Crystal Antlers next to a teepee on a hilltop overlooking the city last night was fun. (Flat shoes and no camera. Lovely.)
The Mae Shi at Sugar on Friday was fun.
Lower Heaven opening for BRMC at the Wiltern tonight will be fun. Jay Reatard at the bowling alley tomorrow will be super fun.
Die Princess Die at the Sixth Street warehouse a little while back was fun. (The broken-toe-broken-arm sort of fun.)
Sleep is fun. Blah blah blah.
(Countessian SXSW slideshow here for people too lazy to click.)
FRIDAY, MARCH 14TH
1000: Breakfast in the lobby. Yummy chocolate milk. Scary family at the next table. Shakes.
1200: Call a cab. Sit on a bench and enjoy the Santa-Ana-esque Texas breeze.
1300: Give up and get picked up by Sean, who runs us to the Pitchfork party at Emo’s. Meet another good bartender who kindly disregards his credit-card minimums for silly girls who already spent all their ca$h.
1340: Fuck Buttons play. We love them. Babygirl experiments with flash vs non-flash photography. We leave after one song because we’re anxious to get to Ms Bea’s to see Yacht, but beat him to the venue. Bah.
1430: Yacht! Hurray! The face-slapping dance moves meet with much approval.
1500: Kat, SG and Babygirl hit a liquor store while I leg alone it to Mohawk for Blitzen Trapper (see how dedicated I can be?) Run down Sixth like a lunatic and arrive all out of breath and sweaty only to be greeted by Brian and Marty who report they’re not playing for another hour. Aiyayai. Chit chat with Erik and then Michael’s fantastically charming girlfriend tells me that she looks at my pictures online and if my Blitzen Trapper viewcounts get a spike, it’s her.
1600: BlitzenT play, big sunglasses all round. The girls appear on the balcony above, then suddenly Babygirl appears next to me, hands me a drink and starts dancing like a madwoman. Nice one, Probly.
1640: Upstairs at deVille. Best tacos ever. Everyone happy.
1700: Hotfoot it to some field somewhere for the Vice party to see the Mae Shi. The Raveonettes are playing when we arrive. Suddenly feel very sleepy and wobbly. Lay down in the grass to take a nap, but get distracted taking bad pictures of good shoes.
1730: Find out the Mae Shi played hours ago, so cross the street to see Wooden Shjips‘ last song. Realise that I can’t see straight and should probably take a real nap. Realise that naps will not be forthcoming for some time.
1745: Back to the field to see Dark Meat. Get glitter in my hair and eyes and mouth and handbag and camera. Get confused by the epic number of people on stage and lose ability to do anything but walk in circles.
1800: I have no idea what happened for the next few hours.
2000: Go with Kat to get hot dogs, promising to meet Babygirl at the iheartcomix party because she is adamant that she cannot wait. Refer to the schedule for the address and trek to Seventh and San Jacinto (henceforth known as That Fucking Street).
2015: Arrive at Seventh and That Fucking Street, but find neither Babygirl or the party. In fact, there’s pretty much nothing there. Thank God for Kat’s iPhone.
2030: Try to find Third and Guadalupe, which seems to be the correct address. Get really confused by misinforned passersby, angry friends and the fact that the street numbers seem to be going in the wrong direction. Eventually find it but the the world and his wife are in line, Babygirl’s not answering her phone anymore and the novelty of pronoucing Guadalupe like “guada-loop” has worn off, so grab a cab to go home for a nap.
2045: Babygirl calls. Driver drops us off and warns us that those dorky bike cab things aren’t allowed to charge, but they do. Some bar, some whiskey.
2055: Sean grabs us and whisks us back to iheartcomix, where the line to get in is long but fast moving. Huzzah! However, the line to get upstairs is slow and snotty and the man with the rsvp list is behaving like a coked-up douche who didn’t get enough hugs as a child. Dude. You just had to go on the website and click a button to RSVP. It’s hardly an exclusive guest list. Get over your stoopid self. Decide I hate this party.
2130: Eventually make it up to the overly swanky penthouse pool place. Realise it took two wristbands and two hand stamps to get into one bloody party. I mean, I’m pretentious and all, but I’m nowhere near pretentious enough for this nonsense. Decide I definitely hate this party.
2200: Erik arrives. Ninja girls steal me a soda. Matt & Kim make the concrete floor bounce like nobody’s business. Life is good. Decide I love this party.
2330: Amanada Blank is a fantastic wiggly skinny badass in J Brand jeans.
2345: SPANK ROCK. Honestly, I was so happy I almost cried. Best party ever. Climb on stage, lay down, take pictures, dance.
SATURDAY, MARCH 15TH
0000: Diplo dance party of doom. Garcia girl booty dancing competition. Glee. [Repeat until fade.]
0200: Schlep our danced-out feet all over downtown Austin trying to figure out what to do with our lives. End up at the van Adriana had been sleeping in so she could get her stuff and join us in our palatial suite. No one’s home, so she writes them a note and we stagger bruised and blistered to a strange staircase on a street corner, where we pretend to be NKOTB while awaiting a cab.
0245: World’s most solemn driver contemplates the illegality of squishing five passengers into his taxi. While he stares frowning at our hotel’s address, a van pulls up along side the cab. The driver yells “Hey ladies!” or something similar, and then the side door slides open to reveal an alarmingly overstuffed vanful of boys who serenade us with a frantic version of Kelly’s Clarkson’s “Since You’ve Been Gone”. One was using his flask as a mic. We stare in awe.
0250: World’s most solemn driver complains bitterly about the disrespect the singing boys showed him. I try to protest but Babygirl hushes me up with a menacing finger-across-the-throat gesture.
0400: Filthy. Achey. Glittery. Still laughing.
(Otherwise known as “What I Did on Spring Break” — Countessian SXSW slideshow here for people too lazy to click.)
THURSDAY, MARCH 13TH
0900: Two girls who never drive realise they don’t know how to get to the airport and end up lost in Inglewood. After approximately seven increasingly frantic phone calls, our intrepid heroines arrive at LAX and consume a stupid, stupid junk-food breakfast.
1005: Babygirl Garcia gets camera training, in preparation for her rock-photography debut.
1015: Fellow passenger is overheard declaring our flight “the coolest in the air”, which is unfortunately a total exaggeration. Also, if you were on the flight and wondered why two girls were weeping and hysterical for the whole second half, it’s because we were watching Eddie Murphy’s Delirious. The part where Aunt Bunny’s falling down the stairs makes me lose it every time.
1500: The band playing in the airport in Austin is really bad. The Garcia girls have matching luggage.
1530: We arrive at the hotel where we were told we were staying, to find they have no reservation for us. They do, however, have a pizza menu that includes a taco pizza because, as the clerk tells us, “there are a lot of Mexicans here”.
1540: Apparently our reservation was changed to a La Quinta, but no one knows where it is so we take a cab. It’s approximately 20 feet away. The clerk, Mike, tells us about his Southern metal band and how hard it is for locals to get gigs during SXSW while he tries to find our reservations. They’re not in Babygirl’s name, or the name of the person who booked them.
1550: We hear a rumour that we were booked into the Fairfield Inn, and dispatch SG across the street. She is victorious! We have a hot tub. The gas station bloke round the corner calls us “beautiful California girls”. We watch Friends and eat very doughy (this is a good thing) pizza and start sucking up Corona’s like nobody’s business, no thanks to the hopeless bottle opener the front desk loaned us.
2000: Longest wait for a cab ever (so far. We will later learn that it was nothing).
2015: Arrival at Seventh and Red River, at which point we declare SXSW officially douchie and wonder what we’re doing here. The streets are jam packed with people who look like they’ve never been out on a school night before.
2045: Schep ourselves down Sixth, arms folded, to Ms Bea’s for Todd P’s Bikes in the Kitchen party. While waiting out front for Babygirl, a drunk local comes and introduces himself, telling Sonya he wants to get her in a sauna. Party looks like it has potential until a screechy girl band starts playing. We are collectively dismayed. The bar only serves beer. The whiskey drinker pouts. The barmaids are in no hurry to serve us and locals look at us like they want us dead, so we’re reminded of Echo Park’s very own Gold Room and feel perfectly at ease.
2130: Ninja Sonic, Best Fwends and Matt & Kim take to the stage and together tear the place up, delighting everyone. Kim is the smiliest person I’ve ever seen. I stand on something precarious (not sure what) and dance like a picture-taking lunatic. Unintentionally take pictures of Leia Jospe but don’t find out who she is until I’m back in Los Angeles and looking at her pictures.
Babygirl loses half her belongings and eventually finds them under the stage, making lots of helpful friends on the way. I climb up the side of the stage and throw myself behind an amp. We all take back everything we ever said about SXSW being douchie. Beer turns out to not be so bad after all. Everyone ends up bruised and filthy.
NOTE: Ninja Sonic introduced the phrases “someone’s gunna get pregnant!” and “I’m on the internet, bitch” to our vocabulary, never to leave. Throughout the rest of this narrative, please imagine variations on the two being yelled at all the least appropriate moments.
2300: We split for DeVille for the Jagjaguwar showcase. The queue is crazy, and our line-jumping antics cause a minor scuffle. Jens Lekman plays. We meet our favourite bartender in the world, ever, who hooks us up with most stoopid drinks in the world, ever. He says “Have fun, cuz I won’t see you again after those” and he’s right.
FRIDAY, MARCH 14TH
0030: We all go crazy over our beloved Black Mountain. The lights at Mohawk are pretty to photograph. Babygirl runs into one of her mortal enemies!
0130: SG falls asleep with her head on a speaker, so we leave. Finding a cab is amazingly easy, because we accidentally waited at what Kat and I later discovered is the place to get picked up.
Shot Nicole Atkins for Prefix.
I really didn’t know much about her before she walked on stage, and she’s really ridiculously lovely. Maybe I was just feeling a bit soppy that night.
Gorgeous voice, excellent cheekbones, nice cop-baiting stories signed Fuckface McCain.
She was sick but cheerful, and sang so well I had to go straight home and tell my dad to look her up.
