More photos! Duels at the Barfly showcase from SXSW 2006, March 17th at Exodus.

This is my last set of pictures of The Cribs from SXSW, from the final night of the festival at the Fenway Recordings showcase at Club de Ville on March 18th.

One more gallery update tonight - The Cribs, Barfly showcase, Exodus, 17/03/2006

Dirty Pretty Things, Fader party at the Levi’s/Fader Trading Post on Friday, March 17th.

Two more SXSW galleries, Dirty Pretty Things at the NME Bootleg BBQ at the Mean-Eyed Cat on March 17th, and The Cribs at the iheartcomix party at the Beauty Bar on March 16th.

I’ve just posted up another set of SXSW 2006 pictures, of Duels’ very first American gig at the Filter party on March 16th.

The first complete set of photos from this year’s SXSW festival have been uploaded to the galleries. Check out The Cribs at the Filter party at Cedar St. Courtyard on Thursday, March 16th.

Part of the nice thing about this blogging thing is you don’t necessarily have to do anything like being on assignment like you would if you were working for some big corporate-whore magazine so you can just relax and chill out and have a lot of fun without worrying about schedules or deadlines or any of that. Besides, it’s SXSW, and anyone who’s done one knows your schedules are out the window by the first afternoon, anyway. Just a rundown of how I spent my week:

Wednesday:
First off was Depraved Fangirls’ party at The Lair Upstairs. There were cupcakes and The Wrens’ Charles Bissell doing an acoustic set, Dallas band The Hourly Radio, and local band Pompeii. Met up with my gig buddies for the week at the party, although we split up again for a couple hours that night soon as we left the party, them to head down to Flamingo Cantina for The Others and me to head down to Emo’s for my favourite Austin band, Voxtrot. Got stamped at the door, walked in, and headed straight for the merch table to get my hands on the new EP, which isn’t officially out until April 4th. Said hello to their singer, Ramesh, on my way over to the stage area. Caught the last bit of Kiss Me Deadly and then all of Voxtrot’s set, who were incredible. They inspire some of the happiest crowds I’ve ever seen in all my years, they really do. They actually surprised me by throwing in a cover in their set, and though it wasn’t the absolutely sublime one they do of Comet Gain’s “You Can Hide Your Love Forever”, it was still a brilliant rendition of Talking Heads’ “Heaven” (which I saw them do in Houston in January as well). Next it was down to The Parish, where I caught London hard-rock duo Comanechi, Wakefield twee-pop trio The Research, and art-rock scene mockers Art Brut, who were to be the most ubiquitous band of the entire festival. Wherever we were, they were too, it seemed. My original plans included the Absolute Debauchery party with loads of free booze and Red Bull until the wee small hours but the last-minute relocation of the party from a warehouse on Nueces to somewhere down on South Congress put the kibosh on that, for me at least.

Thursday:
I got myself going bright and early to get free lunch at Filter’s Revenge of Cedar Street party down at Cedar St. Courtyard on 4th. I caught Duels’ first American gig ever while waiting around for my friends to make it down and said hello to quite a few familiar faces I recognised from the previous year’s festival. When my friends showed up we hung around through the first of several sets by The Cribs we were to catch that week before all heading down to the iheartcomix party at the Beauty Bar on 7th, where we met the Queens of Noize, who are fabulous, funny, incredibly nice and very sweet girls and saw The Lashes, Giant Drag, and The Cribs yet again before embarking for Eternal on 6th to get in to see Dirty Pretty Things’ first American gig. On the way I chatted a bit with the Cribs lads about that whole thing with them, me, and the NME and I can definitely say there’s no hard feelings on either side as far as we’re concerned, I still love those boys like my own and they seem to like me alright, too, so we’re all good. I never blamed them, I still don’t, and they’re still absolutely some of the nicest boys I’ve ever known. But anyway… we were all trying to get into see DPT, but alas, it was not to be. Unfortunate scheduling placed Carl and the boys right in between a very high-demand secret extended set by The Flaming Lips and a highly touted closing set by indie-yuppie buzz band Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and no one was getting in without a badge. That included BBC Radio 1’s own Steve Lamacq, who we saw turned away at the door, as well as lots of people on the bands’ own guestlist. Not even the Arctic Monkeys were getting in without a last-minute intervention by Zane Lowe (which apparently did happen). Once it was obvious we weren’t getting in, me and my other badgeless friend decided to head down to Emo’s Annex to catch The Gossip, which turned out to be the gig of choice for the DPT-bereft, as we ran into the brothers Jarman yet again (and gave them directions to a party in East Austin as well as exhortations to under no circumstances walk around there at night… judging by the lack of gunshot wounds the next I saw them I assume they made it in and out just fine) as well as members of Art Brut and The Chalets catching that set. I wish I could say the night ended tamely… wait, no I don’t. We actually got a bite to eat, had fun with phone calls from a crazy coked-up groupie (I promise you all that’s the last time I’ll mention her), picked up our friend who did get in to DPT and got to see their 5 songs before the Austin PD pulled the plug on them and all hung out together until about 5 am.

Friday:
Another early start, with only two hours’ sleep, I chucked a few cans of Red Bull into my bag and headed for the bus stop to catch the 22 down to W. 5th for the NME Bootleg BBQ at The Mean-Eyed Cat. Undaunted by the previous night’s failure to see DPT (and in fact… not too disappointed really, I’d already seen my favourite band twice that day and had a blast at a couple of parties) I was determined to catch them at the NME BBQ. Which I did… and then it only got better because somehow one of my mates finagled an invitation for all of us to see them play that afternoon at the ultra-hard-to-get-into Fader party from Alan McGee himself. So we saw DPT twice on Friday (a slight snafu at the door meant we arrived before McGee could get us on the list but Anthony Rossomando came to the rescue, so cheers, Anthony!) and had yet another incredibly memorable afternoon because after DPT we hung around during the Death Disco dj sets spun by McGee’s son Dan, who is a really cool kid with some excellent music taste, and caught The Charlatans, who played the last set of the night. That party over, we headed down to Exodus where we saw a Welsh garage trio called The Heights, another fantastic set from Leeds’ Duels (the second time I saw them but the first for my friends), Nightmare of You, who despite the hype they’re getting were horrifically all over the place, and The Cribs yet again, where we were even treated to some new stuff they’d been playing around with (titles for now are “I’ve Tried Everything” and “I’m A Realist”). I sometimes feel like I’m flogging a dead cow everytime I try to put into words just how wonderful these boys are onstage together. To this day there’s no band I enjoy more live or that just makes me as utterly happy as they do. Despite some trouble with bouncers during the gig the boys were great and I really loved getting to hear some new material. We actually put in an early night that night but it was actually rather eventful for reasons best left unsaid. Nothing too bad, but certainly not dull.

Saturday:
Ahh, Saturday. I actually let myself have a few extra hours of sleep before heading downtown again. Hit up the Beauty Bar just in time to see Art Brut again at the Jelly/Southpaw NYC party before attempting to get into The Velvet Spade for NY2LON. We’d just about successfully blagged our way in the door when The Others’ Dominic Masters came out (say what you like, I was utterly blown away by what a genuinely kind guy he is and I’ve nothing but good to say about him) and took us along to whatever was going on at Club de Ville, where we caught Envelopes (whose French singer, Audrey, I was told I strongly resemble by Russell from The Research) and Brakes, featuring members of the Electric Soft Parade and British Sea Power (pictures from last year at Emo’s). Then it was on in search of every free bar in town we could find, culminating in us once again under the Fader tent watching Ghostface Killah (shocked me, I tell you) and seeing Art Brut wandering around yet again. As I mentioned earlier, they were the ubiquitous band of the festival for me, we kept seeing them everywhere at just about every party we went to and gigs and so as we left I jokingly called out to frontman Eddie Argos “Are you following us everywhere, Eddie?” to which he gamely replied, “Yes! Where are we going next?” I definitely can’t wait to see them again in a couple months, they put on an amazing show. After that everyone drifted their separate ways for the next few hours and there was meandering from bar to bar, phone blogging, and finally back to Club de Ville for Toronto disco-punks controller.controller at midnight followed by a festival closing set by… yep, you got it… The Cribs. A perfect end to an unbelievably amazing week, only made better by the fact that I’m catching the lads again in a week.

The highlights… or, “fuck this, I’m not reading all that!”

• Catching up with old friends
• Meeting some fabulous new ones
• The Cribs, The Cribs, The Cribs, The Cribs. Best boys in the world, the week wouldn’t have been half as wonderful without ‘em.
• Dirty Pretty Things… twice!
• Anthony from DPT getting us into Fader. So nice of him and such a bunch of really wonderful guys.
• Going on a free booze hunt with Dominic
• Art Brut absolutely everywhere
• The absolutely gobsmacking incredibleness of the entire week… everything we did, everyone we hung out with, all the places we went. I’m still kind of in a state of shock that for one week, this was my life. It was certainly better than last year’s and last year’s was pretty amazing. And would you believe I still never told you everything?

I’ve still got over 500 photographs from the week to sort through but I will start adding them to the gallery a few sets at a time. Look for lots of Cribs and DPT, especially, but I’ve also got two fantastic Duels sets as well as some others.

The SXSW music festival isn’t just a place where bands from all over the world flock to show off their stuff to a town full of industry personnel and diehard music fans. Oh, no. It’s also a 5-day long orgy of parties replete with free booze, free food, free swag, and some good musical entertainment. Every year the rumour mills start up weeks, even months, in advance of the festival about who’s playing what and which year’s parties will be the prestige invites - prestige being granted by how difficult it is to score a place on the guestlist. With so many people descending upon 6th St., many of the parties are barred to anyone not on the list. But don’t fret if you don’t make the grade for Fader, Vice, Spin, or Jane; there are plenty of free parties in town that’ll be happy to have you.

One free party I’m proud to advertise here is the “I’m Totally Blogging This When I Get Home” party, sponsored by my friends at Depraved Fangirls, in association with See You In The Pit, SXSWbaby, and The Rich Girls Are Weeping. Check out their flyer below, and come on down to 6th and San Jacinto for the party.

You may also be seeing me at the Absolute Debauchery party going all night long on Wednesday night, and at the iheartcomix unofficial sxsw blowout at The Beauty Bar on Thursday, and a few others Friday and Saturday that I’m just waiting to hear back from. Also looking like good bets to keep in mind: the Filter parties Thursday-Saturday at Cedar St. Courtyard (but get down early), the Bootleg BBQs featuring the UK’s newest rising bands going on at The Mean Eyed Cat Thursday-Saturday, the Pitchfork/Windish Agency party on Friday at Emo’s Annex featuring Art Brut, Jose Gonzalez, The Juan Maclean, and Ladytron (dj set), and the NY2LON party on Saturday at the Velvet Spade with The Morning After Girls, The Rakes, Voxtrot, and The Charlatans, among others, provided you’re lucky enough to make the cut. You can always sleep when you’re dead.

Get the lowdown on the best parties in town:
donewaiting.com unofficial sxsw blog
Showlist Austin
SXSW Drowned In Sound