The most bizarre band I've seen in my life, hands down (and I've seen some doozies). Man Man, from Philadelphia. Everyone in the band seems to be a drummer, and all sorts of weird alternative instruments, all dressed in white, and it was a conglomeration of 8 dudes, dudes that you knew in high school would be 'weirdos.' Check out the video below all this verbiage.
The Mystery Jets, perhaps the band I was looking forward to seeing the most did not disappoint. They have unique harmonies, a pair of brothers and a son and dad combo, a great stage presence, and some great tunes. This was hands down the loudest show I saw all SXSW as well. It's amazing the difference day and night makes. Daytime at Victory there are about 30 people watching, their showcase downtown sported a line 1,000 miles. Yea good luck getting into that one. Extremely humble guys, called SXSW 'MADNESS' and said it's the best thing they've ever seen, or something like that. They also said they thought they were bizarre until they saw Man Man.
Downtown the king of swag for SXSW was 'The Editors,' I'm not too impressed with them, but they sure do know how to paint the town with posters. Almost the entire length of sixth street was closed as a whole bunch of white belt boys roamed thru the streets.
Carmellos parking lot, usually a posh Italian restaurant was turned into a live music venue for the afternoon, complete with a Shiner Bock keg. Ashley and Jenny couldn't resist dancing the the tunes. We ducked into plenty places to see what was up, most events packed to the rafters, and it seems the day shows are doing away with the RSVP bullshit. After this was 'rest time' between day and night activities.
Coming out for the evening was Isobell Campbell, former member of Belle and Sebastian now doing a solo career. I must apologize Isobel for a few things, first putting someone like you in 'The Dirty Dog' pub, where jocks are used to watching the game on 4 big screens isn't right, the technical difficulties were shitty, and if I could have snapped the necks of those fuckers with the huge fuckoff cameras in your face and not have gone to prison and done so, I would have done it.
But for our sake, don't bitch that you only get 40 minutes to play, and that you had to pack your ass to Texas to do so. My homeboy Billy Bragg only got that long to play too. Second of all, your guitar player is a cocksmoke!
Next stop, Eternal, where we got a dose of Teddy Thompson, who recently got acclaim for landing a tune on that gay cowboy movie. He's an intense singer, reminds me of my buddy Nate Dogg. Good stuff, highly recommended.
Next, Stewart Ransom Miller and the Believers, who had two 'showcases' at SXSW under different names, because that's just what you have to do to land two showcases. He was supporting his solo album, great pop songs from a charming dude.
Rounding out the night with ERIN!, my long lost Jr Prom Date and great friend recently turned soccer mom. She's down covering some shit metal band for her marketing gig, and we decide to trek it down to Copa, to the local favorite David Garza. We could all get into the gig, and the rest of the evening was spent drinking Vodka Sodas and catching up on life. Not to mention an hour venture trying to find a missing SUV in a mystery parking lot! hahaha The lovely Erin with Mr Fat Cheeks. :-)
Later that evening I popped into a scary Japanese / American bluegrass band, which gets a mention but not a picture or video.
The videos for the evening are as follows, if you watch none of the vids below but one, check out the Man Man clip.
Man Man (video) -- The most bizarre band in the universe
The Mystery Jets (video) -- Performing their first single off the new album
Isobel Campbell (video) -- doing some snazzy stuff on the cello
Teddy Thompson (video) -- singing an intense acoustic number
Ransom Miller (video) -- Singing one of his songs Suzanne
Stewart and Susan Tedeschi (video) -- Duet of Firefly, a beautiful number
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