Photo By Marco Torres

Fat Tony at a day show at SXSW '11

​Sweet lord, it's not even Thanksgiving yet and South By Southwest is making us excited for March in Austin already. Today the industry festival announced a few bands coming to the capitol city next year, and a few Houston names and Rocks Off faves have made the early cut.

Locals on board so far include the map-hopping Fat Tony, who is still touring with Das Racist, and punkers Something Fierce, whose latest album Don't Be So Cruel is still making waves in the worldwide punk and garage scenes months after it's release. Both bands are also up for a few HPMA trophies this month as well.

Austin duo and friends of Rocks Off Jr., Not In The Face!! are also playing the festival. You may remember the drummer Wes Cargal also does time in ATX metallers White Rhino too when the mood strikes their nether regions.

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What the @#$% happened last night? A City Pages SXSW recap of 3/17 from MPLS.TV on Vimeo.

Want to experience SXSW 2011 but have a short attention span? Then check out the above video compiled by our sister paper City Pages which features several big-name performers plus highlight footage from the Village Voice Media/Frank 151 Showdown, where Wu-Tang Clan was the headlining band.

When you're done with that, take a gander at the next video, which show the mayhem that ensued as fans demolished a fence during the "secret" Death From Above 1979 reunion show.

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Photos by Craig Hlavaty

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Valerie June

​This SXSW wasn't a pretty one by any means, with a camera boom falling on fans at Stubb's before Orchestral Manoeuvers In the Dark, Ben Weasel lashing out physically at unruly fans, the Death From Above 1979 police party, and the massive crowds seemingly dwarfing the numbers from the past few years.

Add to that Rebecca Black, the super-moon in the sky, and the UN allies bombing Libya, and it was a virtual pop-culture maelstrom.

But aside from the mace, Kanye West, and the harried SXSW staff, this wasn't a bad year for music at all. We found ourselves wide-eyed and grinning every night in front of one or two artists, thankful to be in the right place at the right time. Here are our ten favorite things we saw last week.

Honorable mentions go out to the Black Angels, Buxton, and especially Billy Gibbons for showing up to the Rachael Ray Feedback party and playing Elmore James' "Dust My Broom" with a bottle of his own BFG hot sauce in his back pants pocket.

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Photos by Marco Torres

​Diddy dropped on the Fader Fort Saturday night for the closing concert of SXSW 2011 featuring a rare live appearance by Oakland "based God" Lil B and not-so-rare appearance by the L.A. troublemakers on everyone's lips this year, Odd Future.

The Bad Boy for Life introduced Lil B, who sang hits including "Won Ton Soup" and "Pretty Bitch." After Lil B left the stage, Diddy came back out for "All About the Benjamins" and "Mo' Money Mo' Problems."

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Marco Torres

​The largest party of this year's SXSW included eight world-renowned DJ's, one legendary hip-hop group, a rap pioneer, and more than 10,000 screaming fans who took over a entire city block of Austin's Warehouse District Saturday night. Fueled by Red Bull and love of the turntables, both the artists and crowd experienced a magical evening that stopped traffic and sent the audience into hip-hop heaven.

We arrived in time to hear the vinyl scratching and acrobatic beat juggling of three time world champion DJ Qbert. His versatile mixing had everyone swaying to the beat, including the kids from the BBOY CITY break dancing crew who were positioned on a platform just left of the stage.

The next guest was none other than the master turntablist DJ Jazzy Jeff, who injected a bit of Philadelphia swagger into the mix. The former Fresh Prince of Bel Air star blessed us with everything from Biz Markie's "Just a Friend" to fellow DJ/producer Mark Ronson's "Ooh Wee."

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Craig Hlavaty

​It was a music nerd's dream, one of your favorite bands of the past ten years reuniting. Even though the titanic-sounding Canadian bass and drums duo Death From Above 1979 only released one LP, one EP, and a remix album, they managed to cultivate a following of rabid punks, indie-rockers, and metal freaks. Their announcement earlier this year that they would be coming back for the Coachella Festival was met with rapturous social media applause.

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UPDATE: According to Pitchfork Media via Twitter, Kanye West went onstage around 2:30 a.m.

Craig Hlavaty

​SXSW's pattern of general mayhem - brawls, collapsing cranes, gate-crashing, performers jumping off of roofs and assaulting audience members - does not seem to be letting up as the festival nears the end of the official showcases (save the few Sunday-night stragglers) in a few minutes.

The most recent example is at Beauty Bar, where for the past hour, Rocks Off's Craig Hlavaty has tweeted reports of flying chairs, bottles, tasers and a downed fence at the reunion show by louder-than-bombs Toronto duo Death From Above 1979.

Hlavaty's latest tweet says the fence that was downed earlier is back up, "for now." Follow him at @hprocksoff. Rocks Off hopes he and everyone else at the show gets out of there in one piece.

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Photos by Chris Gray

​Men Without Hats
Club de Ville
March 18, 2011

Every year at SXSW, Aftermath scans the schedule of hundreds and hundreds of bands and always has the same reaction: "They're still around?"

This year it was Canadian synth-pop safety dancers Men Without Hats. Since Aftermath was already going to be at Club de Ville Friday to interview Cheap Trick/Candy Golde drummer Bun E. Carlos and the Hats - who turned out to be founder Ivan Doroschuk (in a cowboy hat), two hired guns on synths and another on guitar - were closing out the night, we said, "Why the hell not?"

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Marco Torres

​Houston's own Fat Tony hooked it up at Headhunters this afternoon for a quick day set ahead of his showcase show tonight at Karma Lounge at 10:15 p.m. He just opened up for Snoop Dogg last night at the House of Blues in Houston. Someone is having the best weekend ever.

Craig Hlavaty

​ Billy Gibbons sat in with The Cringe at Rachael Ray's Feedback Party at Stubb's just after lunchtime for a cover of Elmore James' blues standard "Dust My Broom." The ZZ Top guitarist also mentioned his BFG hot sauce line, of which he had a bottle in his back pocket.

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