I will be writing up some travel stories soon.  For now here are some videos:

This is the year that Natalie and I finally decided to make our amazing SXSW band review spreadsheet viewable by the common man.  So without further ado, I give you

http://sxswreviews.com/

Of course the main draw is the content, which is comprised of hours of laborous music listening and rating.  After getting close to 300 bands under my belt I can easily say that this year is looking better then ever.  I think it's a little heavy in electronica and DJs, but I'm not complaining...anything that gets ya movin is cool with me.  So enjoy the site, give me feedback if you know me, I definitely can use it.

For those that don't know, one of my hobbies is painting and I'm currently trying to focus a little more attention on it for whatever reason.  It's fitting then, that a few days ago, a friend of mine reminded me about the East Austin Studio Tour (E.A.S.T.) which I went to last year for the first time and was completely blown away by the multitude of hidden studios that exist in my old neighborhood.  I wish I had a better memory to tell you all the great places I went to (making this entry a lot more useful).  What I can offer however, is a suggestion if you're going: start at a few of the larger exhibition spaces (i.e. Pump which is E15 on the map), find an artist who is creating art that you particularly enjoy and just ask them which other spaces they would suggest.  Last year I talked to Mychal at Iona Handcrafted Books (81 on the map) and she was kind enough to point me in the right direction and even gave me a delicious chocolate chip cookie with a beer kicker to boot.

That's it.  I just wanted to push more people to go to this event.  I'll update the blog with some pics and thoughts about my trip to the E.A.S.T. and then later will upload some of my paintings that I am working on (a Goodie in Austin Studio Tour of sorts GiA.S.T.) just for kicks.  I'm thinking this will be a Friday night or Sunday afternoon deal though Friday seems like a strange choice and Sunday's their last day so I'm not sure I'm planning this right.  Hit me up if you're heading there too.

Btw, the above picture was drawn by an artist friend of mine during my recent visit to NYC, he's currently doing a project where he is drawing every person in new york which I think is completely badass.  I realize that it's not from East Austin, but it certainly is from the East.

Please advise...

Update: Adding Mumford & Sons since they failed to show up on the ACL lineup (like everyone else)

Well it's spring, the wildflowers are blooming, people are crowding the hike and bike trail and my work cube gets basked with the daily morning sunlight, which sounds real nice but actually just translates to me feeling sweaty while drinking my morning coffee...guh.

More importantly (and less disgusting), this spring also means there will be (and has been) a slew of great concerts flowing through this town.  It's the Austin concert purgatory between SXSW and the announcement of the ACL lineup where I try to find some bands that I missed at the former and hopefully won't overlap with the later.  So with all my tickets officially purchased, and all my "courtesy" and "will call delivery" (wtf?) fees begrudgingly paid,  let's get into what I consider the best shows on the docket in chronological order (I will update the blog later with some thoughts on the shows).

Shearwater

Wow, this came way too late for it to really matter, but whatever, you try moving out of your place of 5 years, hosting an out-of-towner, finishing Season 2 of Damages AND maintaining a blog.  Anyway here's my recap of this year's SXSW:

I have highlighted the bands I saw with a green (for totally awesome), yellow (for good) and reddish/pink (for meh).  I would normally have another color for bands that were really bad, but I can't say I saw one, so that's the rating system.  Here we go!

Tuesday 3/16 (Day 1): Usually day one is reserved for Wednesday, but thanks to a tip-off from "Huggy", a HR rep for Zynga in San Fran, I was able to head out to the Fader Fort on Tuesday to catch the interactive Zynga Party which had The Constellations opening and Metric headlining.  The party was a perfect way to kick off this year's festivities, with almost all of the ammenities of the Levi's Fader Fort plus some great features like a fake cow milking game, bull riding and ping-pong tables.  I skipped the bull-riding as I had already learned my bow-legged lesson in Hollywood at the Saddle Ranch, but we did use a ping-pong table for a flash-mob flip-cup game which was a major highlight of the night.  

The main event though was of course Metric who rocked the place with a fairly similar set they did a few months earlier at LZR but with a few less tunes (this is SXSW after all).  Only issue had to be the stain of an audience member in front of me who gave me "the look" after I guess I bounced around near him too much...dude, it's Metric, take your earplugs out and rock a bit would ya?  On the opposite end of the fellow audience member spectrum was Sarah who somehow didn't mind the rocking and whom we cleverly dubbed "Day 1 SXSW friend".

We decided afterwards to head back to my place for a little after-party (non-R-Kelly style) when, off my balcony, Anthony heard some music playing in the distance as well as, what else: a pulsating fireball.  Of course we had to go find out what this was, so we had a friend drive us to the gated off front entrance to the old power plant (Seaholm) where we found the source of this oddity: an RV and a band.  The RV was actually a karaoke lounge and was called the {RV}IP.  Its main task during the week was apparently to drive around town (with random sxsw-goers), throw mini-parties and allow people to sing karaoke in their beer and liqour stocked RV.  So we listened to some bad Spice Girl karaoke and then hopped in the RV to be taken off to its next stop, which ended up being The Driskell hotel.  While we could have probably stayed longer, we decided to call it a night since it was a Tuesday after all, and we had four days to go.