BD were of course at South By Southwest this year, drinking Lone Star beers, eating burgers, and checking out lots and lots of bands.The fun part of SXSW is to check out new and upcoming artists (ie not Metallica, although we did see El Mariachi Bronx), and when you venture out with that mindset you get a healthy mix of crap band torture and random greatness . We saw some truly dreadful bands (Mantonix might be the worst band we've ever seen, despite putting on a GG Allin-like show), but also enough great new bands to keep us going. Some bands like Local Natives and Lissy Trullie (the former were ace, the latter a bit grumpy) have already started to get some attention in the UK.
The best gig we witnessed were not by any of the hotly tipped acts though, but by the IHEARTCOMIX one man band Totally Michael who pretty much sound like an updated Atom & His Package (remember him?), ie crazy melodic punky songs on a bed of very simple electronic beats. Sadly, commercial success eluded Atom, possibly (and even sadder!) because he's a short chubby nerdy guy. TM is a good looking, thin tattooed dude, so perhaps he'll become a superstar.
We saw him tearing the roof of a small local bar with no stage to speak of, where he spent most of the gig out in the small but very passionate audience. We were totally blown away and surprised since we didn't except it to be THAT good.
Listen to "Death Hilll (over and over)" (zshare) and you might be able to guess how ace this gig was. Someone need to bring this guy over to the UK for some summer shows.
