SXSW 2010 DiarySXSW 2010 Diary

Here’s a diary we kept whilst out in the madness…

17 March – SXSW Music officially kicked off today, we’ve already been here a couple of days; had a warm up gig at Mi Casa on Monday and checked that all the equipment (and Paul’s broken hand) were in working order. We loaded into the Four Seasons where we would be officially opening the Music Festival with a little acoustic set (last band to do this were Flight Of The Concords!). Here’s a picture of me, Tom and Paul playing to 200+ industry whilst they eat their 3-course meal.

Also, here’s a picture of Valley meeting Bill Murray who he accosted in the hotel lobby. If you know Valley, you’ll have definitely heard about this.

We then dashed to the Alehouse where we were playing our showcase at 1am. We caught the back-end of Nathaniel Ratecliff’s set, which was amazing. The stage was set into a little cave/alcove with church windows behind it and the drums were up on a plinth so it was really cool to have a different backline layout for once!

18th March – Today we played at the Welsh Party which was being held at the British Music Embassy (Latitude 30). I think we were most excited about this gig as the venue has the reputation for the best PA, desk, engineers etc at SXSW. Also it has great bands playing everyday of the festival (The Drums, Chapman Family, Cate Le Bon, Smoke Fairies…). We had an interview with Bethan Elfyn of Radio 1 who was hosting the party, you can see a video interview on her blog pages on the Radio 1 website.

Tom and me then dashed off to the French Legation Museum to see Dum Dum girls and the XX, it was a big outdoor party with a little tent and they played just as the sun was going down. We then headed off to the outdoor New Zealand party, then off to see our friends Angry Vs The Bear at Aussie’s.

19th March – Unfortunately Hassall had to go to hospital after the Welsh Party gig as he’d been bitten on his leg quite badly and couldn’t walk, he was up to the eyeballs on antibiotics. So we had a pretty laid-back day today, we had an acoustic gig at the Sheraton Hotel which was fun; the Bowling For Soup bassist was watching according to Paul! We also went to the Barbados Party for some amazing food. Then a few of us headed back to Latitude 30 to catch The Drums and Everything Everything. We had a nice chat with The Drums’ singer Johnathon afterwards; he gave us some words of wisdom.

20th March – Had another lazy day today, went for a swim and did a bit of second-hand shopping on Congress, then headed to the Radisson for another acoustic gig. We stayed a bit longer to watch the blues band Kill It Kid do their set; how something that brilliantly bluesy can come out of Bath I’ll never know. A few of us went and saw our friends Angry Vs The Bear play at Rusty Spurs, then we dragged a slightly intoxicated Paul to a tattoo parlour called Sailor’s Grave to get the outline of Texas tattooed on his leg. We then headed back to Latitude 30 to see the end of the Moshi Moshi party where we watched Slow Club and had another nice chat with The Drums.

21st March – The Sunday is pretty much a comedown for 6th Street, the roads are open again and the crowds from the previous night are all in bed. We, however, we played our last gig on 6th Street at Sunday Bloody Sunday. We went on after a Japanese/New Zealand jazz-flute-death-metal band, which were pretty impressive.

The turn out was great considering it was still mid-afternoon. We then held an impromptu open-mic party back at the hotel bar that night and said goodbye to all the staff and people who had been helping us over the week.

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You can find a load more photos of our trip over in the media section, there’s also a video of our arrival…we’re making a short film of the whole trip as we speak!

In other news…we’ll be announcing some more festival dates soon so keep an eye on our gig listings!

PMATPP x