It’s 3:18pm — do you know where your favorite live music blogger is?!?!?!
The whole music world has descended on Austin for SXSW 2007, and I can say that as a first time visitor, I’m wholly impressed with the way this entire town completely shuts down for normal business and opens itself up to rock, sing, folk, funk, etc — not to mention party their asses off. Everywhere you look, there is a band playing in a tent with eight different sponsors sporting signage and stupid swag giveaways. What do the bands sound like? Does it really matter anyway?
At any rate, I’ve been chilling and catching up on the web for the past hour while enjoying the Day Stage at the Convention Center. I’m going to try and give a small rundown of how the festival has been and what I’ve seen as the fest goes on, but I can also easily see myself having a hard time keeping up. More on that to come…
12pm – Got to hang out at the Earvolution.com day party from 12pm – 2pm or so. I met Jeff and Dave from the site and hang out and chatted with them for a bit. Cool guys, it was good to finally meet them. I saw The Changes and saw Joshua James, both of which gave me chills at one time or another. Quite impressive considering that a lot of people aren’t even in town yet, nor had they finished their morning coffee before the free beers started flowing.
2:30pm – Bishop Allen @ Sesac Day Stage Cafe — the guys I was sitting with described their music as cute and I think that would be fully accurate.
3:00pm – the Scanners @ Sesac Day Stage Cafe — while a 20 minute set at a convention center wouldn’t ever be a good indicator of actual sound, talent, or performance skills, I can say that I was easily impressed with this band. Especially the rocking girl on guitar. And especially the song that they had never played live before. I’d recommend them to a friend, for sure…
3:30pm – Prototypes @ Sesac Day Stage Cafe — the band just started and I’m not sure what I think overall. A little harder than I want it to be…not as *cute* as Bishop Allen. Oh wait, this song rules — okay, these guys might have something going for them. Plus, they’re from Paris so they’ve got some serious stage attitude. Good stuff.
4pm – Robyn Hitchcock — he introduced himself as “Hi, I’m Robyn Hitchcock from the 1960’s.”
Peace out, yo.