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