• " ambien Buy ambien Buy..."
  (25 sec ago)
• "advance tickets available at..."
  (10 hours 53 min ago)
• "...a phenomenal thing,..."
  (5 days 11 hours ago)
• "oh well either way i missed..."
  (6 days 2 hours ago)
• "it's my new band. no, no, i..."
  (6 days 21 hours ago)

And the best show thread begins:

Best show of the fest so far was Peaches being refused entry into an after party by bouncers who were not allowing anyone else in. After a a minute of arguing one of them touched her and she started screaming "Police ! Police !" Then jossled off with a big grin on her face to her art-dyke entourage. Performance art at it's best !

DS

"Indie is our mainstream"

And so the rant begins. The above quote lifted from an oh so clever flyer deposited around Austin courtesy of myplay.com. SXSW is where the trends meet. Where bottom up is top down and those who started the commercial boom in independent music collide with marketing machines that look to cash in on the cliches a self conscious community/industry may or may not be aware of. There are the official showcases, the embassy parties, the conference, the vip parties, the free parties, the sponsored parties, and the offshoot events like Gay By Gay Gay and Fuck by Fuck You, in clubs and make shift venues scattered around several blocks in downtown Austin. Whether you walk around and get annoyed because you suddenly realize that there are hundreds of other kids just like you that are psyched to see the next big thing, or you let go and revel in the mania in the air, there is so much going on that the confluence of music, art, commerce and people cannot help but inspire a tangible spirit. And if you resign yourself to less than perfect concert going conditions like constant line-ups, a nearly ubiquitous barrage of noise, some shoddy sound systems, and several crappy spaces, the festival can offer a whole lot of entertainment and musical awesomeness. My advice is to take some quiet time away from the madness. See a few shows and allow yourself to bump around, enjoy the moments and hopefully discover why you are doing what you do..... Enjoy the pix , enjoy the sounds and remember POP is with love.
DS

So some of us here are braving the bitter end of winter, our pasty skin whipped by unkind winds, biting our tongues so as to not utter the contempt towards the mass of Montrealers down in Austin, "working" until the southern sun rises. Yeah, we can console ourselves with a series of awesome shows happening right in our hood, but wouldn't you rather be dazedly shuffling from the Nuclear Taco Night to a showcase of punctuation mark bands from Brazil while dodging all the grackles, bats, and discarded shwag?

Neon BibleDuring the finale of their five night run in Montreal in the hundred candle-lit basement of the Ukrainian Federation and an all acoustic version of “the Well and the Lighthouse” , Win Butler walked into the crowd that had followed the band down the stairs after the first encore. The song was ending, the band yelling ‘the lambs and the sheep ain’t sleeping yet’ and a camera followed him into the mass of people parting. He emerged around the other side a minute or so later with the camera in his own hands, pointing it back at the audience before turning it on himself and disappearing backwards into the crowd.

It doesn’t get more grand or dramatic than the Arcade Fire’s sophomore release, Neon Bible, in terms of the ambition of imagery and the breadth of the gestures. Mirrors and bombs, casting of stones and soldiers and the Church, a golden calf, good Christian men, lambs, the flood, a key. If the Arcade Fire are vulnerable anywhere (though they seem a pretty sudden and stern institution around here) it’s in the question, ‘can they really pull that off?’ Are they really standing up there singing “Neon Bible”, and about the big and obvious but almost embarrassing touchstones of our recent age? You know, like war, religion, the public forum and its spotlight? Who do they think they are anyway?

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