SXSW Ends On High Note

I was on a quest to hear great music until the first few days of spring at the South By Southwest Music Festival in Austin, Texas, and I intended to do it without spending a penny on food.

Here's the report from my sixth and seventh days in the live music capital of the world:

I laid down on the couch at 8:30 a.m. on Sunday after the last of our party guests had either fallen asleep or left, and got up an hour later to do a bit of work on my computer and get ready for the annual SXSW softball tournament. Horseshoe Tavern/Lee's Palace/ATG Concerts owner Jeff Cohen and I were on the diamond by noon.

I play shortstop and bat first for the Mixed Media Mongrels, and our first game was against perennial champion and our heated rival, Print Media. We defeated them last year, but they beat us for a couple of years before that, always in the semi-finals. Our team is what our name sounds like, while Print Media's squad plays together 12 months a year. And while it's suggested that it's supposed to be a co-ed tournament, they didn't have any women.

My fielding was fine, but I lined out and grounded out in my two plate appearances. Some of my teammates made a few mental and physical errors and couldn't hit either, and we lost 9-2 in the first round for the first time since I started playing in 2004. The consolation, however, was that players got a ton of free food and beer. I had three brews and loaded up on cole slaw, potato salad, baked beans, shredded beef and barbecued sausage, ribs, beef and chicken while watching a semi-final game.

We returned to the hotel and I went to the rooftop hot tub to try and drown some of the soreness that your body inevitably starts feeling after going non-stop at SXSW. After relaxing and writing through the afternoon and early evening, I took three of my roommates to the Creekside Lounge where I'd been told that there would be punk karaoke like there was two years ago. Sadly, there wasn't. Austin will have to wait another year to hear my dulcet tones.

We went around the corner to Emo's to see the end of The Jazzus Lizard, a Jesus Lizard jazz tribute band. There was more melody and less screaming than with the original group, but it was pretty dull.

We went inside to Emo's Jr. to see a bit of Baby Robots. I liked the keyboardist's Queer Land T-shirt, but not the band's music.

It was back out to Emo's for Stabba, a punk Abba tribute band. All of the members wore blonde wigs and the fat singer was dressed entirely in T-shirts and wore a couple of massive foam boobs. The drummer was shirtless and his very hairy chest was shaved into the shape of a heart. The bassist told him he should spend less time sculpting his chest hair and more time practicing his drumming. It was probably a music purist's nightmare, but it was a lot of fun seeing the band tear through "Mamma Mia," "Fernando," "Super Trouper," "SOS," "Knowing Me, Knowing You," "Take A Chance On Me" and the dance-inciting "Dancing Queen" that ended the set.

Next up was a Misfits tribute act called Children In Heat. They looked and sounded the part, but I had seen The Misfats — the world's fattest Misfits tribute band — at this same club two years earlier. I heckled the group, told them to gain weight and pledged my love for The Misfats.

I headed back inside to Emo's Jr. to see Dead Milkmen member Joe Jack Talcum play a few of his newer compositions, but mostly giving in to crowd requests for songs from his catalogue. The Dead Milkmen reformed for a few appearances last year for the first time since breaking up in 1995, and there are apparently plans for them to tour as a group.

Talcum, however, performed solo with an acoustic guitar and harmonica. Although his versions lacked some of the rawness and snotty delivery of the originals, it was still good to hear "Punk Rock Girl," "Watching Scotty Die," "Veterans Of a Fucked Up World," "In Praise Of Sha Na Na," "The Guitar Song," "Rocketship," "Jellyfish Heaven" and "Life Is Shit" live for the first time. Quite a few audience members sang along enthusiastically and even Talcum's more recent number recorded with Hugh Hamilton, the humorous "Sex Sting," was well-received.

I moved back out to Emo's for Magnifico, a Queen tribute band featuring a tall, skinny singer wearing a tight purple spandex full body leotard. "Thank you for letting me use your neck as a hammock for my balls," he said to a man in the audience who held him on his shoulders when he came into the crowd at one point.

"Killer Queen" and "Bicycle Race" were the non-sartorial highlights of the set.

Gentleman Jesse And His Men were a late addition to the bill, and their power pop set was possibly even better than the one I'd seen Saturday afternoon. It was the last performance of SXSW and I'm glad it was a great one that kept my spirits up, as my energy was starting to drop. I hit the couch almost as soon as I got back to our suite and was probably sleeping by 2:30 a.m.

I got up at 9 a.m. as usual and did some work and packed my bag. There was a bun and a bit of pork in the fridge that my roommates had purchased earlier in the week and didn't want because they were going to a restaurant for lunch, and it was just enough for me to make a sandwich. There was also an apple in the fridge that I took to save for later in the day. I sat in the hotel lobby typing until it was time to catch my flight home.

My plane touched down in Toronto after 9 p.m. I had made it through seven days in Texas without spending a penny on food, and came back with some free promotional nutrition and chocolate bars that I didn't need down there. I'm not a big eater to begin with, so the challenge to eat for free in a place where some of my friends become food-obsessed wasn't particularly difficult. You just have to get yourself invited to the right daytime parties.

I don't own a scale, so I couldn't do a before and after weighing, but I've been right around 68 kilograms for years. I felt like I might have actually gained a kilo or two during my experiment, but that will soon fade away as I revert to my normal lifestyle.