more Austin

I get up pretty early on Friday to meet up with Scary Mansion at Chris Rolls' hotel. I passed on trying to get into this apparently sold out Children's Museum show the night before. I like the Austin bus system, it's pretty regular and cheap. Paul Costuros is asleep in the hotel room when we get there. Leah and her twin sister Vanessa arrive, we were hoping to shoot on the roof by the pool, but there's a power issue, and it's probably noisy, so we opt for filming in the room. The videos turned out great I think, they are here:
We eat a so-so rather bland pita sandwich at the Pita Pit. My food options are pretty wide open compared to my vegan and veg friends, but I still find the selections pretty bland and I vow not to overdo pizza. Paul goes to buy some swim trunks and I get a picture taken wearing a dorky hat and wraparound sunglasses i found at work.
On friday afternoon, we play at Okay Mountain, a gallery near/behind an inflatable moonwalk rental place, which also sold pinatas and had air conditioning. Our band was playing on an Asthmatic Kitty bill with Gary Higgins and Weird Weeds. I ran into Katie Byron and her friend walking down Cesar Chavez and dragged them there with me. It's a pretty cool gallery, and it's a hot day in a backyard with only porta potties. The abundance of porta potties is a sad reality when you bring in a ton of drunk people in to your town and the plumbing capacity is overrun.
The Okay Mountain show runs late and we have to play before Weird Weeds and bounce before they play. I also talk smack about the free gross vitamin water that is there, and I guess the vitamin water people are there. Whoops. We have to drive across town to get to the Opera House for the Smell show. We worry that we are running late, but of course there is still plenty of time because there is a band playing that is friends with the owners who got added. We watch the band Magic Johnson. I go to the cafe across the street and start talking to this random girl. She is editing video, and I ask her what it's for. "Did you watch the Super Bowl?" she asks me. No, I didn't. She says "I don't normally watch it, but I won this contest and they showed my video during the Super Bowl." She entered a Doritos music video contest and now she has a record deal with Interscope. I invite her to come see my band across the street but I can tell this is not going to happen. For the record, I eat a lot of Doritos.
Opera House is right around the corner from End Of An Ear record store and next to a shop called "New Brohemia" that is a men's used clothing shop. I ask them how long they've been around with that name, because I thought I copyrighted the name "Brohemia" in 2000. I honestly never did anything with the name, but I am pretty sure I called dibs on that shit. The guy there said they've been around "a few years," but there we go.
Anyhow, we play indoors in this tiny room and it is pretty fun. Seeing the whole LA crew is nice, it felt like a real show on a real tour. We wait till the end of the show, which is Anavan, and then drive off across town to find the 501 Theater show that Veronica set up.
(photo from The Skyline Network)
For those unfamiliar with Finally Punk, they were/are four young (still young) girls from Austin whom we met in 2006 when they came through the Bay just as we were leaving Club Short. There is an assumption that we were evicted from Club Short. It is not so cut-and-dried, but in any case, people decided to trash our house as if it were being demolished. I am sure it will one day be demolished, but up to this point, it has not been. What can I say about Finally Punk playing our house - the railing on the side of the house came completely off. In any case, Veronica is also in the Carrots and she had supposedly quit Finally Punk, but she played this show with them. When we arrive, Death Sentence: Panda is packing up and Naked On the Vague is playing. There is something distinctive about a certain genre of Australian vocal styles, one cannot put it down to just accents. There is an approach to singing which is see in bands like Sea Scouts, Lakes, and even Naked On the Vague, whose Lucy Phelan is the only woman I can throw this descriptor at. Nevertheless, they are darkly noisy and gloomy in a way that pleases me. I spend part or most of the next band waiting out front trying to locate friends I have told to come here, and I also go back and forth to Ms. Bea's where we've been told that we can play the UTR/ToddP show as long as we get there by 10:45 and promise to be done by 11. I see Michelle Valdez aka Bunnyphonic who moved from Oakland to San Antonio a few years back. We toured together a long time ago, and she seems to be doing well in Texas. Liz Harris shows up also. Finally Punk have the largest crowd as hometown advantage and the rarity of their performance surely comes into play. They have a lot more songs than I remember, and they have the crowd in the palm of their collective hand.
We play a very aggravated 5 or six songs right after them. The ticking clock of another show three blocks away probably adds to the adrenaline rush. Hate to be the dicks who run away right after playing, but that is the way of SXSW. We haul ass over to Ms. Bea's and borrow the equipment of the band before us whose name escapes me, but they are from Georgia I think. We end at 11 on the dot.
After DS:P, Michelle and Russell and I go to a diner whose name I forget. The line is not so bad. Michelle tells me about a residency she did in Barcelona. Both her and Russell agree that music is dead. Art is where it is at apparently. I'm kind of moping to both of them about feeling burnt out on music and they think I should move to Texas. It's not really sinking in at the time, but the longer I linger in Austin, the more livable it seems.