Saturday

We spent most of the day at Mojo’s Mayhem at the Continental Club, though we couldn’t drag ourselves out of bed at 9:30 for the free jalapeño pancakes. The Continental is a fantastic lounge that looks like nothing has been touched since the sixties, and that includes housekeeping. There’s a lot of red velvet and curved booths against the wall. It served as the perfect backdrop for this punk/soul/ psychobilly show. And thankfully, there were chairs. By Saturday morning, neither of us could bear standing or walking any longer.

We caught a great Irish punk/rock band called Mighty Stef, who closed with a cover of “Dead Flowers,” saying, “I think we can all agree the Rolling Stones are badass mutherfuckers.”

Next up was Jon Dee Graham, whom I’d probably name as the best all- around entertainer we saw. He was funny and sad and performed some heartbreaking songs. At one point, Graham said, “I aim to entertain, and failing that, amuse. And failing that, I aim to make you really damned uncomfortable”; To varying degrees, I’d say he succeeded at all three.

Following a set of pretty bland rock by James McMurtry, Andre Williams took the stage in a bright red suit and shades, looking very much like the “black godfather” he professes to be. He had a large backing band whose job seemed to include praising Andre loudly during each break. Williams has always been keen on smutty novelty songs (“Jailbait”, “Pussycat”), but at some point later in his career, he ditched the small amount of subtlety he had in favor of all-out X-rated material. Though he can get away with it, mostly because of his age and goodwill, I wouldn’t say the change is positive. Still, Williams’ haunting growl on slow burners like “I Can Tell” is a marvelous thing to experience.

Dash Rip Rock delivered a solid set, though I have to admit I’m bored by their more straight ahead country rock songs. They played enough raucous psychobilly to make it worthwhile, though.

Mojo Nixon closed out the show. I have a lot of fondness for Mojo, but I wasn’t really in the mood for his extreme obnoxiousness, and after a long tirade about fucking the octo-mom while her kids watched, we went to dinner.

After dinner, I stopped in to check out Scotland Yard Gospel Choir, mostly because I love their label, Bloodshot. The first song was fun and energetic. The second song was fun and energetic and sounded exactly like the first. The third song was fun and energetic and...well, you see where this is going. By the fourth song, I decided to go check out the showcase of Japanese bands at Elysium.

I arrived just in time to see three songs by an impossibly adorable band called Stereo Pony. The impossibly adorable vocalist/guitarist had her between song statements written on a sheet of notebook paper so she could deliver them in English. And at the end of their set, she asked the audience to throw up their arms while the band posed for a photo on stage, prompting the man next to me to say, “That had to be the most adorable moment of SXSW.” The band was so impossibly adorable that even when the drummer threw her sticks (rather forcefully) into the unprepared crowd, we all cooed.

From there it was on to PJ Harvey and the rest of the evening I’ve already written about.

I’m now about to board a flight full of tired rockers and bid farewell to Austin.

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