SXSW Day 5 - March 17, 2012

96 Bar on Rainey Street, St. Patrick's Day

Lustre Pearl, Rainey St.

Lustre Pearl!

People hanging out enjoying the beautiful St. Patty's Day in the backyard of the Lustre Pearl before OFF! take over with loud old-school punk!

Spotify occupies an entire wicked green house.

Whoever actually wears these shades back home, gets called a hipster.

Whoa-oh-oh, magic "vintage" bus! So cool. Want.

Get the feeling I liked Hotel Vegas? Hotel Vegan during SXSW as Brooklyn Vegan resided with awesome rock parties over 4 days here, two metal parties elsewhere, and more! Over 95 bands! .05% of the festival! Brooklyn Vegan, a great blog I learned about via the festival and fellow Rockstar Motel advisor, rules!

Diamond Rugs, easily one of the funnest, and my most favorite bands I saw at SXSW. This is an alt-rock/psych/country supergroup composed of members of: The Black Lips, Los Lobos, Dead Confederate and Deer Tick. This was at 6 p.m. at Hotel Vegan. I loved them so much, I wanted to see them again right away. Happily I had that chance again at the end of the evening!

Hotel Vegas inside post-Diamond Rugs. Pretty mellow scene for St. Pat's Day on the last day of SXSW.

Back patio of Hotel Vegas

Okervil River, of Austin, TX joined the bill at the last minute. Yay!

Happy people enjoying the day.

Loved Okervil River! I could've listened to their uplifting, slightly anthemic-but-not-too-much music which at the time to me sounded a bit like Talking Heads meets early Arcade Fire, but ultimately they really had their own awesome folk rock thing going on. I was so happy to see this band live. Why haven't I spun them yet on Spin with Cyn! Must, pronto!

Sunny, mellow people. More St. Patty's Days should be like this. Thankfully I was not on 6ixth St. most of this day!

See the shades? Easily I spot Spotify house attendees.

Sunset on East Sixth Street

Bands pretty much played ever few dozen feet in Austin.

Wow, I made it to this show! A couple favorite Seattle bands of a friend who also works with Rockstar Motel. Hopefully sending the good vibes her way.

The Gracious Few

The Gracious Few

The mid to late evening scene at the Candlebox/Live/The Gracious Few show at Antone's. It was fun, but by then my feet were killing me and I was nearly burnt to a crisp. No floor space to even sit, sigh.

Live. Wow, I had no idea I would remember all the lyrics to these songs!

Live

St. Patrick's Day Street scene

First time recharging (iPhone and self) in at least 6 hours.

1:00 a.m. I was going to go home, but . . . a chance to see Diamond Rugs again, twice in the same day? And to expose a friend to them as well? Alright, let's go! I saw First Avenue booker Sonia who also saw them earlier in the day and loved them as much as I! Already these songs sounded very familiar and I had favorites. The banter in between sets was funny. At the beginning of the set a lead singer discussed his appreciation of Prince and his big question of whether he danced in high heels, someone asured him that he did. Quandary solved, they kicked off a set with a great country rock song. Later, they did a cover of the Replacements "I Don't Know." Seems they had Minneapolis, on their minds. Hopefully enough to come play here! Their first record is being released April 24, 2012. I can't wait! Till then, you'll hear their great single, "Gimme a Beer!" in regular rotation on KFAI Spin with Cyn.

Lustre Pearl bathroom. Beautiful!

Lustre Pearl, Rainey Street. One of my favorite bars in Austin.

Lustre Pearl

Lustre Pearl

You can pretty much see through this shotgun house straight onto the big stage. Sounds like this little house with missing windows and doors has better sightlines than the Brick.

We love Diamond Rugs, so fine, so fun, in so many ways! What a perfect ending to a spectacular SXSW, rife with great music discoveries such as this.