THURSDAY

Started the day at the (pretty lame) Texas Picnic Company, a couple of blocks from Emo's. After lunch, we walked over to Emo's Lounge to see if we were right the first time about the Mae Shi (see Wed. night). Turns out we were! Those guys are fucking amazing!


And just for fun, another illustrative youtube clip:

After Mae Shi, we wandered over to the Emo's outside stage and caught a couple of minutes of Most Serene Republic. Not bad, but didn't quite live up to their very cool name. BUT! MSR represented the third trombone sighting thus far during SXSW.


After Most Serene Republic, I went inside to the Emo's main room and caught a couple of minutes of some rock band - i think it was Son, Ambulance:

At this point, Mark, Dave and I left to go down to the Flatstock poster show, which was great. There was a lot of excellent stuff down there, including a set of White Stripes posters based on chess pieces. The asking price for the whole set was like 900 dollars, too high to be really tempting, exactly, but man were they cool. I bought some t-shirts for Amy, and a couple of posters, including this excellent Spoon poster from Aesthetic Apparatus in Minneapolis:

I also bought this Wilco poster from Dan MacAdam at Crosshair Silkscreen Design:

I don't have permission to use these images, which definitely belong to the above-named companies and not me, but I bought the posters and I encourage everyone to go buy stuff from them.

So after this, I walked back up 6th street, taking in the mid-afternoon crowd. Just look at this selection of the nation's hippest, most in-the-know music freaks:


Woo! I want to party with those folks! I then returned to Emo's Lounge to catch Parts & Labor and those guys fucking PEELED THE PAINT OFF THE WALLS. They are a very aggressively loud noise rock band with these inexplicably catchy pop melodies careening over the din. Not everybody's cup of tea, I know, but I really, really enjoyed this show.



After Parts & Labor, I stumbled happily down 6th street, rivulets of blood coursing down from my ears and marking my trail as I wandered randomly in and out of a couple of clubs. I stuck around the Look See Proof show for a minute; they were English kids who really, really like the Futureheads first record. Hey, that's okay, I like it too:

I also saw these guys, but I have no idea who they are:

Eventually I drifted back to the Emo's outside stage for Tokyo Police Club, a young, kind of spastic Canadian band that got spiked by a bad mix for the first couple of songs, but once the mix got fixed they really finished strong:


Closing the Emo's outside day show was Minneapolis group Tapes 'n Tapes. I really liked their debut album "the Loon," which was reminiscent (to me) of the best old Violent Femmes songs; rawboned, jangly, aggressive, and funny. I expected to see a pretty straight reading of these songs, but they surprised me and mostly played new stuff, which is much more straight-ahead. The old songs were played in looser, louder versions, and I thought really came off well. Plus I liked the new stuff - I'll probably buy that record when it comes out next month. All in all, a great end to the day shows.

Mark, Doug, and Dave certainly seemed to enjoy it:

And here's a clip from the actual show:


After dinner at Habana Calle 6, I returned to the hotel to await Mike's arrival and contemplate my 6th Street henna tat (produced by half a dozen wrist stamps over the course of the day):

Once I met up with Mike, we tried to get into the Jagjaguar showcase at Mohawk, but Mike didn't have his wristband yet, and the lines just weren't moving. We then stopped in briefly at Stubb's to see a song or two of the Old 97s:

We then hauled ass down to Soho Lounge, a hole in the wall on 6th street with a long narrow upstairs bar, and arrived just in time to see Times New Viking start up @ 1:20; a three piece with organ, guitar and drums. Remarkable driving distortion, and really infectious melodies. The video clip is from the actual show we saw.


Again, it's not everyone's cup of tea, but by the end of that show, Mike and I were jumping up and down, pounding each other on the back, and basically having a fucking great time. Back to the hotel, ears ringing, and then bed.

P.S. at one point Thursday I also went into Cedar Door Courtyard by accident thinking I was at the Cedar Street venue. I was trying to see Montreal indie pop band Islands. Instead I saw two songs by shit-awful radioternative nightmares Army of Freshmen. (No, no link. No!) I promptly deleted the memory of the sound from my ears, but not this picture from my camera, so here it is: