Thursday 19/03/09 South By Southwest @ Various Venues, Austin, Texas

Early to bed and early to rise as there are 3 more days of madness to come!  Last night, the party scene wasn’t so fantastic…a bunch of eager kids wanting to get pissed and waiting on line for 30 minutes to do it.  The only line I was waiting on last night was at the hotel as I had already lost my key for my room (blame it on the vodka and Red Bull!).

When it comes to big festivals and loads of bands that always means free stuff!  You can’t deny a gift bag, so it was off to the Carrera Café to pick up some free schwag.  Unfortunately, I have no talent with an instrument or my voice, so that meant no Ben Sherman clothing or sunglasses, but I did get a free coffee mug and some bright yellow tote bag.  Hey, at least I attempted to score the cool stuff!

After my short stint with the gifting suites, I walked over to check out Meiko at the MySpace Records day party.  I needed some singer/songwriter at this very moment and Meiko was just the person to give it to me.  Being a total jokester, she fooled around with the crowd between songs, but once she opened her mouth the crowd watched in awe as she sang an absolutely perfect set.
Now I needed some punk rock in my life…and as I was walking en route to Stubbs I saw a sign that said ‘MXPX’ on the door. This couldn’t be the MXPX that I knew who sang ‘Chick Magnet’…or is it?!  My suspicions proved to be right as I walked through the small club door to find approximately 50 people jamming out to some of old classics that brought me back to the good old days.

It was time to continue to 90’s madness and catch the Meat Puppets live at Stubbs.  Best known for stepping on stage with Kurt Cobain at Nirvana Unplugged, the Meat Puppets are still legends in my book.  They even threw the audience a curve ball with a super fast version of ‘Lake Of Fire’ that took a few seconds to register what exactly the song was!

After catching the Meat Puppets, I took a quick walk over to see Portland’s finest, The Thermals.   Usually, they play to much larger crowds in New York, so it was such a pleasure to catch them in a small Texas venue during SXSW.  Playing a lot of new stuff (that sounded fantastic, if you were wondering) and old favorites to sing along to, this brought some fun back into my Thursday.

Legend time!  Finally, Primal Scream was playing and I couldn’t be more excited.  Finally watching Bobby Gillespie in the flesh was stepping into my world and I counted down the seconds till they came on the stage.  Playing loads of new stuff from their new album “Beautiful Future” was great until the ‘Swastika Eyes’ into ‘Rocks’ back to back just blew me away.  I was absolutely exhausted but somehow became more awake dancing along and then singing with the crowd to ‘Rocks’. Oh. My. God. Primal. Scream.

Then it was Playboy Party time.  I missed seeing Jane’s Addiction with the original lineup but who cares?!  I just saw Primal Scream in all their glory and nothing else mattered.  Booze was still flowing and A-Trak was on the decks so I made sure to stick around and enjoy the early morning fun.