SXSW 2012: Day Three
Let's start with a lie. This picture is actually from Wednesday night, sorry. It is the whole The Burning Club gang (except Perry and Monica who always manage to avoid group photos, probably for good reason). We are on the edge of teh stage at Maggie Mae's Rooftop at 2.00am -ish . Three Blind Wolves ( with drummer from Ayr, Scotland, my hometown) have just finished..... Here are Al, Brad, Jenna, Dave, Simon, John, Tracey and moi with a complete stranger about to crash our photo....bastard.
If you throw a party in teh middle of nowhere and you have two hundred people waiting outside what would you do - probably wait till you open the gates before you get the band to start. Nope, Not at Hotel Vegas. Inside, Of Monsters & Men, Iceland's Arcade Fire, play to nobody......we queue outside....
Now we are in......
Al and I pop back to Maggie Mae's Downstairs where we join a bunch of sixty year olds having lunch and about twenty other people to see the quite stunning and destined for absolute greatness, Motopony storm through 30 mins....
Triphop, lounge dance, Portishead wannabees, whatever, at Rusty's here is Wishes & THieves..
Ear plugs in but making no difference the Scottish wall of thundrous sound continues at The Stage Outdoors with We Were Promised Jetpacks......toooo loud boys....
Two of the top acts of teh moment in teh same little venue with zero audience...that is what you can do at SXSW if you know your stuff, ahem. JOHNATHAN Wilson, a geetar virtuoso, with great voice & tunes. If you do not know him , just go buy his album, before teh bandwagon rolls into your city......
That was excellent, says I.
REally, that is great coming from The Burning Club , says JW.
Yes, I noticed you missed a few strums on teh fourth song....
Fuck off....JW
Anyway, we are now best pals......
Yes, lets do lunch...JW
An SXSW moment....
pringsteen..Guest Speaker at teh conference....announces a special live gig. Only accessible via winning a ticket through the badge holders lottery. We all applied.....Al, Perry and I won a ticket. Unfortunately cameras were banned so photos did not happen, We sat The Low Anthem - great - Alesandro Escavedo - good - and Bruce - excellent. Here are a couple of Al's mobile phone shots. Very intimate gig....Springsteen is teh one impersonating The Elephant Man.....
Actually proceeded with a game of darts , not a typical SXSW moment.....
and this shows the actual proximity to BS & His E street Band... Any closer and I would have been playing the caracas in teh band....
It was a day for EVENTs....NIke launched the FuelBand at SXSW. Go google. As a result they threw nightly rave parties. Over teh week they had Major Lazer, Calvin Harris and this one - Girl Talk...wild, wild , wild....
How my brain felt.
That's him with the headband. He mashes Springsteen with JayZ, Devo with obscure rappers, a party animal....
Then back to SXSW normality, weirdness. Two kids called The Cannon Brothers, one girl,one boy, thrashing pop. Average age I would say was 17.
And.....the....night .....is ....over......already.......Big Big Day......
