Well after a rousing good time with No Age to finish off the afternoon Jill and I grabbed some roadside tacos (yes, tacos for lunch and dinner, deal with it) and ventured out into Austin in search of what showcase to hit for the evening. Upon perusing our ghetto ass printed schedules (side note: apparently you can’t get the SXSW schedule book without a badge, psssh) we determined we were going to try to go to the Sub Pop showcase at Radio Room.

Now this was our first ever foray into the unknown world of badges, wristbands and lowly mortals so we didn’t really know what to expect. Upon arrival at Radio Room on 6th street we were basically the 5th and 6th people in line for the show. Of course as time went on, the line grew, and eventually the blue-shirted officials of SXSW showed up and split the giant line into 3 slightly less giant lines. In this new setup we were 3rd and 4th for the cash tickets to the showcase, which we were informed would be $13. Now as we were waiting in the original pangea line I discovered through the magic of twitter than Dinosaur Jr. would be the “special guest” over at the Secretly Canadian/Jagjaguwar showcase at the Mohawk. We debated about whether to ditch our current line and head over there (I love J. Mascis like no other, but have seen him a million times so I could have gone either way initially), but we initially decided we had a sweet ass spot in the line and we should hold onto it. Well after about another 30 minutes of waiting for them to even open the door (which they did about 5 minutes after No Age was supposed to go on, another theme of the weekend, why did every showcase do that?) we decided fuck this and we were going to try to get in to Mohawk. Mind you we still didn’t know what to expect vis a vis lines or anything so I half expected to walk up to a similar line of death at Mohawk. Fortunately Mohawk let us walk right on in and settle up in front of the bar and get ourselves ready for a night of rock.

Mt. St. Helen’s Vietnam Band – Mohawk – 3/19/09

I had purchased the self titled debut album from these guys a mere few days before SXSW as something to listen to on the drive down from Dallas and I have to say the album definitely delivered and piqued my interest, and the live show did even more of the same. These guys were really tight and had a great sound, great energy to them. Most of the songs are very high energy kind of fusing fast paced indie rock with elements of prog rock and the occasional Bloc Party-esque dueling hooks. They were all dressed in a standard outfit that was pretty nice, and they proceeded to really kill it on the small indoor Mohawk stage. This was a great start to the night, and if you don’t have this album/haven’t heard of these guys you need to take notice now, they are good stuff.

Bishop Allen – Mohawk – 3/19/09

After MSHVB, Bishop Allen was kicking it off on the outdoor patio stage at Mohawk. A side note here – the weather was fucking fantastic the whole time we were in Austin which made all of these outdoor/patio stages especially awesome (with the aforementioned notable exception of Red 7), and the weather was perfect for a Mohawk patio night this night. Bishop Allen brought their poppy, upbeat jams to the crowd and were pretty good I have to say. They have a lot of cool energy to their show and it is a lovefest between each other and the crowd, really seems like they are enjoying themselves up there. Very sweet songs, very well done. Not blowing minds but just bringing some incredibly solid tunes, I thoroughly enjoyed their set.

Julie Doiron – Mohawk – 3/19/09

Jill really wanted to see her and she was actually pretty good if not a little bit morose. She actually had some fairly angular hooks (yep, I finally used the word angular, suck on it) and interesting, edgy guitar parts intertwined with a solid beat. Didn’t really light me on fire but was pretty good beyond expectations. It was just her and a drummer up there but they did a pretty good job and the crowd was pretty responsive to what they were doing.

Phosphorescen – Mohawk – 3/19/09

Not knowing anything about them, I figured these guys would be an electronica act but I couldn’t have been more wrong. Kind of folksy, mildly bluesy songs that were very very mellow and were kind of meandering. Not bad stuff at all, but it wasn’t really my cup of tea at the time. We only caught about 1 song from the rooftop before heading back inside for Foreign Born.

Foreign Born – Mohawk – 3/19/09

These guys were actually really good I thought, though I think Jill was struggling to like them at this point. They had some pretty straightforward indie rock riffs and were a fairly upbeat and groovy kind of affair. I thought it actually worked really well and I was fairly impressed by these guys. They had some pretty well put together songs that worked pretty well.

These Are Powers – Mohawk – 3/19/09

These guys were certainly one of the highest buzz bands of the Thursday night showcase at Mohawk and they really didn’t disappoint. They did two things before kicking it off – 1. Turn down the lights and 2. Turn up the bass, way up. They had the bass on the mix way up so you could really feel it in your chest and generally everywhere as they broke it off. They have a kind of eclectic dance sound to them with a few dramatics thrown in. The lead singer Anna Barie has a great stage presence and throws a lot of rock star looks and poses into every song that seem almost choreographed to just add that extra little oomph. They put on an extremely high energy show and had pretty much everyone in there dancing or going crazy. Excellent set, expect to hear more from them for sure.

Women – Mohawk – 3/19/09

Ok I have to confess I only listened to about 3/4 of one song of Women. First of all, they were supposed to go on at 12 per the schedule, but everyone else inside ran way behind and they took a long time setting up so they didn’t go on until probably 12:35. The problem with that was that Dinosaur Jr. was starting at 12:45 on the patio stage and that stage was running on time so I was going to have trouble seeing both. After about half of a perfectly solid song I decided I needed to secure my spot outside for Mascis. I had heard a lot of good things about Women so I wish I had been able to really soak in and enjoy their set, but I also had to be honest with myself that I really don’t miss Mascis when I have a chance to so that’s what I did. Jill and I put on our meltable-faces and journeyed out to the patio for the main event.

Dinosaur Jr. – Mohawk – 3/19/09

Well this was such a perfect way to end the night. We had always initially planned to see J the next night at Cedar Street, but given that we weren’t sure we could get into that show I was pretty excited about this set, since I knew this might be my only chance to see him here (though that ended up not being the case, heh). I first saw J at the Roxy in Atlanta probably 15 or 16 years ago and I have always been a fan ever since high school. Now the reunited lineup shows are actually quite a bit different than when I started seeing him, but the face melting solos are all still there.

One of my minor complaints on the reunion tour back in 2005 (or 2006, not sure) was that they played entirely original lineup material. Now I do love the original lineup material (basically everything before Green Mind plus the latest album) but there are some really incredible songs in the middle there that I was worried would now be lost to the ether post-reunion. Fortunately when I saw him at Pitchfork Music Fest last year those fears were proven unfounded and he blasted me with some of those middle era classics, and here at SXSW it was no different.

I wish I had taken notes on the setlist but I am terrible at remembering what the song titles are of Dinosaur Jr. songs because the titles all sound similar. Anyway, they seemed to only hit about 2 or 3 songs off the “new” album (”Beyond”) with a ton of early era Dinosaur Jr. with the unfettered greatness of “Out There” thrown in as well (which he did not play the next night at Cedar St). He also threw in one of my favorite obscure Dinosaur Jr. live cuts “Kracked” (which he also did not play the next night) which is just blitzing solos all over your head, greatness.

He also dropped “Feel The Pain” on us, now famous again because of Rock Band, at which point a mosh pit broke out in front of the stage knocking the rest of the crowd back a ways which kind of continued throughout the rest of the set, though someone managed to get in there to crowd surf during one of the later songs which was impressive.

So the extra special moment of the night was when Broken Social Scene’s own Kevin Drew came up on stage to perform “The Wagon” with the band (see photo at the top of the post), though he was just doing vocals. I know that Mascis and BSS have played shows before in Canada and I also know that, like me, Kevin Drew was a huge Dinosaur Jr. fan from way back in the day, so it was pretty cool to have him up there guesting on this song (which actually did happen the next night as well). Plus, “The Wagon” is one of my favorite Dinosaur songs, and it just kills live. As they finished the song and Drew left the stage, J dropped a joke on the unsuspecting audience. As I mentioned this was the Secretly Canadian showcase, so as Kevin Drew walks off J goes “He’s not secretly Canadian, he’s openly Canadian”.

J still certainly has the chops and just blew the place up once again. He actually played a longer and more varied setlist at the Mohawk so I thought this show was better than the next night, but both were awesome. Despite now having grey hair and being a little bit older he still knows how to rock that shit out, and it is still epic everytime. I will say a few more things on the next post about his set at Cedar St., but J is still the man. If you want mind melting solos this is the way to go still, no question.

With that finished we headed back to the convention center to catch the shuttle back to the hotel. Unlike the next night the bus got us pretty much immediately and got us back. One thing we did not really do at all during this excursion was do the late night parties. I think I really would have liked to do them but in hindsight I am not really sorry we didn’t. Since the shuttle stopped running at 3 am it was probably better to not deal with cabs, etc. and we didn’t really get home til 3 each night anyway. Next year I will have to indulge in some night parties though.

Anyway, day 1 was a blast and really lived up beyond expectations, so we slept it off and got our game faces on for Friday at SXSW, stay tuned…..

Check out my post on the Thursday day parties we attended at SXSW!

Be sure and check out all of my photos from Thursday’s action here!

Dinosaur Jr. – Kracked (Live) – From Quest
Women – Shaking Hands – From Women
These Are Powers – Glass Blocks – From All Aboard Future
Foreign Born – Vacationing People – From Person to Person
Bishop Allen – Dimmer – From Grrr…
Mt. St. Helen’s Vietnam Band – Masquerade – From Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band