocking, and put on a great set. These guys deserve to hit it big, although the guitarist is decidedly average, from a distance though he looks like a weathered Jamie Doran! Bourbon Rocks patio is a great venue, with an outside bar. I met two sxsw veterans (this is their 15th year), who gave me some great tips.
• Delorean ***** LINK Were awesome. For those who haven't heard of them, they combine excellent guitar work with their own blend of spanish dance music. The gig was at Maggie Mae's rooftop, and I was sure that with the combination of excess bass and a crowd of 300 jumping fans that the roof was going to come off! How these guys aren't huge across Europe is baffling.
• Von Bondies **** LINK At 11pm we were off to Emo's for the biggest gig of the night. The buzz about the Von Bondies was huge when we arrived that afternoon, and they were one of the bands I wanted to see. Unfortunately by the time we got there, the venue was full, even our badges, which got us to the front of the queue were no help here. Luckily, the venue was partially outside, so we could still see and hear. The band was great, and a drunken girl, fell over the kerb and hit her head on a tree, which was so funny, it almost made up for the lack of beer.
• Suffrajett ****1/2 LINK At 12am, we are at a venue called 'The Blind Pig' to see the above band. We had a choice to see the Black Angels, but these guys won out, and we were pleased. The bass player was the best I have ever seen, and I got a couple of plectrums from him. The only negative point about the gig was that the singer decided to shout 'suffrajett don't forget' between each song (as though it was the greatest slogan of all time). I hope to pick up the album soon, oh and as a point of useless trivia, the drummer is formerly of the legendary Psychadelic Furs!
• TAB The Band **1/2 LINK This was a band I had high hopes for, unfortunately, where all of the above bands had checked their sound levels before playing, these guys seemed to be after sheer power, which imho negatively affected the performance. I still liked the band and their style of rock music (very Rolling Stones). I think with a bit more polish, these guys could do well indeed. Congrats to the drummer who managed to play half of the finale with 1 stick.
At the end of the night, we had to get a shuttle bus back to the hotel (6 miles away from downtown). Bit of a pain, but there you go.

Laters,
Steve.

This was written on my Nokia N810. For more information go to http://www.nseries.com/index.html

Cow town, Butch Cassidy and the greatest steak in the world

Well, we've left Dallas, and I think I've seen most of what 'big D' has to offer, so on to fortworth, where the fog has lifted and the sun is shining at a lovely 75°F. Fortworth is completely different than Dallas but is part of the same Metroplex, it combines steel and glass skyscrapers with 3-storey historical buildings, converted salloons and banks now form a very beautiful entertainment and business district called sundance square (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid frequented Fort Worth regularly). Trees wrapped in fairy lights line each wide paved streets. Both pedestrian and automobile live in harmony, it's laid back, friendly and definitely cowboy Texas.
A short bus ride out of downtown sends you to the historic stockyards where Texas cattle drives started on their route to the north. It's a fascinating place rich with history and cowboy culture. Again we hit a bar (can anyone see a pattern emerging here), a proper saloon with all of the walls and ceilings covered in cowboy hats... Oh, and beer is $2 a bottle, so we sat back and watched a proper country battle of the bands... And I'm still not a big fan...

The final act of the day was to head to a restaurant called 'The Chop House'... My god, Texans sure know how to cook a steak, a beutiful rib (on the bone) steak cooked to perfection. I have never in all of my life (a lot of steak) tasted a better piece of meat. It was a pricey meal £30 a head inc. wine, but so worth it.

I am sad to leave fort worth and it's lovely food... But excited by the approaching SXSW festival and what Austin has to offer.

Laters,
Steve.

Fog, public transport and the fun of shopping

Today I awoke to a foggy dallas, the skyscrapers cut in half by the swirling mist. Although the temperature has dropped, it's still warmer than telford, and there are still no chavs in sight. As it's Monday, the city has come back to life, yet even with a limited mass transit system, and 99% of workers commuting, there are no nose to tail traffic jams. I think this is due to having high capacity roads, lots of them, people obeying traffic laws and the complete lack of roundabouts. Well that's my opinion anyway.
As the weather is poor today, we dedcided to travel to one of Dallas's many out of town malls using the new electric tram system. It's clean, efficient, with covered stations playing classical music, which seems to annoy most of the low income/unemployed black and hispanic travellers whom seem to make up 90% of all customers. Unlike the UK, the public transport system, this embraces new technology (lpg powered buses) and is subsidised greatly by the government. I suppose you'd have to when petrol is $3.00 a gallon (less than 40p a litre)!
Anyway the mall was pretty crap, although it was easily twice the size of the bullring and it had an apple store. We spent the rest of the afternoon looking around Dallas exploring the cultural district and looking around, before travelling uptown to have a walk about and find a bar serving the largest plate of nachos you have ever seen (there must have been half a pound of cheese on the plate!), All washed down with several beers.
Tomorrow we move to Fort Worth... cow town

JFK, BBQ, and homeless zombies

Dallas, city of oil, banks and presidential assassinations. Steel and glass towers rise high into the sky, housing thousands of workers between monday and friday. Unfortunately today is saturday, which means that downtown is deserted. I fight the urge to shout 'hello!' Like Cilian Murphy in 28 days later. However the fear of zombies and tramps offering directions and their opinions on the JFK assassination, for a fee of course... To be fair, they print their own magazine and most of the stuff they say is pretty much rant free.
Eventually, we found the west end area filled with bars and we were sorted for the evening. I didn''t even mind paying $10 for a bunch of roses for Emma.

The following morning we were off to Dealey plaza to the 6th floor museum, and saw how Oswald was framed for killing Kennedy. It was a great museum with real indepth information on the life and death of JFK. After we headed to a bbq restaurant for some amazing texas food. Brisket slowly smoked for 2 days and then served with bbq sauce is surely the food of the gods. Finishing the day drinking some cold beers watching girls getting wet... In the rain (behave you lot)closed out a great sunday.

Oh, and Oswald didn't do it.

40,000 feet above Greenland

Hi all, sorry for the delay in posting but I've been without a computer for a week or so. So here goes my first blog entry.
I've just finished watching the Coen brothers magnum opus 'No country for old men'. It would have been better without the crappy ba standard headphones, or the stupid woman who kept moving her seat. Still though it was a very atmospheric movie, Javier Bardem is perhaps the scariest man in movie history and who would have thought Josh (the elder goonie brother) Brolin could pull off a performance like that? Anyways, I digress; looking out the window at the arctic wastes and frozen mountains of greenland it's hard to believe the global warming excuses for tax increases. It's a beautiful looking land, and will be better once the snow all melts and the bears are gone (no camouflage without snow you pesky bastards).
We're currently 40,000 ft up. Emma's watching some bad sitcom and by the look of it, could have eaten another piece of carrot cake, while I'm looking out the window contemplating the cold, and the fa cup shocks of the day (go on barnsley!), while reading the new Stuart Maconie book.
As we fly south across Canada, over the great lakes (which are bloody huge!), and then over Milwaukee, I realise that it's still winter, everything is still frozen, and it's much further south than Telford. I think this is why the Americans don't make a fuss about global warming, it doesn't affect them, much like we didn't bother when scandinavia was complaining in the nineties.
Still, if the government spent a tenth of the money it makes from petrol tax, we would have solved global warming by now.

Laters,
Me.