This is the year that Natalie and I finally decided to make our amazing SXSW band review spreadsheet viewable by the common man.  So without further ado, I give you

http://sxswreviews.com/

Of course the main draw is the content, which is comprised of hours of laborous music listening and rating.  After getting close to 300 bands under my belt I can easily say that this year is looking better then ever.  I think it's a little heavy in electronica and DJs, but I'm not complaining...anything that gets ya movin is cool with me.  So enjoy the site, give me feedback if you know me, I definitely can use it.

Please advise...

Update: Adding Mumford & Sons since they failed to show up on the ACL lineup (like everyone else)

Well it's spring, the wildflowers are blooming, people are crowding the hike and bike trail and my work cube gets basked with the daily morning sunlight, which sounds real nice but actually just translates to me feeling sweaty while drinking my morning coffee...guh.

More importantly (and less disgusting), this spring also means there will be (and has been) a slew of great concerts flowing through this town.  It's the Austin concert purgatory between SXSW and the announcement of the ACL lineup where I try to find some bands that I missed at the former and hopefully won't overlap with the later.  So with all my tickets officially purchased, and all my "courtesy" and "will call delivery" (wtf?) fees begrudgingly paid,  let's get into what I consider the best shows on the docket in chronological order (I will update the blog later with some thoughts on the shows).

Shearwater

Wow, this came way too late for it to really matter, but whatever, you try moving out of your place of 5 years, hosting an out-of-towner, finishing Season 2 of Damages AND maintaining a blog.  Anyway here's my recap of this year's SXSW:

I have highlighted the bands I saw with a green (for totally awesome), yellow (for good) and reddish/pink (for meh).  I would normally have another color for bands that were really bad, but I can't say I saw one, so that's the rating system.  Here we go!

Tuesday 3/16 (Day 1): Usually day one is reserved for Wednesday, but thanks to a tip-off from "Huggy", a HR rep for Zynga in San Fran, I was able to head out to the Fader Fort on Tuesday to catch the interactive Zynga Party which had The Constellations opening and Metric headlining.  The party was a perfect way to kick off this year's festivities, with almost all of the ammenities of the Levi's Fader Fort plus some great features like a fake cow milking game, bull riding and ping-pong tables.  I skipped the bull-riding as I had already learned my bow-legged lesson in Hollywood at the Saddle Ranch, but we did use a ping-pong table for a flash-mob flip-cup game which was a major highlight of the night.  

The main event though was of course Metric who rocked the place with a fairly similar set they did a few months earlier at LZR but with a few less tunes (this is SXSW after all).  Only issue had to be the stain of an audience member in front of me who gave me "the look" after I guess I bounced around near him too much...dude, it's Metric, take your earplugs out and rock a bit would ya?  On the opposite end of the fellow audience member spectrum was Sarah who somehow didn't mind the rocking and whom we cleverly dubbed "Day 1 SXSW friend".

We decided afterwards to head back to my place for a little after-party (non-R-Kelly style) when, off my balcony, Anthony heard some music playing in the distance as well as, what else: a pulsating fireball.  Of course we had to go find out what this was, so we had a friend drive us to the gated off front entrance to the old power plant (Seaholm) where we found the source of this oddity: an RV and a band.  The RV was actually a karaoke lounge and was called the {RV}IP.  Its main task during the week was apparently to drive around town (with random sxsw-goers), throw mini-parties and allow people to sing karaoke in their beer and liqour stocked RV.  So we listened to some bad Spice Girl karaoke and then hopped in the RV to be taken off to its next stop, which ended up being The Driskell hotel.  While we could have probably stayed longer, we decided to call it a night since it was a Tuesday after all, and we had four days to go.  

As sxsw is all but a week away, I figured it's time to unveil "The Sheet", which, in my opinion, is the best sxsw band review spreadsheet edited by 6 random people who may or may not know each other...known to man.  I decided that this year, I'll use my blog to get it out to the masses, and by "masses" I really mean a few friends who might read this and probably my mom in Michigan (hi mom!)

So without going into a dissertation on how this will be the best and/or worst sxsw ever, or the annoyance and/or necessity of shortening the event name to just "south-by", I'll get right down to the sheet.  It's located here.

For those of you who have stuck around to read more for whatever reason, I thought I'd give you a small bio on some of the reviewers so that I could point out their particular style and taste in music (moving from left to right on the sheet):

Natalie

Natalie is a curly haired, indie music-loving, force to be reckoned with, if you don't see her bouncin up and down at a concert you're at, then you're probably at the wrong concert.  As you can tell from the sheet, she's easily the most prolific reviewer of the bunch but will readily admit to you that she really only likes indie music so if a band happens to fall into any other category, chances are, Natalie gave them a 1 or 2 for no other reason.  Besides the 300 things she also does during any given day (like powering the sun), you can see her running around town lake with her dog Guinness.

Jason

That's me!  Like Natalie, I tend to stick with indie music, but I also enjoy electronica, rock, folk, bluegrass, industrial and the occasional DJ.  I can be found at a variety of venues, ranging from my favorites like Mohawk (prior to them getting that damned cement wall), Emos, Club De Ville and even at the worst venues such as La Zona Rosa (if there is no other option).  I am the guy in the group who suggests music to everyone even when it's not asked.  

You: "I went running yesterday and got shin splints and it hurts like a bitch".

Me: "Hmm, interesting, have you heard of this new super group with the lead singer of the Shins and Danger Mouse called Broken Bells?"

I was on the verge of not going to see this show because it was at La Zona Rosa, my most dreaded of venues, but I couldn't neglect the fact that I have been listening to their latest album Fantasies to the point that the mp3s are skipping.  I'm particularly fond of the last song, Stadium Love which pits various animals, people and celestial beings against each other in a stadium...of love?  I don't know, I just know that I've been a fan of the random battle idea every since I read Bear v. Shark and bought my Tesla v. Edison t-shirt from hovercraft! on Congress.

So the show itself was a blast and the band did everything right.  Emily Haines did some rocking jazzercise (rockercise??) moves that had me bouncing in my crowded space.  I even gave the moves names: I call the first one the crazy-leg-planted-neck-swing (see fig. 1) and the second the mid-air-swan-dive-head-bang (see fig. 2).  She also genuinely seemed impressed with Austin and our musical prowesses and pandered to us proficiently (unintended alliteration bitches!).  She ended the show with an acoustic, slowed down rendition of Combat Baby with guitarist James Shaw that got the entire crowd singing in unison.  We indeed "know our shit" Emily, thanks for the awesome show, next time come to a better venue, we've got a few to choose from.

This year's sxsw far surpassed all other previous years.  I guess it takes about 3-4 years to finally figure the whole thing out and I think this was the first time I haven't kicked myself for not going somewhere or seeing something.  So what made this year so good? 

PLANNING!  YEAAA!  

I mean serious planning people, massive spreadsheets were involved.  I was verging on spreadsheets for my spreadsheets it was getting so crazy.  The main two were a party spreadsheet and most importantly a band spreadsheet.  The band spreadsheet was basically a list of all the bands that were performing this year at sxsw with small reviews and a 5 point system.  Myself and four friends took ourselves on a journey of musical discovery, taking in as many bands as our ears would allow in a given day.  After almost 500 band reviews, we were ready to make our choices of parties based on who was playing at those parties.  Simple right?