SXSW Recap!

My whole body hurts. A week of little sleep, lots of walking, the occasional open bar, and most importantly GREAT MUSIC has culminated in SXSunday. Exhausted and still putting this International Trade paper off, here's a recap of my SXSW.


Films I saw:
Terri - John C. Reilly plays a school counselor for an obese middle schooler named Terri. Dark turn toward the end but quite good.
In A Better World - Won Best Foreign Film at the Oscars. Powerful film with great acting. From Denmark.
Elevate - Inspired by UT baller Alexis Wangmene, this doc follows four Senegalese basketball players as they go from Africa to play prep ball in the US. Great film.

Films I want to see now:
Hesher, Detention, Bellflower, Instead of You.

Celebrities I saw:
Josh Lucas, Dane Cook, Rainn Wilson, (maybe) Michael Ian Black, Brittany Snow

Music Festival:
Wednesday 3/16 - Saw The Black Lips and Talib Kweli at Emo's. Talib Kweli is great.

Thursday 3/17 - Went to The Strokes with Eric, Allicia, and Matt where we were part of an angry mob that tore down the fence and ran past cops to get in. It. Was. Awesome. The Strokes were great, played 5 songs of the new album (according to P4k) along with my favorite song "I Can't Win", and closed with "Last Nite" accompanied by fireworks. Wonderful Night.
Also saw Friendly Fires that night. They are a great live band. Check them out.

Friday 3/18 - Saw Austin locals The Bright Light Social Hour at Momo's with my friend Burke. They rocked. Obviously have deep roots in classic rock. One of their songs reminded me of "Black Dog". They broke it down in the middle for soloing from each band member (guitar, keys, bass, drums) before ending it with a big ol' rock finish.
After BLSH we saw Robert Earl Keen at ACL live at the W. Great venue. He was pretty good but obviously didn't care for playing a short set.
After REK I met up Tyler and Eric at the Blue Moon, a blues bar on 6th street and watched this amazing blues band til about 1:30.

Saturday 3/19 The Big Finish. Eric, Daniel, and I went to stand in line for the Kanye show at 4:00. Yes, that's eight hours early. Well, eight hours if the show had actually started at midnight, but VEVO doesn't know how to run an event efficiently at all. Read about it on the internets. Turns out the long wait, horrible lines, and mass of pissed off people was incredibly worth it. Somehow Daniel got in (The Hip Hop Gods were smiling on us) and the show started at around 1 am.

The G.O.O.D. Music All-Stars were on hand for the event and the opening acts were Mos Def, Pusha T, Kid Cudi, Prince Cy Hi, and Mr. Hudson. Then out came Kanye. He played mostly songs off the new album and was joined by John Legend and all the openers. A mini-marching band joined him for "All Of The Lights." Then, oh goodness, out comes

JAY-Z. Seriously.

Played a couple songs together before Hov played "Public Service Announcement" and the place went absolutely nuts. Seriously, there is nothing like a bunch of mostly white people screaming along to "Allow me to reintroduce myself, my name is HOOOOVVVVVVVVVV!!!"

Bon Iver showed up for "Lost in the World" which was great. Then the whole crew came back for "Monster" to close the show at about 4 am. Wow.

Now I'm tired, my whole body hurts, and I have a paper to write due Tuesday. WORTH IT.