For this week's cover story, Bill Jensen shadowed comedian/actor/emo rapper Donald Glover. For your enjoyment, we present this deleted scene.

Donald Glover is in Austin preparing to host the MTVu Woodies--an "awards" show which is really just an excuse to gather a bunch of bands and to represent MTV at SXSW. Glover has brought the shaggy-haired Pierson to be his writing partner and help him with the script for the one-hour show.

Foo Fighters are performing soundcheck, and Tyler from Odd Future just picked up a guy in a chicken suit onstage and slammed him to the ground, possibly breaking his arm.

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​For the newest edition of City of Music, producer Dan Huiting and videographers Chris Hadland and Andre Durand caught up with Fargo quintet Secret Cities down in Austin, Texas during the SXSW music festival for a take-away performance... in a tree.  More >>

​Last year, as SXSW'ers swarmed downtown Austin, Texas, Alexander "DJ RTC" Fruchter rented a palatial mansion in the nearby hills for four days and set about creating a "hip-hop fantasy camp." Rappers like Freddie Gibbs, Fashawn, Rhymefest, and Kanye West associate GLC passed through, hung out, and wrote music together. Along with compiling the best of those sessions for an album project, video footage of the bonds the artists forged was recorded for an accompanying documentary. As Fruchter puts it, the aim was to "not just document the culture and the art that came out of those four days but to tell the story of the artists and what makes them unique." With Closed Sessions: ATX released on March 15th, we asked Gibbs, Fashawn, GLC, RTC and Dilated Peoples' Rakaa to look back on their time inside hip-hop's most grandiose recording spot.

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All photos by Alexander Flores

For more photos from Flatstock 29, check out Alex's two-part slideshow here and here.

​Greetings citizens: I don't usually do this, but at the request of our intrepid music editor, I'm compelled to give an account of my virginal visit to the phenomenon that is known as Flatstock.

For those not as obsessed with design and poster printing as I am, Flatstock is a rock poster convention created by the American Poster Institute and it's been operating at different festivals all over the nation since 2002. The American Poster Institute is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting and preserving the art form of rock posters, and was formed to protect the spirit of the music and cultural landscape portrayed in the work of gig poster artists, just as the iconic rock posters promoting shows out of venues like the Fillmore West did in the 1960s. Showcasing its artist members, API and Flatstock has been something of a sleeping giant for nearly a decade now, serving as a secret Mecca for lovers of music in the graphic form, designers who love music, and followers of a craft that is slowly gaining momentum with more mainstream audiences.

As a designer and closet collector of gig posters myself, it was long overdue for me to attend a Flatstock exhibition and get the face-to-face experience with the artists themselves.

This week, I got my chance. Flatstock 29 took place at South by Southwest, running between March 16 and 19, opening Wednesday evening and concluding Sunday evening of that weekend. Appropriately smack dab in the middle of the music portion of the festival, and located within the air-conditioned walls of the Austin Convention Center, more than 80 artists from all over the country and world (showcasing artists hailed from everyone from Brooklyn to London to Germany to Portland) were present, with tons of combined stock to display and sell to the wandering public.

In other words: I've been to heaven, and it is screen-printed.

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Photo by Erik Hess

​We have one final piece of SXSW coverage to offer up this week, and then we're done -- for real this time. In this video, our team of Dan Huiting, Andre Durand, and Chris Hadland recap a few of the final shows they saw at SXSW this year, including all seven bands at our Gimme Noise and First Ave day party and a performance by Okkervil River. More >>

Allie Mason

​The Pitch's photo intern, Allie Mason, stopped by Capybara's set at the SXSW official showcase to snag some shots during her trip to SXSW this year. Click on the picture above to check out a slideshow of Capybara's set. 

Who knew J. Mascis was an Edie fan?

​So here we were, sitting around DC9 HQ, talking about music as we tend to do, and, specifically, about our highlights from SXSW weekend. And, somewhere between my loving ramblings about Odd Future, Noah W. Bailey mentioned that, in his quick Austin sojourn, he'd caught an acoustic set from iconic Dinosaur Jr. axe-slinger J Mascis and loved it.

I, one-upper that I am, pointed out that I'd seen the same thing last year, and that I too found it pretty damn impressive.

Then Bailey trumped me. See, he didn't just see Mascis perform. He saw Mascis perform a cover of an Edie Brickell & The New Bohemians song. "Circle of Friends," to be specific. Lucky bastard.

I searched high and low to find a clip of the performance. The best I could find was this performance, which is just a pretty crappy video and wasn't even the SXSW performance Bailey caught, oh well. I did, however, also find a clip of Mascis performing the same song just a few days before SXSW, during an in-store at Newbury Comics, the incredible record store chain based in and around Boston, where I pretty much purchased every single album I bought as a teenager.

Anyway, the performance is pretty great. Moving stuff for sure. I've posted it for your viewing pleasure after the jump. Watch it. Five minutes ago.

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The most inspiring Miami band of SXSW 2011 ... Pretty Please!

​Hey, Miami!

Let me report that SoFla was well represented at SXSW 2011 with a large variety of acts playing around Austin: ANR, Dreaming in Stereo, Locos Por Juana, Panic Bomber, and Surfer Blood all played official showcases that made major press.

In fact, Austin360.com picked Dreaming in Stereo's showcases as one of the shows to watch while ANR played a late-night set at the Ghost Room showcasing for BMI execs from all over the country and Surfer Blood drew a huge crowd for its set.
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Photo by Ben Clark

Phantom Tails at SXSW

​It's a strange thing, going from the constant cacophony of thousands of bands playing at once down to nothing at all. But it's a process that is as much a part of attending SXSW as all of the incidentals of the festival: BBQ, suntan lotion, beer, beer, beer. Sure, I feel a bit hungover on life right now, but I'm also feeling an overwhelming sense of pride for my hometown and a stronger sense of unity pulsating through the scene than I've ever seen or felt before -- and for that reason alone, I hope you'll give me just a few more minutes of your time to reflect on the experience that was attending SXSW in 2011.

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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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