I’m trying to Twitter our adventures downtown, so if you want to follow, my feed is here.  AT&T is overloaded downtown, though, so there’s only so much Twittering I can do.  I’m also taking pictures, and the slideshow, which I’ll update daily, is here.

We started off the day dinking around downtown, and ended up doing one of those things you only do because it’s SXSW and you have to: We went into Beauty Bar.  For those unaware, Beauty Bar is a national chain that appears to be established for poseurs.  They parked a branch downtown and have tried to compete with Emo’s, Beerland, Mohawk, etc., and have had limited success.  Bands I like play there on occasion, but somehow I’ve never worked up the enthusiasm to go.  (Which is for the best—-at night, they’re treating paying customers trying to get in like we’re attempting to steal their cookies and only a thorough examination of your ID taking no less than 3 minutes will stop this.)  But we went to a daytime show and discovered our first favorite band of the festival: Hot Panda.  Alas, they don’t have much in the way of video-age online, but this gives you a small idea of how good they are:

All their songs started off as basic indie pop, and then just got better. I will be very sad if they don’t take off.  They’re playing 9PM at Habana Calle 6 on Saturday, and for those without bands or badges, come out today at 4:30 to see them at Headhunters.  They’re one of the bands we intend to chase at SXSW(as in see multiple shows, not stalk), and when we saw them on the street, we told them as much.

Then we rolled over to Emo’s and saw Strange Boys (good country-fried rock), some band I don’t know, and then King Khan and the BBQ Show.  King Khan was really entertaining, and it was shocking how much sound they got out of two musicians.  Still, I can’t say that the songwriting is original enough, which is kind of important, even if you’re working in retro genres.

We decided to kick off the evening part of the day by going to see DJ Mel, who I’ve heard great things about.  All these things are 100% true, but it wasn’t so great to see him, because apparently we were the only people who decided to translate hearing good things about someone to hearing them live.  No joke, look at the dance floor:

So that was sad. We danced anyway, because he’s that good. 

We then rolled over to see the Von Bondies, who were as awesome as to be expected.  They played a lot of new stuff, and it was, to my mind, equal to the old stuff.  Vice is, I do believe, where Parish used to be, or it’s built just like Parish was.  And therefore it’s still the shittiest space for rock shows, and it needs to be a dance club or something.  After that, we rolled to the Beauty Bar to hang out with some friends for a bit, but left pretty quickly, due to the loud sucking sound emanating from the walls.  After that, we rolled out to B.D. Riley’s to see Angry Vs. The Bear.  On the way there, we saw that guy above dressed like a panda bear.  Clearly, bears—-especially panda bears—-are really reaching an apex of trendiness. 

Angry Vs. The Bear put on one of those shows where most of the crowd is indifferent initially and, a few songs in, are chanting the band’s name.  I found even less decent YouTube stuff on them, so you’ll have to check out their MySpace page. If you’re congenitally hostile to the return of New Wave pop cotton candy dance music, then you probably won’t like them, because they revel in that and don’t even try to make it something it’s not.  Here, after all, is the bassist:

Check out the song “I Sing, We Sing”, and you’ll get an idea of how the frontwoman Mitzi Fox owns your ass when you see this band. After that show, we went to see Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head.  They’re mining the same vein as Angry Vs. The Bear, and they’re fun, but not as good.  But still a fun dance party if you’re up for it.  After that, we decided that we maybe didn’t need to do another 14 hour day of festival-going, so we’re rolling out a little later in the day today.

*Yes, I know pandas aren’t bears. 

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