@Discographies SXSW Diary, Day Four

Anonymous music critic @Discographies (even we don't know who he/she is) has earned tens of thousands of Twitter followers by distilling artists' entire discographies to 140 characters (example: Bruce Springsteen: 1-5 "You ride the road..." 7-8 "...until you arrive..." 9-10 "...or run out of gas..." 6,11-17 "...or your country does."). So for the South By Southwest Music festival and conference in Austin – four days of more bands, food, beer and people than anyone could possibly get their head around – RollingStone.com asked @Discographies to identify the unique moments that make SXSW an annual cavalcade of absurdity and amazement. Today's installment is the last of four.

Saturday, March 17th
12:45 PM:  Hours slept: 4.5. I no longer have a circadian rhythm.

2:00 PM:  Hotel restaurant.  A smarmy branding-and-licensing guy is sipping a mimosa.  "I feel like all artists should eventually sell out."

2:15 PM:  Guy in semi-successful band:  "I get hungry every two hours. It's biological."

3:30 PM:  The final evening of SXSW is always a nightmarish onslaught of people, but add St. Patrick's Day into the mix and you can be sure it's gonna be a bumpy ride.  Sixth Street is full of green shirts, green beer and, soon enough, green vomit.

3:50 PM:  "This is really gonna look good on my resume." 

4:25 PM  Austin natives are growing openly contemptuous of interlopers. I ask a barista if he's looking forward to the end of the festival and he tells me: "No offense, but we'd just like you all to go home."

4:40 PM:  Best band name at SXSW this year: Fake Your Own Death.

4:50 PM:  Hotel bar.  A guy who looks like Mr. Belding tells me he's stoked to be seeing his favorite group tonight: "They're sexy. They're a sexy band."

5:30 PM:  A music publisher with a margarita introduces herself:  "This is my girlfriend. I mean, you know, she's not like my girlfriend kind of girlfriend. She's my friend-girlfriend. I guess I should make it clear that we're not lesbians. We're moms."

6:10 PM:  Tales of social anxiety at 2nd & Congress:  "He asked me 'do you think I'm a hipster?' I'm like, 'no.' He's like, 'awesome.'"

6:15 PM:  Bar Congress: This is the sort of establishment where the chief mixologist can tell the difference between two batches of the same artisanal gin just by sniffing them. ("The first formulation was beautiful," he tells me.  "The second was a coriander bomb.") He makes me a drink called a Critical Darling; it tastes kind of like Radiohead.

7:00 PM:  3rd & Congress:  I give a guy in a banana suit five bucks and he gives me a hug.  Not sure if that's legal in Texas.

7:10 PM:  4th & Congress:  Erin Go Bragh!

7:40 PM:  I have just walked 6th Street all the way from Congress to Red River. Under present conditions, this is akin to winning the Kobayashi Maru or reaching the kill screen at the 256th level of Pac-Man.

7:45 PM:  Red 7. The band I am watching is called Psychedelic Horseshit. As a description of their music, it is 50% accurate.

7:50 PM:  Stubbs. Michael Kiwanuka's songs recall an earlier era of expanded-consciousness British troubadours like John Martyn. He sounds luminous, even through the awful Stubb's PA.

8:45 PM:  The Palm Door is a small club on a quiet block below 6th. Supposedly Donovan – THE Donovan – is playing a gig here in 15 minutes as a last-minute sub for an act that canceled. It seems improbable.  Why on earth should he be here?  Doesn't he have anything better to do? No one who works here knows whether or not it's true. Skepticism is rampant. All I know is: I passed on seeing Sleigh Bells for this.  If the dude doesn't show, I'm gonna be pissed.

9:00 PM:  Holy shit! He's here! You can feel the collective endorphin surge wash over the room. He plays his hits. He plays new songs.  He plays "Sunny Afternoon" by the Kinks. He cracks himself up every time he does the "quite rightly" bit in "Mellow Yellow." He makes us admire the plastic fingernails that he superglues onto his guitar-picking hand. Everyone sings along to everything.  (If you've never been in a room with two hundred people shouting "goo-goo/goo-goo-barabajagal" at once, you should try it sometime.)  Not even a lackluster guest appearance by Eric Burdon can dampen the mood. A triumph.

10:00 PM:  The Parish.  I have broken my inviolable "no seeing the same band twice at SXSW" rule because Soft Metals' electro-burble was simply too much fun the other night not to experience again. When the sequencers kick in, everyone in the room starts doing the bounce-up-and-down-robotically-while-not-actually-picking-your-feet-up-off-the-floor dance.

11:00 PM:  The Doritos Jacked Stage might be the most unsettling bit of corporate brand extension at SXSW this year, which is saying a lot: a fake vending machine 56 feet high full of giant bags of tortilla chips glowing an ectoplasmic blue, like ghosts or artifacts from the Tron universe.  Bands play at the bottom of the thing, surrounded by smoke machines belching contact-lens-destroying mucilage. I feel bad for them.

11:15 PM:  I accidentally walk into a VIP area and a burly security guy gets all TSA on me.  "Show your Doritos wristband, please."  My what? "Show your Doritos wristband, please." I don't have a Doritos wristband, I tell him.  "Show your Doritos wristband, please." This is my cue to leave.  

11:25 PM:  Someone in the SXSW scheduling department must have a sense of humor: avant-hip-hop guy EL-P and singer/songwriter LP are both playing shows in the same time slot. (ELP the prog-rock band are nowhere to be found.) LP, who looks like Cate-Blanchett-as-Bob-Dylan in I'm Not There, reveals herself to be the sort of resourceful performer who can win an audience Macgyver-style with just a broken ukulele and her impressive whistling skills.  One to watch.

12:00 AM:  Back on 6th Street.  I'd put the number of people here who could be described as "completely shitfaced" at somewhere around 70%.  Sirens; cop cars; things on fire; booming subwoofers; people slumped over on benches; debris everywhere: it's like the third act of a Michael Bay movie.

12:05 AM  I felt horribly guilty as soon as I took this picture. 

12:07 AM:  Two women teeter by on high heels that would be challenging to walk in sober, let alone their present condition. "Everyone just uses me, don't they?"

1:00 AM:  For my last band of SXSW, I need something loud, fast, noisy and borderline insane. Jacuzzi Boys are only too happy to oblige me. I admire their slash-and-burn garage-rock pummeling, their vintage Vox amplifier and the singer/guitarist's curtain of 1970s surfer hair, which obscures his face like Cousin It for most of the set.  Their performance is over much to soon, and when the band stops I realize: Oh. That's it. We're done here. I can't decide whether I'm sad or relieved about this. Both, I think.

2:10 AM:  Back in my hotel room with a Diet 7-Up and a bag of Corn Nuts.  My feet are killing me.

To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

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@Discographies SXSW Diary, Day One

Anonymous music critic @Discographies (even we don't know who he/she is) has earned tens of thousands of Twitter followers by distilling artists' entire discographies to 140 characters (example: Bruce Springsteen: 1-5 "You ride the road..." 7-8 "...until you arrive..." 9-10 "...or run out of gas..." 6,11-17 "...or your country does."). So for the South By Southwest Music festival and conference in Austin – four days of more bands, food, beer and people than anyone could possibly get their head around – RollingStone.com asked @Discographies to identify the unique moments that make SXSW an annual cavalcade of absurdity and amazement. Today's installment is the first of four.

Tuesday, March 13
12 PM:  Austin Bergstrom Airport: Barbecue smoke. Austin has the best airport food in America.

12:30 PM:  In cab to hotel. I see: used tires; old lawn mowers; homemade Ron Paul banners; barking dogs; rust.

1:45 PM:  Badge pickup area, Austin Convention Center: A registrar yells: "Anybody who doesn't turn in a green card is going to be stuck in purgatory!"

1:50 PM:  Guy on cellphone: "Awesome. Yeah, awesome. Killer all around."

2:15 PM:  3rd & Congress: female vocalist screeching into crappy mic and distorted amp: "no deal is a good deal is a deal is a good deal is a deal."

4:15 PM:  Best outfit I've seen today: woman in a head-to-toe aquamarine leotard, caterpillar dreadlocks, beat-up cowboy boots; she was sipping an iced coffee. Runner-up: an African-American dude with a side shave, tap pants, and a pair of three-feet-long angel wings that appear to be sprouting from his back.

4:30 PM:  Game over. This guy wins.

7:15 PM:  Hotel lobby: Jack Black is being accosted on his way to the elevator by a man who is insisting that the two of them share numerous mutual friends.  Black keeps repeating "Okay. Yeah, okay." in the calm and patient tone of someone trying to defuse an incendiary device.

8:00 PM:  At Hype Hotel for my first show of SXSW 2012. The room abruptly fills to capacity 30 seconds before Oberhofer takes the stage. He looks like Vincent Chase from Entourage; the music is a weird take on skinny-tie new wave, complete with stolen "My Sharona" drumbeats.

8:40 PM  Musician David Liebe Hart:  "I wrote a song about going to camp at the Christian Science school. It's a punk rock song; it's called 'Poison Mushrooms.'"

8:50 PM  This year's must-have men's fashion accessory: enormous, Mike Nesmith-style sideburns.

8:51 PM  This season's must-have women's fashion accessory: a miniskirt short enough to expose matching front-of-thigh tattoos.

9:00 PM:  At the Mohawk to see LA psych-rockers Sun Araw. Their set: Looping swampy bass groove with organ fuzz on top. Chanted vocals. Moog solos that sound like kids making arm farts. The drummer stays in one place, grooveless. Then they just... stop. No build. No peak. Nothing. "We've got a buzz going on," the vocalist says. Unfortunately, he's only talking about a defective cable.

12:00AM:  1100 Warehouse: Danny Brown raps about his, um, oral skills in hyper-anatomical detail, drops gratuitous Urkel references, enthuses about Adderall, tells us how drunk he is at least eight times and ends every song by saying the exact same thing: "Make some more fucking noise, South By Southwest!"

2:25 AM  Back in hotel room with a Sprite Zero.  My feet are killing me.

Wednesday, March 14
10:35AM:  Major label A&R guy in lobby:  "I own more Insane Clown Posse records than Tom Waits records."

10:45AM:  Barbecue run!  J.Mueller's has the kind of brisket you used to be forced to drive two hours outside of Austin to enjoy: dense, spicy, symphonic.  Each slice is surrounded by a pink corona of smokiness & an outer penumbra of pepper-coated suet. It is amazing in the way that only something really, really bad for you is amazing.  I try to take a photo of the pitmaster/proprietor and he barks: "Hey! Don't be stealing my soul!" Afterwards, because we haven't yet ingested enough artery-clogging fat for one morning, we jaywalk across the street to Gordough's for a made-to-order donut topped with a pound of banana pudding.

2:45PM:  Wandering around the Audio Expo. Like any trade show, it is full of products no one wants, fake-happy product reps manning empty booths and young women walking around dressed as Batgirl.  A guy in a cheeseburger costume tries to hand me a flyer.

3:30PM:  Maverick outsider-pop genius R. Stevie Moore improvises a song posing the musical question of the week: "Why would anyone come to SXSW to see Lionel Richie?"

4:00PM:  Upstairs in the Convention Center, nearly a thousand people have turned up to see Alabama Shakes, who are one of this year's most buzzed-about new bands. Their Janis Joplin-y music sounds as old as somebody's well-loved copy of "Cheap Thrills" as they envelop the room in a cheery, nostalgic bubble of blues-rock verities. You know those people who are always whining about how "there's no good music anymore"?  This is what they've been fantasizing about.  Your parents will love them.

5:15PM:  I have no idea whatsoever.

5:25PM:  Irritated singer/songwriter: "I had to mentor someone this morning."

6:15PM:  Hotel bar: the only available seat here is next to the bassist from a Famous Band. He tells me a hilarious and unflattering story about a music-biz bigwig I don't dare name. The bassist is playing a show tonight: "Don't come. It'll be past my bedtime."

8:00PM:  Stubbs: Thousands of chattering people, a non-illuminated stage, and an outdoor venue with the worst acoustics I've been exposed to since the PA system that was used for morning announcements in my 7th Grade homeroom. Then! Suddenly! A blaze of light! A squeal of feedback! Fiona Apple onstage with a full band! Singing! At least I think so. The song ends. There is rapturous applause. Fiona speaks! It sounds something like this: "mmmmffmngrrmmmffthnx."

9:00PM:  "Get over here now!" a friend texts me, and I make it to Whisky Bar in time to catch most of a set by Jerusalem & The Starbasket, a band I've never heard of. They are worth the hustle: a scuzz-droning power trio with a krautrocky drummer who could be mistaken for Kim Pine from Sex Bob-omb. She knows exactly one beat: the right one.

10:00PM:  I make it into Elysium seconds before Zola Jesus hits the stage looking like Emma Frost from the X-Men. She's got: echoey drums, billowy fog machines, icy synthesizers, Grand Canyon-y vocal reverb and a shrouded violinist who hovers in back looking like the angel of death. ZJ warbles operatically, sneaking in a shard or two of soul when no one's looking; she flaps her arms like a flightless Antarctic waterfowl. This might be the least funky performance I have ever seen, but the sturm-y, drang-y clove-cigarette melodrama of it all is irresistible.

11:40PM:  I'm in an endless line to see Miike Snow. Hype Hotel workers are passing out free tacos that have shells made out of Doritos. (The Hype Hotel is sponsored by Frito-Lay.) A woman next to me grabs one; I ask her if it's any good. "I'm hungry," she shrugs.

12:40AM:  Miike Snow have now been onstage setting up their equipment for over 30 minutes. Most bands at SXSW manage to do this in 5.

12:50AM:  Fuck you, Miike Snow. Your formerly captivating Europop and your supernumerary unvoiced vowel mean nothing now; you are dead to me. I'm outta here.

1:00AM:  I run back to Elysium to see The Men, who are precisely what I need:  a roar of super-fast art-punk delirium and a psychedelic light show. Listening to them is kind of like being attacked by a friendly power sander. It is high adrenaline and low coherence and it is pretty goddamn fantastic.

2:35AM:  Back in my hotel room with a large bottle of water and some trail mix.  My feet are killing me.

To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

Amazon Music and MP3 Center

Read more »

@Discographies SXSW Diary, Day One

Anonymous music critic @Discographies (even we don't know who he/she is) has earned tens of thousands of Twitter followers by distilling artists' entire discographies to 140 characters (example: Bruce Springsteen: 1-5 "You ride the road..." 7-8 "...until you arrive..." 9-10 "...or run out of gas..." 6,11-17 "...or your country does."). So for the South By Southwest Music festival and conference in Austin – four days of more bands, food, beer and people than anyone could possibly get their head around – RollingStone.com asked @Discographies to identify the unique moments that make SXSW an annual cavalcade of absurdity and amazement. Today's installment is the first of four.

Tuesday, March 13
12 PM:  Austin Bergstrom Airport: Barbecue smoke. Austin has the best airport food in America.

12:30 PM:  In cab to hotel. I see: used tires; old lawn mowers; homemade Ron Paul banners; barking dogs; rust.

1:45 PM:  Badge pickup area, Austin Convention Center: A registrar yells: "Anybody who doesn't turn in a green card is going to be stuck in purgatory!"

1:50 PM:  Guy on cellphone: "Awesome. Yeah, awesome. Killer all around."

2:15 PM:  3rd & Congress: female vocalist screeching into crappy mic and distorted amp: "no deal is a good deal is a deal is a good deal is a deal."

4:15 PM:  Best outfit I've seen today: woman in a head-to-toe aquamarine leotard, caterpillar dreadlocks, beat-up cowboy boots; she was sipping an iced coffee. Runner-up: an African-American dude with a side shave, tap pants, and a pair of three-feet-long angel wings that appear to be sprouting from his back.

4:30 PM:  Game over. This guy wins.

7:15 PM:  Hotel lobby: Jack Black is being accosted on his way to the elevator by a man who is insisting that the two of them share numerous mutual friends.  Black keeps repeating "Okay. Yeah, okay." in the calm and patient tone of someone trying to defuse an incendiary device.

8:00 PM:  At Hype Hotel for my first show of SXSW 2012. The room abruptly fills to capacity 30 seconds before Oberhofer takes the stage. He looks like Vincent Chase from Entourage; the music is a weird take on skinny-tie new wave, complete with stolen "My Sharona" drumbeats.

8:40 PM  Musician David Liebe Hart:  "I wrote a song about going to camp at the Christian Science school. It's a punk rock song; it's called 'Poison Mushrooms.'"

8:50 PM  This year's must-have men's fashion accessory: enormous, Mike Nesmith-style sideburns.

8:51 PM  This season's must-have women's fashion accessory: a miniskirt short enough to expose matching front-of-thigh tattoos.

9:00 PM:  At the Mohawk to see LA psych-rockers Sun Araw. Their set: Looping swampy bass groove with organ fuzz on top. Chanted vocals. Moog solos that sound like kids making arm farts. The drummer stays in one place, grooveless. Then they just... stop. No build. No peak. Nothing. "We've got a buzz going on," the vocalist says. Unfortunately, he's only talking about a defective cable.

12:00AM:  1100 Warehouse: Danny Brown raps about his, um, oral skills in hyper-anatomical detail, drops gratuitous Urkel references, enthuses about Adderall, tells us how drunk he is at least eight times and ends every song by saying the exact same thing: "Make some more fucking noise, South By Southwest!"

2:25 AM  Back in hotel room with a Sprite Zero.  My feet are killing me.

Wednesday, March 14
10:35AM:  Major label A&R guy in lobby:  "I own more Insane Clown Posse records than Tom Waits records."

10:45AM:  Barbecue run!  J.Mueller's has the kind of brisket you used to be forced to drive two hours outside of Austin to enjoy: dense, spicy, symphonic.  Each slice is surrounded by a pink corona of smokiness & an outer penumbra of pepper-coated suet. It is amazing in the way that only something really, really bad for you is amazing.  I try to take a photo of the pitmaster/proprietor and he barks: "Hey! Don't be stealing my soul!" Afterwards, because we haven't yet ingested enough artery-clogging fat for one morning, we jaywalk across the street to Gordough's for a made-to-order donut topped with a pound of banana pudding.

2:45PM:  Wandering around the Audio Expo. Like any trade show, it is full of products no one wants, fake-happy product reps manning empty booths and young women walking around dressed as Batgirl.  A guy in a cheeseburger costume tries to hand me a flyer.

3:30PM:  Maverick outsider-pop genius R. Stevie Moore improvises a song posing the musical question of the week: "Why would anyone come to SXSW to see Lionel Richie?"

4:00PM:  Upstairs in the Convention Center, nearly a thousand people have turned up to see Alabama Shakes, who are one of this year's most buzzed-about new bands. Their Janis Joplin-y music sounds as old as somebody's well-loved copy of "Cheap Thrills" as they envelop the room in a cheery, nostalgic bubble of blues-rock verities. You know those people who are always whining about how "there's no good music anymore"?  This is what they've been fantasizing about.  Your parents will love them.

5:15PM:  I have no idea whatsoever.

5:25PM:  Irritated singer/songwriter: "I had to mentor someone this morning."

6:15PM:  Hotel bar: the only available seat here is next to the bassist from a Famous Band. He tells me a hilarious and unflattering story about a music-biz bigwig I don't dare name. The bassist is playing a show tonight: "Don't come. It'll be past my bedtime."

8:00PM:  Stubbs: Thousands of chattering people, a non-illuminated stage, and an outdoor venue with the worst acoustics I've been exposed to since the PA system that was used for morning announcements in my 7th Grade homeroom. Then! Suddenly! A blaze of light! A squeal of feedback! Fiona Apple onstage with a full band! Singing! At least I think so. The song ends. There is rapturous applause. Fiona speaks! It sounds something like this: "mmmmffmngrrmmmffthnx."

9:00PM:  "Get over here now!" a friend texts me, and I make it to Whisky Bar in time to catch most of a set by Jerusalem & The Starbasket, a band I've never heard of. They are worth the hustle: a scuzz-droning power trio with a krautrocky drummer who could be mistaken for Kim Pine from Sex Bob-omb. She knows exactly one beat: the right one.

10:00PM:  I make it into Elysium seconds before Zola Jesus hits the stage looking like Emma Frost from the X-Men. She's got: echoey drums, billowy fog machines, icy synthesizers, Grand Canyon-y vocal reverb and a shrouded violinist who hovers in back looking like the angel of death. ZJ warbles operatically, sneaking in a shard or two of soul when no one's looking; she flaps her arms like a flightless Antarctic waterfowl. This might be the least funky performance I have ever seen, but the sturm-y, drang-y clove-cigarette melodrama of it all is irresistible.

11:40PM:  I'm in an endless line to see Miike Snow. Hype Hotel workers are passing out free tacos that have shells made out of Doritos. (The Hype Hotel is sponsored by Frito-Lay.) A woman next to me grabs one; I ask her if it's any good. "I'm hungry," she shrugs.

12:40AM:  Miike Snow have now been onstage setting up their equipment for over 30 minutes. Most bands at SXSW manage to do this in 5.

12:50AM:  Fuck you, Miike Snow. Your formerly captivating Europop and your supernumerary unvoiced vowel mean nothing now; you are dead to me. I'm outta here.

1:00AM:  I run back to Elysium to see The Men, who are precisely what I need:  a roar of super-fast art-punk delirium and a psychedelic light show. Listening to them is kind of like being attacked by a friendly power sander. It is high adrenaline and low coherence and it is pretty goddamn fantastic.

2:35AM:  Back in my hotel room with a large bottle of water and some trail mix.  My feet are killing me.

To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

Amazon MP3 Download Center

Read more »

@Discographies SXSW Diary, Day Two

Anonymous music critic @Discographies (even we don't know who he/she is) has earned tens of thousands of Twitter followers by distilling artists' entire discographies to 140 characters (example: Bruce Springsteen: 1-5 "You ride the road..." 7-8 "...until you arrive..." 9-10 "...or run out of gas..." 6,11-17 "...or your country does."). So for the South By Southwest Music festival and conference in Austin – four days of more bands, food, beer and people than anyone could possibly get their head around – RollingStone.com asked @Discographies to identify the unique moments that make SXSW an annual cavalcade of absurdity and amazement. Today's installment is the second of four.

Thursday, March 15th
2:15 PM:  Hotel restaurant:  Every cell of my body is screaming for caffeine. Hours of sleep last night: 4.25.

2:20 PM:  Record company guy at the table next to me oversharing to a co-worker about how his marriage ended: "We hooked up at our high school reunion. Best sex I ever had." Fortunately, everything's okay now: "I have matured, and the self-confidence thing has really kicked in!"

3:25 PM:  Conversation in front of ATM machine:  "I guess the worst case scenario is that we'll have to go see some music."

3:45 PM:  You cannot make this shit up: "We're a new fat freezing treatment! It's totally non-surgical! And we brought the Naked Cowboy in from Times Square to join us!"

3:50 PM:  This season's – okay, every season's – must-have Middle-Aged Rocker Dude fashion accessory: Hawaiian shirt worn over band logo tee in failed attempt to conceal paunch.

4:45 PM:  Rusty's:  A way-too-excited marketing guy thrusts a squeezable plastic pouch of "Merlot" into my hand and gloats like he's just discovered radium: "Isn't it fantastic? We've put our delicious wine into a convenient pouch that you can hang around your neck on a lanyard!" I take a sip. It is insanely sugary, like fermented Kool-Aid. "Wow," I say to the guy, and he takes it as a compliment.

5:10 PM:  6th & Red River: A woman stands in the middle of the intersection doing hula-hoop tricks. You know: for kids.

5:15 PM:  I am pretty sure this is my favorite person at SXSW this year.

5:25 PM:  Unless it's this guy.

6:00 PM:  Hotel bar: A Twitter exec and an Apple exec are repeatedly congratulating one another on their awesome accomplishments. It's the corporate equivalent of "I love you, man."

6:15 PM:  There are not many things in this world sadder than a 60-year-old man with a mohawk and an Ed Hardy shirt drinking a Cosmo.

6:55 PM:  My pedicab driver has no idea how to navigate the seven blocks to my destination: "I just moved here."

7:15 PM:  IFC Crossroads House at Vice:  Poliça's peppier, poppier take on trip-hop is wonderful. Equally wonderful: the club they are playing provides complimentary housemade caramel corn, and the whole place smells like creme brûlée. The synergy is glorious.

7:45 PM:  SXSW's voracious need for downtown performance spaces creates some of the oddest venues imaginable. Which is how I find myself in Mellow Johnny's, a bicycle shop owned by Lance Armstrong, watching hometown heroes Shearwater deliver their grad-student-y melancholia to a hundred people and about twice as many terrain bikes. (News you can use:  Mellow Johnny's has the most spacious and immaculate restrooms of any SXSW performance space.)

8:45 PM:  A woman in Lululemon casual wear attempts to talk her way into a way-over-capacity show at the Central Presbyterian Church on 8th Street by browbeating the staff: "Don't you people have me on the list?  I'm supposed to be introducing the Alabama Shakes!"  Who aren't playing here tonight.  Busted!

9:30 PM:  Britain's Charli XCX is dressed like a gothic version of Ellie May Clampett.  Her music – smoldery, overripe yowling framed by bloopy synths and martial drumming – is Eighties fluffernutter pop dunked in mascara: the Gwen Stefani/Siouxsie hybrid the world was not previously aware it needed.

10:15 PM: Barbarella:  Soft Metals have zero stage presence, but they refashion vintage electro-pop into a relentless plinketa!-plinketa!-plinketa!-plinketa! that I wouldn't mind getting lost in for about six hours.  The room is full of girls in sparkly dresses who want to dance and boys who are afraid to talk to them. 

11:10 PM:  6th Street:  Woman on cellphone walking around in a circle screaming into cell phone: "I'm by myself next to the gay bar! THE GAY BAR!"

12:00 AM:  Skrillex is the only performer I've ever seen who brings an entourage on stage with him to loaf around texting and drinking beer while he's doing his thing.  When he hits the stage at The Main, the room instantly becomes Party Central; even the security people are bouncing up and down.

1:15 AM:  On the outdoor patio at Red 7, Fear's Lee Ving, ever the provocateur, is having a tantrum onstage: "When we get done bombing Tehran, then we'll take out the soundman!" Walking out the backdoor of the club, I find myself in an alley that – there is no polite way to say this – is essentially a 300 foot sluiceway of urine.

1:40 AM:  I can't wait for the inevitable reality TV show about drunk people competing to hail taxis in Austin.

1:55 AM:  Back at hotel.  Several members of a Band You've Seen On TV are loitering outside.

2:00 AM:  Hotel Bar. I sit down five feet away from an Very Famous Rock Star and his posse. Unlike most of the VFRS that I've encountered, this one is taller in real life.

2:15 AM:  Back in my hotel room with a club soda and a couple of Advil.  My feet are killing me.

To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

Amazon Music and MP3 Center

Read more »

@Discographies SXSW Diary, Day Two

Anonymous music critic @Discographies (even we don't know who he/she is) has earned tens of thousands of Twitter followers by distilling artists' entire discographies to 140 characters (example: Bruce Springsteen: 1-5 "You ride the road..." 7-8 "...until you arrive..." 9-10 "...or run out of gas..." 6,11-17 "...or your country does."). So for the South By Southwest Music festival and conference in Austin – four days of more bands, food, beer and people than anyone could possibly get their head around – RollingStone.com asked @Discographies to identify the unique moments that make SXSW an annual cavalcade of absurdity and amazement. Today's installment is the second of four.

Thursday, March 15th
2:15 PM:  Hotel restaurant:  Every cell of my body is screaming for caffeine. Hours of sleep last night: 4.25.

2:20 PM:  Record company guy at the table next to me oversharing to a co-worker about how his marriage ended: "We hooked up at our high school reunion. Best sex I ever had." Fortunately, everything's okay now: "I have matured, and the self-confidence thing has really kicked in!"

3:25 PM:  Conversation in front of ATM machine:  "I guess the worst case scenario is that we'll have to go see some music."

3:45 PM:  You cannot make this shit up: "We're a new fat freezing treatment! It's totally non-surgical! And we brought the Naked Cowboy in from Times Square to join us!"

3:50 PM:  This season's – okay, every season's – must-have Middle-Aged Rocker Dude fashion accessory: Hawaiian shirt worn over band logo tee in failed attempt to conceal paunch.

4:45 PM:  Rusty's:  A way-too-excited marketing guy thrusts a squeezable plastic pouch of "Merlot" into my hand and gloats like he's just discovered radium: "Isn't it fantastic? We've put our delicious wine into a convenient pouch that you can hang around your neck on a lanyard!" I take a sip. It is insanely sugary, like fermented Kool-Aid. "Wow," I say to the guy, and he takes it as a compliment.

5:10 PM:  6th & Red River: A woman stands in the middle of the intersection doing hula-hoop tricks. You know: for kids.

5:15 PM:  I am pretty sure this is my favorite person at SXSW this year.

5:25 PM:  Unless it's this guy.

6:00 PM:  Hotel bar: A Twitter exec and an Apple exec are repeatedly congratulating one another on their awesome accomplishments. It's the corporate equivalent of "I love you, man."

6:15 PM:  There are not many things in this world sadder than a 60-year-old man with a mohawk and an Ed Hardy shirt drinking a Cosmo.

6:55 PM:  My pedicab driver has no idea how to navigate the seven blocks to my destination: "I just moved here."

7:15 PM:  IFC Crossroads House at Vice:  Poliça's peppier, poppier take on trip-hop is wonderful. Equally wonderful: the club they are playing provides complimentary housemade caramel corn, and the whole place smells like creme brûlée. The synergy is glorious.

7:45 PM:  SXSW's voracious need for downtown performance spaces creates some of the oddest venues imaginable. Which is how I find myself in Mellow Johnny's, a bicycle shop owned by Lance Armstrong, watching hometown heroes Shearwater deliver their grad-student-y melancholia to a hundred people and about twice as many terrain bikes. (News you can use:  Mellow Johnny's has the most spacious and immaculate restrooms of any SXSW performance space.)

8:45 PM:  A woman in Lululemon casual wear attempts to talk her way into a way-over-capacity show at the Central Presbyterian Church on 8th Street by browbeating the staff: "Don't you people have me on the list?  I'm supposed to be introducing the Alabama Shakes!"  Who aren't playing here tonight.  Busted!

9:30 PM:  Britain's Charli XCX is dressed like a gothic version of Ellie May Clampett.  Her music – smoldery, overripe yowling framed by bloopy synths and martial drumming – is Eighties fluffernutter pop dunked in mascara: the Gwen Stefani/Siouxsie hybrid the world was not previously aware it needed.

10:15 PM: Barbarella:  Soft Metals have zero stage presence, but they refashion vintage electro-pop into a relentless plinketa!-plinketa!-plinketa!-plinketa! that I wouldn't mind getting lost in for about six hours.  The room is full of girls in sparkly dresses who want to dance and boys who are afraid to talk to them. 

11:10 PM:  6th Street:  Woman on cellphone walking around in a circle screaming into cell phone: "I'm by myself next to the gay bar! THE GAY BAR!"

12:00 AM:  Skrillex is the only performer I've ever seen who brings an entourage on stage with him to loaf around texting and drinking beer while he's doing his thing.  When he hits the stage at The Main, the room instantly becomes Party Central; even the security people are bouncing up and down.

1:15 AM:  On the outdoor patio at Red 7, Fear's Lee Ving, ever the provocateur, is having a tantrum onstage: "When we get done bombing Tehran, then we'll take out the soundman!" Walking out the backdoor of the club, I find myself in an alley that – there is no polite way to say this – is essentially a 300 foot sluiceway of urine.

1:40 AM:  I can't wait for the inevitable reality TV show about drunk people competing to hail taxis in Austin.

1:55 AM:  Back at hotel.  Several members of a Band You've Seen On TV are loitering outside.

2:00 AM:  Hotel Bar. I sit down five feet away from an Very Famous Rock Star and his posse. Unlike most of the VFRS that I've encountered, this one is taller in real life.

2:15 AM:  Back in my hotel room with a club soda and a couple of Advil.  My feet are killing me.

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