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The day began at the crack of 11:00 am. Our first stop was the house of a friend of my host Kelsey – the friend agreed to lend me perhaps the second most essential SXSW tool after a cell phone loaded with local hipster contacts: a bike. While most of the official venues were heavily concentrated downtown along 6th Street and Red River, the also-enormous unofficial side of SXSW is much more diffuse, with venues scattered throughout the East Austin and South Congress neighborhoods, as well as around the University of Texas further north. A bike is an absolute necessity to see these shows without blowing huge amounts of money on cabs or staying sober enough to drive, neither realistic possibilities for a good portion of attendees.
We briefly stopped at Beauty Bar to see about their promise of free beer. San Francisco’s Thee Oh Sees put on an appropriately rollicking set for the packed back yard tent, but the free beer had long run out by the time we got there at 1:30. We biked to the OK Mountain Gallery in East Austin, where three kegs….I mean, the Mae Shi were playing in the yard. OK Mountain is housed in an old garage and yard directly behind an operating garage. The Mae Shi set up in the threshold of the old garage door and played for the small crowd assembled in the yard. Their spasmodic circuit-bent guitars and madcap, jumpy performance probably would have gotten the crowd moving in a dark basement or club, but in the sweltering expanse of the yard, it was all the audience could do to just stand up and watch. They were followed by Garotas Suecas (“Swedish Girls”), a six piece Brazilian garage rock band reminiscent of the less freaky/interesting side of Os Mutantes. Garotas put forth a good showing, despite looking a bit wilted from the heat.
