Ray and Peter Lek

Along with the rest of the DC-9 crew, the Lek Brothers made it down to Austin last week for a look at the music festival with more of a dance and DJ focus.

The Lanai Rooftop Lounge, Hair of the Dog and Barcelona were a few of the venues they hit up. They caught up with DJ's from the Dallas area like DJ Select, Schwa and Big J.

Check out the shots in our slideshow here.

[Last week, we asked a few bands to check in with us from time to time over the course of the week to tell us about their SXSW experiences. Now, with the fest over, those diatribes are starting to show. Johnny Lloyd Rollins' take on the fest is a little different from the others we've posted so far. For one, none of his showcases were sanctioned SXSW events. And, second, he videotaped his entries. Ah, technology. Enjoy.]


Explains Rollins: "RJ Wafer and Kirk Miller (metro mix NYC) join me for some sightseeing as we do business at SXSW."


Explains Rollins: "Henri Mazza (Creative Director of the Alamo Drafthouse) and I have been friends since we were 14. He blames me personally for 90 percent of the ideas he comes up with for the Drafthouse. His girlfriend, Sarah Pitre, runs one of the most popular blogs in Austin, poshdeluxe.com."


Explains Rollins: "I don't have an iPhone with GPS... so trying to find the Dizzy Rooster turned into an ordeal. Luckily the boys from Red Monroe were there to help."

[Last week, we asked a few bands to check in with us from time to time over the course of the week to tell us about their SXSW experiences. Now, with the fest over, those diatribes are starting to show. Here's Telegraph Canyon frontman Chris Johnson's SXSW diary, for your reading pleasure...]

Hal Samples

Telegraph Canyon, yucking it up.

Wednesday:

Playing in a band can feel like going to summer camp with your friends week after week. Our first trip to SXSW is no exception.

I'm sure someone did us a favor, or there was a clerical error that lead to us being here, but we didn't ask any questions.

Packed to the gills with enough video games, toy helicopters and junk food to ensure a good time no matter what, we set out for Austin on Wednesday morning. We arrived to find beautiful weather and tons of traffic. Fun always seems to start with no fun at all.

It could have been worse, though, and we knew it. We recently had our van totaled by a drunk driver, so we replaced it with a later model RV. The old van would overheat if you turned the AC on, so sitting in traffic in our surrogate living room was pretty much the shit.

We got set up and settled into the $10-a-night RV slot on Barton Springs Road and headed downtown to gather our wrist bands, tote bags, and free energy drinks full of enough sugar to make your sweaty ass feel like you need a whiskey drink to start turning this thing around. I spent most of Wednesday night show-hopping and running into old friends. A few unmemorable shows led to a quick cab ride back to the RV for some much needed rest.

Thursday:

Thursday was packed full of running around 6th Street trying to catch friends' shows and meeting with new managers for Telegraph Canyon. For a street that's really not all that long, you'd think you could get around quicker. I still seemed to miss every show I was hoping to see by a few minutes.

At some point, I gave up and gave in to letting music find me. That's when we spotted the Black Cab Sessions cab. I almost lost it. Well, OK, I did lose it.

For those who don't know, Black Cab Sessions is from Europe and they're essentially a little British taxi that picks up musicians, drives them around and films a one-take performance of a song while the world is going on just outside the window. Several of my favorite artists have contributed to this project, including My Morning Jacket, Spoon, Fleet Foxes, and Bon Iver. I love the concept, and the videos they have put up at blackcabsessions.com speak for themselves.

Apparently, I was so excited that I made enough of a scene for one of the guys to hop out and ask me if I knew what they were doing. I launched into a rant about how I spend most lazy Sundays watching Black Cab Sessions on my laptop and could I please, please, invite myself along to perform for them. The guy said grab your instrument and hop in.

That's when it dawned on me that all of our instruments were back at the RV park and it would be a $20 cab ride round-trip, and at least an hour in this crazy traffic for me to get our stuff and get back to them.

Naturally, I thought this would be completely doable.

He gave me his number, Andrew [Skates] and I hailed a cab and took off. An hour later, Andrew and I are lugging a banjo, a toy dog that has a bell set on it, and an acoustic guitar through the streets in search of the elusive black cab.

International cell phones are shit. I had already had problems reaching a record label mate from Scotland all week, and getting through to the Black Cab Sessions number did not prove to be any easier.

Plan B: We'll just run around with all this crap until we find them. Another hour later, and we're still looking, but not losing hope. Andrew finally spots them going into the parking garage of a hotel, so we haul ass past the security guard and chase them up the ramp the entire 6 floors until they eventually park and get out. We round the corner, trying to compose ourselves and play off the fact that we just chased them all this way. But there was no way of getting around looking desperate at this point, and I seriously didn't care. Black Cab Sessions is just too cool for us to not try like hell to make it happen. I tried to keep a positive look on my face when he told me the camera crew had gone home for the day and we would have to wait until
Friday to be filmed. Ahhh, the things we put ourselves through.

We split from the parking garage and headed over to The Hole in the Wall to catch Will Johnson's solo show. I talked to Will beforehand and it was obvious he was losing his voice and wasn't feeling very well, but you would have never known it from the show he put on. He sang like a champ to a packed house of admirers. I guess after performing for 15 years, you can sing like that even when you can barely talk. Hands down, this would be the best show
I would see all weekend.

I also caught some of J. Tillman's solo show (Fleet Foxes' drummer) at a crap venue with dance music thumping upstairs, met some crazy people at 2 a.m., and split for the camper, still carrying all of our gear.

(In the end, we didn't get to do the deal for Black Cab Sessions during SXSW--but they've assured me that we can hook up with them when we go to London. I'll continue to hold my breath.)

Friday:

Dominican Joe is a coffee shop on Congress that hosted a bunch of friends' bands on Friday, thanks to an old pal from Fort Worth and recent Austin transplant, Marcus Lawyer (Top Secret Shhhh....). We played a decent show to a handful of folks, but it wasn't the highlight of my day, to say the least.

You win some, you lose some. That kind of thing.

Chatterton from Fort Worth, Birds & Batteries from San Francisco, and Thrift Store Cowboys from Lubbock blew me away with near-perfect shows, though, and we had a great time overall.

I also caught a really cool show by Monahans from Austin that night, as well as a packed show for The Bird and the Bee before calling it a night.

Well, kind of. We partied the rest of the night in the RV. Sorry to all of the old people in their campers at the Pecan Grove RV Park. We tried to keep it down.

Saturday:

I spent most of the day working on guitars, sleeping, and rounding up everything for the early load in at Habana Bar. "Hurry up and wait" is the deal, so after load in, I killed some time by sitting on the sidewalk and working on this blog until show time at 10 p.m.

Well not right up until our set, actually: I've been playing completely sober lately, and it hasn't been working out very well, so I started pounding beers an hour or so before our set. I think it helped.

The show went off well and we had a great time. We were due for a pretty good show after a
few weird ones. Bosque Brown followed with a beautiful set and I Love Math was really great also. The show was probably the least stressful time of all of SXSW, which is probably the way it should have been.

We once again retired to the RV park to annoy old people (no one complained, but we know
you were cursing us) and to celebrate our week of good times before returning home on Sunday.

Patrick Michels

The best photo of SXSW, in my book. And, yes, we at DC9 are clearly obsessed with Monotonix. We know.

If all goes to plan (which never happens, but we'll see), we should have a few more belated dispatches from bands who played SXSW popping up in the next couple of hours and/or days. (Speaking of which: Do yourself a favor and read The O's' dispatch. Trust me).

In the meantime, as far as DC9er commentary goes, this, mercifully, is the last we'll speak of all that Austin-related shitstorm for a while. So, without further ado:

Top five performances (not counting Metallica's incredible "secret" show), in no particular order:

• Asobi Seksu, whose sound is far more crushing and immeditate than its name, which translates to "casual sex", implies. Hope you caught these guys at Rubber Gloves on Sunday, Dentonites.
  
• At the Mohawk on Thursday night night, Akron/Family not only got the crowd dancing hippie-style to its world-folk rock, but also showcase the first--but not the last--stage dive I'd see at this year's fest. Saw this elsewhere (forget where) so I can't claim it as my own insight necessarily, but rest assured: At SXSW '09, the stage dive returned in a BIG way.
  
• France's Yelle, if only because she was able to turn the beer-soaked, sweaty, dirty confines of Emo's Main Room into the kind of all-out dance party you only see in movies. Also: Loved her Jane Fonda dance moves.
• Dinosaur Jr's "secret show" at the Mohawk, which was not only great, but was loud as fuck. The secret: The four full-stack amps set up right behind J. Mascis on stage. Yep, that was more equipment than Metallica had on stage during its show the next night on Stubb's far bigger stage down the road.
  
• And, lastly, Passion Pit, who proved on Thursday, at its first SXSW performance, that its incredibly catchy dance music comes off quite well live.

Worst performance: Gil Mantera's Party Dream, whose members should probably start rehearsing without mirrors from here on out.
Lamest Celebrity Spotting: Former *NSYNC member Chris Kirkpatrick, who, I crossed paths with at an afternoon performance. Without having too much to say to the guy, I complimented him on his work in VH1's reality show Mission: Man Band. "That show was pretty fun," I caught myself mustering. So maybe I'd had a few beers. Big deal. "Eh," he responded. "That show sucked." Indeed. Nice guy, though.

Best Day Party: The Paste Magazine/Brooklyn Vegan event at Radio Room, which I hadn't planned on attending, but couldn't pull myself away from. Sweet lineup.

Biggest Diva: Solange Knowles, who can't seem to make it to performances on time. And, according to reports, doesn't know how to leave the stage either. Which leads us to...

Best Song Dedication: Black Joe Lewis, who reportedly opened his post-Solange set with the Honeybears by saying "This is for Solange, who doesn't know when to get off stage," before launching into "Bitch, I Love You."

Now that the festival is over and folks hangovers are wearing off, the really good shit is coming in. The past few days I've been enjoying living vicariously post-facto through KJHK's SXSW blog. If I tried to do the same thing through the Ssion's blog for Vice magazine, I'd probably turn gay, have a heart attack and die a glamorous, rainbow-spewing death. Click here or on the photo below for part one.

Megan Mantia

Cody Critcheloe's stories are not for prudes. The talks openly and unashamedly about taking drugs, chasing boys, and, worst of all, eating food from Chili's. But his lust for life is undeniable. As a boring straight guy who is psychologically incapable of letting go even for a minute to the extent that Cody and crew did at ever turn, I am in awe.

Possibly my favorite moment is his description of getting past this doorman (because getting past doormen is almost a bigger sport than the whole music game at SXSW):

Megan Mantia

On top of that there was a door guy, wearing a suit! HA HA! Can you believe it? Where did this asshole think he was? LA? Paris? Milan? New York City? HA HA HA! What a fuckwad! He tried to tell me that we weren't on the list, but after Alexis threw a fierce fit, he couldn't deny our star-power and let us in. It was odd the door guy had such a problem with us because the clientele seemed to be mostly over 40 and part-time employees at Joe's Crab Shack.

You have to realize that for fags to go more than a couple of days without dancing is like being in HELL!

The Vice blog is tricky to navigate, so here are the links to part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4 and the grand finale, part 5.

Nate "Igor" Smith

Just some guy

Two red-eye flights there and back, a night in a camper without a pillow or blanket, another crashed uninvited on an angry stranger's futon, no consistent shower or WiFi in sight--with pilgrimages like this, I think you're supposed to find God, but instead I found Dent May. In no particular order, five personal highlights:

Jensen a/k/a the bossman

Metallica at Stubb's. When the prerecorded artillery fire of "One" kicked in, I temporarily made excuses to leave my show buddy (a/k/a my boss) because I didn't want to be self-conscious about reflexively throwing up the devil horns, headbanging in a skirt, and screaming along to this anthem of my metalhead adolescence, especially around someone who employs me. Earlier, Rob said this show was the first time he'd ever considered buying a beer for the express purpose of throwing it--this was the first time I have ever in my life ordered a double whiskey on the rocks. But come on. "Seek & Destroy"? "Master of Puppets"! "Sad But True"?!? You don't drink motherfucking Amstel Light to Metallica's greatest hits.

Micachu and the Shapes at Emo's Annex. Micachu and the Shapes is to Mica Levi as the Dirty Projectors is to Dave Longstreth. And you know how Longstreth looks like a young Christopher Lloyd imitating a chicken? Mica Levi looks like a high-school tomboy playing Cate Blanchett playing Bob Dylan. At 21, the Surrey native has already composed a piece for the London Philharmonic Orchestra, recorded with grime MCs, and released one of this year's most inventive weirdo-rock records, Jewellry. Her Shapes are Mark Pell, a sandy-haired drummer boy who looks too young to drive, and Raisa Kahn, a laptop jockey/keyboard manipulator who turned 22 years old last week.

The day I saw them at SXSW, Levi announced Kahn's birthday, which elicited cheers: "We did it earlier and everyone was all, 'So what?' Too cool for us." Impossible, I might add. Mica has this onstage ease you can't fake or force, wunderkind instincts bolstered by mishmash instrumentation: an Autoharp strummed with a credit card, guitars shrunken to Mica's size, cowbell beats, etc. But probably the most impressive thing about these kids is the effortless nonchalance from which they segue from tin-man-chest-thumping percussion to brief noise squalls to woo-hoo falsetto pop jams. Like when you bond with a stranger on vacation and return home feeling closer to them than some of your friends, Michachu and the Shapes is suddenly one of my most trusted iTunes associates. Soon to be yours too.

Rebecca Smeyne

Ms. Beas on Friday night during HEALTH--looked the same the next night too.

Crystal Stilts, Wavves, and No Age on Ms Bea's patio Saturday night. Been looking forward to the Ms. Bea's patio since last year--apparently, so were the bazillion other people who congregated here, and in the adjacent dirt parking lot, on Saturday night. But fuck the hype, this was a beautiful moment of DIY traveler camaraderie, public urination, and dude-passing under the gazebo roof--call it limbo crowdsurfing--that the cops somehow didn't break up. As for Wavves, scenes like this are why Nathan Williams was born. So yeah, I like Wavves, sorry.

Dent May & His Magnificent Ukelele at Antone's. Dent May is basically Jonathan Richman with a plucked lute: catchy tunes with clever vignettes, white-boy jigs, social critique masked as bon-mot singalongs ("College Town Boy/Get off your ass and do something/College Town Boy/How does it feel to be nothing?"). He's one of the few people to strip a Prince song of its groove and not make it suck--his cover of "When You Were Mine" sounds like a 69 Love Songs outtake. When Activision releases Ukelele Hero, I nominate Dent May for his own title.

Nate "Igor" Smith

Kanye at Fader Fort. This year's Fader Fort finale was billed as G.O.O.D. Presents, a showcase for Kanye's Def Jam imprint featuring Kid Cudi, GLC, Consequence, and "special guests." But after Kanye flapped his jaw to the press that he'd be popping off at SXSW, everybody and Craig Newmark's mom knew this would be where to find him. And so when Kanye emerged, his baby mullet shaved, he spent the first half of his two-hour jawn making introductions to "new faces." We met Consequence, GLC, Really Doe. We met Detroit's Big Sean and his discovery narrative: "He wanted to spit a rhyme for me and I was so impressed, I signed him," said Kanye. We also met Mr. Hudson, who West promised would be the next John Legend--in truth, Hudson is completely wack.

But you can't really complain about a free gift, so let us focus on the fact we eventually got Erykah Badu, Common, and 808 hits "Love Lockdown" and "Heartless"--including, as FoSOTC Ryan Dombal also noted, the fairly revealing improv admission: "Did I make you heartless when I cheated on you?" Didn't get that on American Idol.

Also Awesome: Devo, Dirty Projectors, Matt & Kim (duh), Women.

Best Use of Auto-Tune. Baby screams through a vocoder, courtesy of Diplo.

Best Evidence that One Letter Makes All the Difference. Bun B and Bun E.

Worst Thing Ever Said to a Fader Fort Crowd. "How many of y'all are in a relationship?" asked Big Sean during the Kanye showcase. Stinkbomb might as well have gone off by the crowd's response--save the relationship status for Facebook, bro.

Worst Way to Deal With Those Harrowing Bathroom Lines. The lead singer of metal band Annihilation Time defecating onstage at the after-hours Vice Party. Yes, I was there and our awesome pitgirl Rebecca Smeyne has pictures, but I really don't think you want them. Seriously, you don't.

Rebecca Smeyne

Vice Saves Texas late-night party, an event where gross things went down

The border around that YouTube video is green. Like money. I received a press release today about the St. Louis band Living Things, which did something kinda outrageous at SXSW last week. The band burned money on stage. Several times. The stunts were done in protest "Wall Street's dirty ways" according to the release. The band also had this to say: "Our mother is a bank manager at Bank of America. Our father is a small business owner. We believe in the American Dream. But the dream is broken. You and I have something in common, we want the good life. But there is a problem. Wall Street's dollar is dirty. Let's burn that dirty dollar. We are not economists. We don't have a solution. But through symbolism we can raise awareness together."

A publicist for Living Things told me that over the course of several shows at SXSW, a total of $200 went up in smoke but also donated that much to a homeless shelter. Maybe they should have burned Monopoly money and donated $400 to the homeless shelter. But I guess that wouldn't have been as extreme.

Pick up a free Living Things download at ultragrrrl.blogspot.com.

[Last week, we asked a few bands to check in with us from time to time over the course of the week to tell us about their SXSW experiences. Now, with the fest over, those diatribes are starting to show. Here's The O's' take on SXSW...]

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Dear O's Journal,

It's 10:30 AM. For fuck's sake, John's running late again. I swear, he never is on time. He said we'd leave at 10:00. Geez. SXSW: Can we survive? It seems unlikely. If we can make it through without visible scars, a hospital bill, an injury sustained while saying, "Hey everybody! Watch this!," random bruises, dropping an entire pizza, sleeping, having people literally avoid me by walking a safe distance away by making a large circle, listen to "Stairway to Heaven" eight times (nearly in a row), get told to put my shirt back on (but what they really mean is put your dingle back into your boxers)... If we can make it through without those things happening, then maybe we will be OK...

Oh wait, what? We're going to promote; to work? Huh. Hmm. Stuff.

2:00 PM - Stopped at Czech stop. Kolaches taste good when you mouth them. We buy beer.

4:30 PM - Just left a magical place called Papa Joes; it's a killer honkey tonk in Lorena, TX. One may recall hearing of this highway gem from a recent assault charge against living legend Billy Joe Shaver who shot another dude for "talking shit about his wife" after saying these words: "Where do you want it?" The place is great; beer is ice cold. Usually we would stop at these other 'tonks also: George's, then Shade Tree, then Frontier, then Speedway Inn, then suffer through until Austin. However, we are in a hurry. Only one 'tonk today. John has a burn on his arm he doesn't remember getting.

6:30 PM - Walking down 6th St, we enter a bar called The Thirsty Nickel. Normally, I wouldn't note this, but upon entry, the bar man said, "Holy Shit! The O's!" And then he sang our song, "I Love You So Much." We drank a something called a Hideous Liquor. Then another, then another... eeks. When the band finished (Thirsty Nickel was part of a certain Pyramid Fest that most bands know of through an incessant barrage of email/myspace bothering asking bands to be a part of their battle of the bands and then fucking the bands over... in the butt) the bar man cranked "I Love You So Much" on the speaker system. Party.

12:00 - Midnight, I think? Taylor stumbles in to see Stax legends The Bar-Kays. They are badass! Icons! Those dudes blow everyone's minds. They are flawless. Taylor is happy. This is really why we come to SXSW, isn't it?

Pictures include: Taylor and John at Czech Stop, John laying on the ground, John confused after dropping an entire pizza, Taylor bro-ing down with a mannequin, etc.

Friday, March 20, 2009

Dear O's Journal,

Wow. What the hell happened last night? Or yesterday for that matter? Did we see any music yesterday? Yes! We saw a band wearing chicken suits. Really? I think so, but I don't know--the picture is all blurry. Let's eat!

11:30 AM - Texas Chili Parlor. John had the chili sampler and Taylor had cheese and jalapeno burger. Yummy to tummy, dos cervezas and a margarita. I feel OK. You feel OK? Let's do this.

3:00 PM - Club De Ville. After attempting to go straight to Club De Ville, we stop by several bars to have a drink. I won't lie. This day is rough. We're a bit H.O.'d. We fight through as well as possible. The Hold Steady are playing. A friend asks John, "What are they all about?" John says "geek rock." Then we walk around the corner and the friend says, "Oh you mean actual geeks playing rock. I thought you meant hot dudes that wear Buddy Holly glasses."

3:45 PM - After John takes his boots off and lays on the ground, Taylor starts to party.

6:00 PM - We are at Sholtz's Beer Garden watching Doug Sahm's son play his songs. It's a gooooood time. Plus the bartender is a friend and the cocktails are FREE!!! Yay! Free Stuff! The last free stuff we got (some bag full of things that get you free stuff) we left at a bar the night before. Oops. Oh well. Come to think of it, I was told about all the free stuff we'd get at the SXSW bonanza, but I didn't get shit! WTF?

1:00 AM - Text from Hunter Hauk to John that says, "When Taylor says to leave him on the corner, should I believe him?" I reply, "Sure! He'll be fine." Hunter calls and the convo went something like this:

"Really? He was pretty [fill in word for good time]," says Hunter.
"Trust me, he'll be OK. He's the Taylor!"
"But he said to me, 'You go your way, I'll go mine.' Again he was really [fill in word for good time]."
"Bro, you got Tunderdogged! Good night!" I hang up.

Taylor catches the group, School of Seven Bells with Dallas via Brooklyn's own Ben Curtis on the guitar. They blow his mind. He likes the two girls in the band. He decides to save his moves on them for the tour next month when we'll be in NY. It's on! R N R.

1:30 AM - Taylor makes it home later after a cab driver calls and says, "Hey, uh, ya, uh, I'm trying to get your friend home. I need directions." Where's The Luke, our tour manager? Geez.

3:30 AM - Note to self: When staying at a friend's house, make sure they are cleared by a minimum of three psychiatrists. In our case, we got what we didn't pay for: A butt pain--wait I mean a pain in the ass. Our gracious host has blasted Led Zeppelin Live now for a couple of hours. I've heard "Stairway" five times. Can you fucking believe that? It's retarded.

3:58 AM - Stairway count : 6

4:30 - Stairway count : 7

(phone dead = no clock) stairway count : 8. I don't care what the cost is, we're getting a hotel tomorrow. Fuck it. This is stupid.

Pictures include : John laying down on the ground at Club De Ville after saying "Hey everybody watch this" and then someone stepping on his face; Taylor looking awesome doing stuff; John being force-fed vodka and soda 'mouth-to-mouth-style' by straw because he had no strength to drink; several of John with his head in his hands; Taylor, John, and John Dufilho bro-ing; others of us doing stuff and bro-ing down.

Saturday, March 21, 2009

Dear O's Journal,

12:00 Noon - John has brunch at Mi Madres. Not good. No matter. This is a big day for The O's. We have two shows. (Taylor is playing two other shows with THe BAcksliders around The O's shows. Geez.) Taylor is off to play the other show. John gets a hotel room. No joke!? Yay! How much? Let's not worry about that. It's worth it.

1:30 - Check into hotel. Play with the sleep number bed. Turn on and off the TV. Play with the shower curtain. Open and close the blinds. Turn the AC way up, then turn it way down. Turn on lights and then turn them off. Plug in Ipod and turn on Jerry Jeff Walker. Shit. I gotta go.

3:15 - Arrive at radio show late. Couldn't find the place because of Google maps. Those fuckers have done us in the butt yet again. They are NEVER right. Geez. Show goes GREAT! Yay! Check out Kaos Radio Austin. It's a coupla cool dudes. Taylor and I speak before the show and it goes a little something like this :

Taylor : I don't feel so good.
John : That sucks man.
T : Hey, I don't feel good."
J : I feel you bro.
T : After THe BAcksliders show, I walked off the stage and puked.
J : Ouch, I hate that.
T : I don't feel so good.
J : Did you Thunderdog anyone?
T : Don't think so, but I puked. It was gross.
J : That's how I was yesterday.
T : You puked yesterday?
J : Yeah, at Club De Ville. Ouch.
T : Party.
J : Totally.

Then John and Taylor hugged.

5:30 PM - Taylor and John show up at Mother Egan's to load in gear. We hang with bro-mates Beau, Seth, and Dylan who are totally righteous. We meet Angie our stage manager and she is awesome. Taylor unveils, "Thunderdog", the newest member of The O's family. It's a 900-inch bass drum that sounds like canons blasting. It is totally awesome.

6:15 PM - Go to hotel and giggle.

7:15 PM - Taylor learns that he is late for a BAcksliders show. John goes to bar town. Taylor sees what he claims as the worst band in the history of bands. "They sound like a giant beast screaming at everybody over music with no time signature. It was so shitty," says Taylor.

8:00 PM - John sees a band called Los Super Elegantes at Vice(?). A pregnant Mexican girl sings while wearing a bed sheet. The other singer is a douche wearing sunglasses. The drummer rips. The bass player plays a Prince bass. There is a trumpet player. Things. Taylor sends a message saying something about Thunderdogging and/or peeing in people's drinks. No, that was John. Sorry. R N R.

9:15 PM - Taylor is en route to Mother Egans for the show. John is slowly behind. We're trying to get there for Shibboleth, who are totally awesome and will blow your butt away to nowhere's land if you're not lookin'. However, John is at the moment watching a band called 'Two Wheels to Death(?)' or something like that at The Belmont. John thinks they are Canadian. They try really hard to kick ass. At the end, the bass player throws his bass to the ground with reckless abandon. They all Thunderdog the stage. They run off and hide behind a curtain for a minute. It's totally rock and roll to the maximus. (Beat.) Then they walk back on stage, heads down, and slowly pick up their stuff and wrap cables. R N R.

9:35 - Taylor is drinking a whiskey at Mother Egans. John shows up and says, "Bro! What's up?" Taylor says, "Dude, I can finally stomach something." Then John high fives Taylor to the max. R N R.

10:30 - 30 minutes until show time. People are actually here to see us! Yay! From all over the place. We see friends from Kansas to NY and from Austin to Canada. (How those were the places I chose to go to and fro I do not know.) Drink drink drink.

10:50 - We start early so we can play longer. We lunge into our set shredding so hard (acoustically of course). People start to pee on themselves. A pregnant lady gives birth. Chuck Norris has a karate demonstration on some ninja fans, a band of Hell's Angels are employed as security by the end, etc. Party.

12:00 Midnight - We cocktail and watch Little Black Dress. They rockis maximus.

1:00 AM - We cocktail and watch The Crash That Took Me. They rock so flippin' hard.

2:30 AM - Taylor gets a ride with Little Black Dress who help us with the two bass drums (no small feet to say the least) and merch. John sits on the street awaiting a cab with four guitars, a lowebro, and another case full of shit. Beau, the savoir, the one, the angel of Guitar Center, some say--he came to our rescue like a Dragon swooping down and killing an army of naysayers while grabbing us and protecting us like a baby in a basket. He dropped us at a hotel.

3:30 AM - I set my sleep number bed to 60.

Pictures include : A bunch of silliness, the side of the pregnant mexican girl, walking and crossing of streets, things and such.

Patrick Michels

While most of the DC-9 crew enjoyed SXSW's offerings at a safe distance from the stage, note-taking and reflecting on the music, some of us did battle up by the stage to get concert shots, throwing elbows and telephoto lenses.

We've got a handful of band photo slideshows, along with some other photo sets that'll give a pretty good idea what it was like down in Austin last week. In case you missed checking out our photo coverage, a rundown of our slideshows (and who's in them) follows after the jump.

A Look Around Austin

• Scenes from around town during SXSW
• SXSW Fashion WINS and FAILS
• Hottest Posters at Flatstock 20
  

Band Photography

• Wednesday, Part I
  Austin Music Awards, Doug Sahm Tribute and more
  
• Wednesday, Part II
  The Decemberists, the Avett Brothers and more
  
• Thursday, Part I
  Andrew Bird, Ben Harper and others
  
• Thursday, Part II
  Dinosaur Jr., Blitzen Trapper and more
  
• Village Voice Media SXSW Party
  M. Ward Gomez and more
  
• Friday, Part I
  Devo, Silversun Pickups, Metallica and more
  
• Friday, Part II
  Metallica, The Hold Steady, Okkervil River and more
  
• Saturday, Part I
  Plush, Des Ark and more
  
• Saturday, Part II
  Echo and the Bunnymen, Monotonix and others
  

Where to begin? I should start with the ornamental comb, like three white gleaming stakes from some Gnostic purification ritual, holding a jet-black stack of hair atop the fiery head of Polly Jean Harvey. She's never wanted for making an impression. Wrapped in white, backed by a hard avant-garde blues band (the warm up music was a Howlin Wolf mix) that looked like they'd just gotten away clean from an S & L hold up circa 1945, PJ approached her "showcase" (a ridiculous concept in her case) like she knew as well as anyone else that a landlocked date in the states is as rare as diamonds. Not everyone gets it. "What's going on here?" a 25 year-old neo-preppy with a press-credentialed badge asked as I waited in line outside of Stubb's. Informed it was PJ Harvey, dude says, and I quote, "Never heard of him. Doesn't sound like something I'd listen to. It's probably from a different era."
Probably. Harvey, along with long time friend and collaborator John Parish, focused on new songs from the forthcoming A Woman, A Man Walked By, starting off with "Black Hearted Love," a seared, Plathian rocker, with martial drums, heavy on the toms and eerie banjo riffs. Then they flew into another new song, with chanted lines "There's No Laughter in the Garden!" and on into "Urn with Dead Flowers in a Drained Pool," a recitation/song from her 1996 album with Parish, Dance Hall at Louse Point. Though the set had none of her landmark material, the new songs and obscure, forgotten tunes were riveting, even when at their most absurd and Dr. Suess-like, as with the title track from the new album: "He had chicken liver balls, he had chicken liver spleen, he had chicken liver heart, made of chicken liver parts..." lines no other singer I can think of, and no other band, with its spare, hard improvisations, could pull off.

Roy Kasten

Bishop Allen

On Saturday night, Friday afternoon felt like another era, and it was, with a strong, twitchy set from Brooklyn's Bishop Allen at the Hot Freaks party at Mohawk's. There was a quick Crazy Horse-crazed suite from New York's Chief at the Beauty Bar.

Roy Kasten

Great Northern

There were new songs from LA's Great Northern at Red Eyed Fly.

Solon Bixler and Rachel Stolte took a fierce shoe-gaze turn, but their unforced chemistry sustained the lush drone.

Roy Kasten

Little Steven introduces St. Louis' the Living Things at the Antone's day party.

A final day party of Friday took me to Antone's, for Little Steven's Underground Garage show, featuring the affable Silvio Dante himself, and St. Louis's own Living Things, who played just three songs, all hard and chunky but, alas, not free from political gratuity. Lead singer Lillian Berlin has gone from burning pictures of George Bush on stage to burning dollar bills (a $20 would have been somewhat more impressive). If you'll pardon the cliche, their music should and could have done the talking.

Rochester, New York's The Chesterfield Kings followed, as loud and splashy as a DC-9 landing in the Hudso. They opened with "Up and Down," the strongest song from their most recent album Psychedelic Sunrise, and overall slashing together early Stones and eternal Ramones, with lead singer (and skinniest androgynous hipster at SXSW) Greg Prevost kicking cups and flinging napkins, in some kind of rock tantrum explained by a stone-faced, motionless, un-rock and roll crowd. That doesn't mean, however, they weren't fantastic. They were.

I spent Friday night's first showcase amid the terrible sight lines of the Cedar Creek Courtyard, trying to hear the plush and whispery Beach House.

Roy Kasten

Camera Obscura

Unable to evade the chattering classes, I fled for La Zona Rosa where Camera Obscura was debuting new material as part of a Scottish showcase. With trumpet, second percussion and the essential church organ keys, Tracyanne Campbell and company sounded just like the records, which in this case is what you want. The songs from the forthcoming My Maudlin Career are as hooky and economical as 2006's Let's Get Out of this Country, and nearly as well-received as "Lloyd, I'm Ready to Be Heart Broken," which had the crowd mouthing every line.

A cabbie got me to Loney Dear's set at Habana Calle in time to witness the lederhosen kid yelp and strum over a band-in-a-box laptop (he had a rhythm section and a keyboard player, but apparently Emil Svanängen prefers karaoke) and I was so far from feeling it I thought I'd pass out from the cute, not-trying-and-proud-of-it anti-attitude.

Roy Kasten

David Johansen of the New York Dolls at the Smoking Lounge.

The night was not lost, however, as the New York Dolls were still to play at the Smoking Lounge, and play they did, for over an hour, with strong new material and indelible oldies like "Personality Crisis," and David Johansen smiling and growling, Sylvain Sylvain, hamming up every solo, and song after song hitting like the band -- or what remains of it -- really did invent punk rock.

I could have ended Saturday then and there, save that I wanted to catch Samantha Crain and the Midnight Shivers at the Alehouse, and was happy to have done so, though it meant sitting through the sub-open-mic tunelessness of LA's Terra Naomi and the mildly entertaining vaudeville folk of Miami's Rachel Goodrich. Crain and band, however, rocked the freaky folk much harder than I expected.

After PJ Harvey's set, I scrambled to make it into the first ever show from Jimmy Webb and the Webb Brothers, the father-and-son team, at the miserable basement bar Prague, and though they only had time for half a dozen songs, the songwriting master sounded splendid on "Galveston" and "Wichita Lineman," two of the greatest songs in the English language (which Webb just happened to write). If the forthcoming family album sounds half as good as their South By set, it will be Best of 2009 worthy.

The Rosebuds began the wind-down of the night, in the Parish club crammed with dance rockers who responded quite well to a couple of almost country-ish acoustic numbers but mostly loved Ivan Howard's electric chord chopping and Kelly Crisp's thick keyboard surfaces. The band is expert but perhaps a little cool and disarmed, and the crowd deserved just a little more enthusiasm from the duo (I'm one of those old fashioned types who believes such things).

Instead of closing out SXSW as usual with the Waco Brothers chaos at Red Eyed Fly, I headed across Sixth Street for Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears, a soul and blues band who are beginning to pick up steam outside their home town of Austin and who were slated for 1 am.

Roy Kasten

Solange

Something, however, was going wrong on the Buffalo Billards stage. The drum kit was behind plexi-glass, the stagehand was checking three wireless microphones, and three young white guys wearing yellow pajamas were the only musicians in sight. By 1:30, the band started up a Super Fly riff, and announced that it was star time. Out came three young and very attractive African American women, also wearing some kind of matching pajama-like outfits, dancing and singing and urging the crowd to do the same. I surmised that this was Black Joe's idea of a soul revue warm-up, but then another song followed, and another, and another. I looked at my schedule: Solange and the Hadley Street Dreams of Houston, Texas were to have performed at Midnight; evidently they did not. Solange, for those keeping score, is Beyonce's little sister, and a pretty solid singer and dancer, though her band that night was a bit by-the-numbers.

Black Joe finally made it to the stage around 2 am, and promptly introduced his first song: "This is for Solange, who doesn't know when to get off stage. Bitch, I love you!"

But instead of doing that most notorious of his novelty number, the band just blasted through a shortened, sound check version, with the horns and bass locking in, and Black Joe raking his guitar with punk-blues speed. The Honeybears are not the tightest soul band on the planet, but they can still electrify, especially when Lewis gets down on his knees, James Brown style, for their original homage to "Please, Please, Please."

After three songs, it was past closing time, but the crowd wouldn't let them go, and someone's manager came up on stage to give them another three. The set -- jumping, angry, focused, fun and loud -- was the kind finale SXSW more than deserved.