Monday, March 23, 2009

SXSW 2009, Day 7

Slept in a bit; started day with lunch at Le Cafe Crepe (yum), followed by late arrival for the 2pm Quincy Jones keynote speech.
He was really rambling on and on, it seemed. Left after an hour. He was running way over his scheduled time.

Went to the SXSW Block Party at the trade floor, which just meant that several of the vendors had free food and drinks available.

M and I then went to different things; she went to a movie while I headed to the Devo interview panel at 5pm, followed by a 6pm set by the Von Bondies at the made-for-tv-fake-nightclub called the Bat Bar, also in the convention center. The first song didn't sound very good (maybe it was just me), but after that I enjoyed it.

After meeting back up with M, who had eaten dinner during her movie (Alamo Drafthouse Ritz), we dropped back into Le Cafe Crepe where I ate for the second time that day. We then headed on over to Antone's to catch the Doug Sahm tribute by various artists. First up was Jimmie Vaughan, who played 3 or 4 songs. When he left the stage, they began setting up for the next band (The Gourds), and M stayed here while I headed over to Stubbs to catch several acts there, beginning with the Meat Puppets. I was a big fan back in the late 1980's - early 1990's, but hadn't seen them in a long time. I believe this was my 7th time seeing them. They were still fun to see, although I thought the bass was mixed too loudly relative to everything else. :-/

Next up was Gomez, followed by Andrew Bird. Both were enjoyable. Then came Ben Harper & Relentless7. This show was good, but the whole thing was too loud I thought, even with earplugs. I stayed for most of it but left a little early to see if I could catch the end of Gordon Gano's set. I arrived to find him playing for perhaps 25-30 people, and I caught just the last two songs (the closer being his hit from the Violent Femmes, "Blister in the Sun"). As we left filing past the small stage, I asked him if he was doing any other day parties during SXSW, and he said that unfortunately he was not because he had to get to New Orleans for a show the next night.

No comments: