Austin - The Beginning

Well, that was fun! 

Austin turned out to be a pretty rad city, as we knew it would be.  Julie and I rolled into town Thursday night (Oct. 7^th) and immediately grabbed a shuttle to out hotel, The Omni.  This turned out to be a pretty nice class of place.  After a quick little freshening up, we headed right out to our first gig; First Aid Kit, who was playing at a place called Stubb’s, which turns out is walking distance from our home base.

It was a BBQ restaurant with a bar in the basement.  The room was holding maybe 200-250.  After a long day of flying, hardly any food and an excitement to get things rolling, we had jumped into drinking jack and sodas, so it didn’t take long before we had cheerful smiles on our faces.  Especially with the “Texas Long Pour”.  Anyway, band was great…We then took advantage of the nearest hot dog stand, where I blasted down a “Vienna” dog and Julie swallowed the veggie version.  Return walk to the hotel entailed a 2am stroll down 6^th Street, which is Austin’s version of Bourbon Street.  We took in the sights and goosed a couple of girls that walked by us in heels they could barely stand in.  Good times.

Next day after getting up a little late, we decide to walk down to Zilker Park for the festival.  We started out about 2:00pm or so and discovered Annie’s Café along the way, at which we stopped for a bite.  Our bartender, Bill, was a cool old fella…bright and cheery.  We eat a fantastic meal with a couple of beers to start the day.  As we’re about to continue on the walk, Julie decides we need a pick-me-up…so we ask Bill for a couple of shots of Jack.  This pleases Bill very much.  He thinks we be cool folk.  He pours us each a shot that had to be 2 and half ounces in each.  We slug ‘em back and head out.

The walk is hot as hell and longer than we’d anticipated.  But hey, we’re young!  So after this hour long walk in 30 plus heat, we make it onto the grounds of Austin City Limits and immediately race for the beer tent to cool off!  We sat down for some of the Black Keys set, but for some reason, the sound was horrible ad we could barely hear them.  That drove us back to the beer tent where we met some folks and hung out for a while.  We must’ve caught some else in the somewhere….hhhmmm.

At last the time came to get up for Sonic Youth.  We made it to their stage early and sat down nice and close to the stage.  They were awesome!  Great set, great show…Julie had to pee the whole time but didn’t want to leave, so she had one of those uncomfortable concert experiences where the band is unreal, but you pee s bad throughout the whole thing you can only half-enjoy it.  Having never seen them before, I was curious and open-minded.  Thurston Moore definitely delivered for me.  He’s an unreal guitar player and commanding stage presence.  Ms. Gordon, of course, was breathtaking.  The grand momma of noise, indeed!

As their set ends, we make a mad dash for the cans, lining up with everyone else for 20 minutes.  As this happens, The Strokes fire up right beside me and man, they are loud!  Sounded frickin’ on fire.  So after we finally get through that bathroom extravaganza, we make a run for Phish, at the other end of the park.  I’ve missed the opening couple of tunes, but hey…what’re you gonna do?  By the time we get within earshot and start wrangling through the crowd to find a spot, they’re into a sick jam on Wolfman’s Brother and I am in heaven!  From there on, Phish was tight!  Great set included Chalkdust Torture, You Enjoy Myself, Harry Hood and a screaming cover of the Talking Heads, “Cities”.  I am so happy to gotten o see Phish again after so many years.

After the festival ended, it was a walk back downtown for another aftershow.  This one was at a place called Emo’s for Those Darlins and the Black Lips.  On the way there, we went back to the same hot dog stand and by God if Julie didn’t eat meat!  I warned her!  But being drunk in Texas and 15 years without meat…she caved in!  She ate a hot dog right along with me!  Couldn’t believe it.  She was so happy about it, too!

Anyway, back to Emo’s…dive bar, kind of open air segment to it and get this:  outhouses for cans.  Nice.  The reason we bought tix for this show was more for the opener than the headliner, but I gotta say, I was all that thrilled with either.  I mean, whatever..they were okay and all.  But I was expecting something different out of both bands.  Anyway, we stayed for it all and partied with a bartender that Julie thought looked just like Curtis.  After the shows, it was onto our walk back to the hotel, with the obligatory slide through 6^th Street again.  But hey, before we get there, “I want another hot dog!!”  So back to our hot dog lady, where Julie and I share a good-night tube. ..Haha!!

Okay, that’s all you get for now….I’ll write about the rest of the trip in the next day or so.