South by Southwest, just the highlights

SXSW really begins at the airport, where I look up from my seat at the gate waiting to board and see my husband embracing a woman I don't recognize. A split second of "Whaaaaa……?" Of course he'll run into someone he knows, also heading to Austin. I leave my seat on the plane for five minutes, and when I get back he's networking like mad with the guy in the window seat. He must be from Germany, Scandinavia…. Norway, it is. Yes, we did bring up Sondre Lerche. {see below}

So many people wearing Wayfarers ON THE PLANE. With guitars and vintage suitcases. And beards and dirty hair. And tattoos. And giant headphones. And a guy in a Bouncing Souls t-shirt. I would've stopped him and said "Hey, I knew that band!" but he disappeared.

(I must go back for a moment to the very beginning of this trip, where we had the greatest conversation ever with a cabdriver, about what are the best vampire/werewolf/zombie shows on TV. I shit you not. We suggested he find "Dead Set" [zombies] and "Being Human" BBC version [vampires, werewolves, AND ghosts]. I love to talk about TV.)

After leaving the airport and driving 30 minutes in the opposite direction (GPS let me down), I found our rental house on South1st St. Great location with several great restaurants, a flock of food trucks, and four vintage clothing stores and four tattoo parlors. A cute cottage with landscaped yard and a studio over garage for the band. This location was especially awesome since I've been here enough times to be able to navigate my way back and forth from downtown without map or GPS. Walking distance to S Congress! My actual favorite shopping street in the world. The very nice lady who owns this place is SO very nice, and there's TWO binders of instructions, including appliance manuals, a special letter about the beer in fridge (Shinerbock, not Lone Star, and we should just call her if we'd rather have wine), and labels on every light/fan switch. We don't have to check out at checkout time, or clean up. Nice.

South-by has certainly ramped up since I first made the trip, let's say, something on the order of fifteen years ago. There used to be mostly nothing but panels and such during the day, and we amused ourselves with touristy adventures. LBJ museum, nature walks, barbecue road trips, Travis County Rodeo, City-Wide Garage Sale.

Now, even pizzerias and Mexican restaurants have multiple stages rocking all day.

The musical highlights:

City and Color: Nice country-rockish songs (which I am extremely susceptible to), but every song is like another band's one slow song, I would like to hear it on a setting other than "slow burn". Very 70's AM radio vocals, made me think of Paul Carrack singing "How Long", Michael thinks Burton Cummings. I googled Dallas Green (get it? "city" and "color"), apparently he's a whole Canadian thing I know nothing about. But in general, y'know, heavily inked punk rock guy singing country songs, uh, no contest, I'm gonna be interested. Think Mike Ness with an actual pretty voice (AND geeky glasses). I watched a few videos of his punk band Alexisonfire, there's another guy doing the Cookie Monster vocals, and Dallas Green sings the choruses. (That's his hand above.)

Hey Rosetta!: Love the record, wondered now closely they would stick to the elaborate arrangements. Absolutely rigidly, apparently. I was hoping they would bring a little something extra to it, but it was impressive. Can't understand how everyone does not not love this. It has the feel of something so fully formed and complete, with intelligence behind it. I'm thinking Tim Baker could/should be scoring movies. I guess it's somewhere in the neighborhood of Arcade Fire. And a handsome boy, gorgeous voice. Girls chatting him up after the show. Also Canadian.

Jon Langford and Skull Orchard (at the Continental Club): It wouldn't be SX without John Langford (The Mekons are in my top five bands ever.)! Not a super amazing set, but he's one of those artists that I admire tremendously for just continuing to rock year after year. Very few people exude such enthusiasm and joy from the stage. Caught the last two songs by preceeding act David Garza, weirdly rockin' in a down and dirty blues-funk way that sounds terrible on paper, but was very convincing in person. He was wearing guyliner. People were DANCING. I thought that wasn't allowed in rock clubs any more.

Sondre Lerche: Was super excited to see him on the sched, I have repeated ad infinitum how he made me cry at the Alex Chilton tribute at City Winery with his rendition of "Kangaroo" (Listening to the original right now. Searched in vain on You Tube for a version by Sondre). Started listening to his records and really liked them. I saw a solo set at Paste party during the day on 6th St., was pretty great, went again for seconds to see him Friday night with a band. He announced he was going to perform his forthcoming album in it's entirety, and I thought, "he gets extra time?" Sets are confined to no more than a half-hour. After the usual allotted time had passed, he admitted perhaps he had underestimated now many songs he was going to fit in. I find his delivery - faint accent and talky singing very compelling, tantalizing and hypnotizing. There's just something about a non-native speaker of English. He's one of those artists who is not a traditionally "good" singer, but just puts over a song with style and conviction. And it doesn't hurt that he is super adorable in a sort of pixieish way. He has that Scandinavian mousy-brown hair and blue eyes. Can't get the chorus of this song out of my head.

Ivan & Alyosha: Made it to three performances. Watched from the greenroom at the IFC Crossroads House as they filmed their acoustic performance there; they do it so well. (Ted Leo came in and sat down next to me, I've never been a giant fan, but I know many who love him. He's from Bloomfield, the next town over, and we frequently pass by "The Frank M. Leo Building". Michael Googled it in the car one day, and that is Ted Leo's grandfather who passed away recently. So we just had to bring that up with him. He seemed embarrassed that such detailed information is available from a fan site.) Full-on electric performance at The Parish was well attended. Certainly the loudest I've ever seen them, and it sounded great. Video! When I turned around to scan the house, there were, surprise, very many girls. I was talking to someone (a guy) afterwards, who wondered why they would take it down a notch and close the set with "Glorify", "but then the girls all went {girly whimpering sigh}". "Swoon", that's the word he was looking for. See for yourself. Their afternoon set at Homeslice Pizza was supposed to be electric, but the plug was pulled before we got there. (Too close to residences.) To be honest, I wasn't really paying that much attention, I was standing on the side playing with Tim and Lindze's baby Henry (he's been on the road with the band). He starts jumping and dancing as soon as they take the stage, before the music even starts. A music biz lady standing next to me was just completely bonkers over him, I explained he's not mine, he's with the band. She had to know which guy he belongs to, and "does he know that's his dad on stage?" Uh, yeah, he does. (I'm guessing she doesn't have kids.) Then he put his little arms around my neck and fell asleep. Delicious. Found another video from the set.

Freedy Johnston: I was certainly going to make every effort to catch at least one set by Freedy, my favorite singer-songwriter and personal acquaintance. It turns out he was playing with some others as The Hobart Brothers and Lil' Sis Hobart (Susan Cowsill), at a restaurant a block away from our house. It was great to hear different songs, a little more rootsy, but still with an unmistakable Freedy sound. I'm willing to bet you've never seen a singer call out from the stage for "250 readers" (glasses)... and she got them. That's what I call keeping it real. I went up to say hi after, and he kissed my hand! Also picked up a copy of his covers record, which includes Matthew Sweet's "Waiting", very personally special to me. The only CD I had with me to listen to for my five-hour round trip to visit an old friend.

The Benson Interruption: So, Friday night, tired of waiting in line, and nothing we HAD to see jumping out at us from the schedule as a must-see, we decided to hit a comedy show at 9:30, featuring Eugene Mirman (the landlord on "Flight of the Conchords"). We strolled over to Esther's Follies on 6th St at 8pm, to see a huge line around the block. Better get in it, but it seemed awfully early. A volunteer crowd-wrangler told wristbands and badges to go to the middle. I thought he meant another line, and we and several others marched up to the front, looking for a special people line. Door guy at the front announces the line is stopped, they're checking capacity. Stoned comedian Doug Benson magically appears, and ducks inside. Capacity checked, only 20 more people. We're waved in, and scurry inside, realizing we just cut in front of 100 people. Sorry. They're putting chairs in the aisle to accommodate everyone, and we grab the last two. I'm still thinking we've come to see Eugene Mirman, and I'n wondering what everyone's going to do for the next hour and a half. Maybe there's a earlier show...but what is it? Oh...My...God...we just accidentally scammed our way into "The Benson Interruption" live show which he's done as a podcast and also on Comedy Central. For those of you unfamiliar, "The Benson Interruption" consists of Doug Benson, sitting in a chair onstage, ripping on another comedian who is trying to get through their act. Sometimes they do a tweet off (comedians are big into Twitter). And for those of you who don't know, Doug Benson is one of America's foremost stoners, being the subject of "Super High Me", a documentary wherein he DOESN'T get high for 30 days, to see what will happen when he does. And yeah, he did look, uh, really stoned when we saw him up close. Each comedian he brought out was progressively funnier. I hadn't seen Tig Notaro (had a recurring role on "The Sarah Silverman Program" as a cop), she was very droll. Brody Stevens, who I hadn't heard of before (apparently he's done warmup for "Chelsea Lately") was just nutty, in a Robin Williams sort of way, but in no way annoying. I thought Michael was going to plotz when he did a joke about the correct lifting of kettlebells. (It's a gym joke.) And the final guest...Aziz Ansari! OMG! I love him on "Parks and Recreation" and in "Funny People". (Michael downloaded his record for me, but we can't find it.) He was very funny ranting about friend's babies. (He's not interested in your baby pictures.) Apparently he hangs with Kanye, and has crazy Kanye anecdotes. I cried and snorted and cried some more. I will repeat one sample joke in a rant about babysitters. "...and what does the girl get out of it?...'hey, I need to give this guy a hand job...can I use your house?'"

Didn't want to wait in line to maybe make it in to see Duran Duran, so we ended up at what turned out to be the prettiest club, Swan Dive, another converted industrial space, but all roughly whitewashed inside. Sam...somebody was playing folksily. I turned around to see where Michael had gone off to, and there, cooly leaning backwards against the bar, OMG, is that Jon Hamm?!! I ran over to Michael to confirm. Yes. Yes, it is. And he was wearing his badge, with his name on it. Baseball cap, plaid shirt, Carhartt jacket, jeans, workboots, tall can of Lone Star, unshaven. Like the handsomest construction worker ever. Seeing him in person, I'm going to say that even if he was not a TV/movie star, you would take one look and say, "who IS that guy?" All the masculine charisma of Don Draper without the drunken womanizing. And he has a great reputation as a nice guy who is a comedy nerd with a cool girlfriend. I just read an interview with Paul Feig (Freaks and Geeks co-creator, movie director) , who says that Jon Hamm does quotes from "Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy" on the set. I don't even want to know that. Does he cook, too?

And on that note, let me just say that if you like (dirty, sweaty) cute rock boys, this THE place. Seriously. You'll be up to your elbows in them everywhere. And they're from all over the country and all over the world. Y'know how I said I've never seen so many handsome men as I saw at the "Sex and the City 2" premiere? Well, this is the place for tattooed miscreants in skinny black jeans. THOUSANDS of them. And my husband is very tolerant.

A few superlatives-

Most seen t-shirt: Joy Division

Most inscrutable tattoo: something involving a pomegranate, a flounder, and a tiger, partially obscured by a shoulder strap, I'm sure it's very personally meaningful. Or did she just open up a visual dictionary at random and point.

Greatest opening words of a song I've ever heard: "Bloody knuckles…." Don't you want to know where that's going?

If I have another few spare hours this week, I can perhaps begin to describe the awesome food, awesome shopping, awesome friends, awesome weather.