I forgot my camera this day, so pardon the crappy iPhone photos. On the plus side, there is a post (in Spanish) over at Chichipanguanorrea about it with better pictures.
Read more to check out photos, the bands, videos, reviews, etc. from that night.
The folks of Hillel held their yearly Israel Block Party last Wednesday. they somehow managed to match last year’s concert with another big act: they brought Israeli rock star Berry Sakharof. I have no clue how they do that.
The freak freezing and raining weather forced them to move the event from UT’s South Mall (cool link) into their building. This affected attendance. The concert itself was held in a tent at the parking lot; so while it protected us from the rain, it didn’t help that much with the cold.
Thankfully Berry put up an awesome concert, totally worth the hypothermia. And it’s always cool to see a good act in a small venue in which you can force your way so close to the stage, especially an artist that I don’t get many chances to see in concert. Hit Read more to see more photos and three of my shaky YouTube videos.
At the last minute, I got tickets to see Circus Oz last night at the newly reopened Bass Concert Hall. This is an Australian Circus, with all human performers. I didn’t know much about them nor did I know they were in town, but it turned out to be a great show.
For their opening act, all of the performers together took part in some impressive stuff along this large metal pole going up to the ceiling. Going up and down in every imaginable way.. it was incredible. I mean, I’ve seen some pretty amazing feats centered around vertical metallic poles at several… uhm… venues, but this was above and beyond any of that. In fact they were so good that I’m pretty sure that even I wouldn’t be able to do it. At least on the first try. No, really, it was really cool.
Compared to Cirque Du Soleil, which is the benchmark for fancy-schmantzy circuses in which there’s no risk of being peed on by a lion, Oz is a lot smaller in scale and the acts are less impressive. On the other hand, they aren’t nearly as pretentious, the music is better, they’re cooler (but not as cool as De La Guarda) and they try harder at humor. The humor part puzzled me though, because it was very simple, as if aimed at making little boys laugh (it worked)… yet it included some pretty off-color movements and poses (no, not during the metal pole act)… so there. Puzzling.
We got together last night at a friend’s house in order to watch a certain soccer match on T.V. (I don’t remember what game, O.K.? O.K.?).
As usual, we ordered some pizzas from Papa John’s. I like ordering from them because their online ordering system is really good. The pizza’s not bad either.
After what felt like a very long wait (feels longer the hungrier you are), the bell rings. It’s a pizza delivery girl. That’s a first, it’s usually a guy. She hands me the pizzas and says:
– Really, that comment?
I reply:
– Huh?
– The comment you wrote on the order for the delivery guy…
– I don’t know what you’re talking about!
So she shows me the note on the label on the pizza box:
The list of bands for this year’s South by Southwest festival has been published. I haven’t spent any time researching it yet but would love to hear (through the comments) any recommendations. A few of these bands I’ve seen before. This is the list, current as of today:
Don Chingón wearing his $9 USD Wal-Mart hunting hat. Zero sunburn baby!
This past weekend I attended the Austin City Limits Music Festival. As a revenge act for not going last year I got me a nice 3 day pass; and most of my local friends decided to go as well. It was both a lot of fun and extremely tiring. These festivals aren’t easy on an old guy like me. I was expecting a lot of people to stay over at my place during the weekend but at the end it was only Nathan, Sarai, Mindy, and Jill. Nathan is a wuss and bailed out on day three. On the other end of the spectrum, Mindy and Jill are total warriors, doing all three days early in the morning followed by downtown partying, plus one all-nighter on Saturday and the drive back to Houston on Sunday night. Respect. Bernardo Dychter, Baruch Chollow (whom I hadn’t seen in a looong time), and Alex were in town as well.
More info, photos, and a video if you keep reading!
It’s been a rough week. The SXSW Music festival started on Wednesday and for four days in a row I endured the trip downtown and the concerts and the partying. I know, it’s a tough job but somebody has to do it. Nathan came over from Dallas for the whole thing. A bunch of the local usual suspects were here too. Moi and Beto joined us for a last day of all-Japanese rock.
If you’ve never been to SXSW, you should go. It’s by far the largest of the two big music festivals in town (the other being the Zilker park based ACL) with some 1,400 bands from the whole world spread over all of downtown Austin. Last year sadly I couldn’t attend.
We saw some cool bands, some known (to me) and some new: Fobia, Moby, Sussie4, Presidents of the United States of America, just to name a few.
For the first time since I moved to Austin I went to the yearly Carnaval Brasileiro. They have it every year for 31 years now. I kept hearing about it but never actually made it there for one reason or another.
The Carnaval has gotten so big that now they have to hold it at the Palmer Events Center. I was told this is the biggest indoor Carnaval party outside of Brazil (around 6,000 people) but I can’t verify that. The eclectic crowd includes a smaller-than-usual percentage of students, surely due to the $35 ticket price.
They had a really good samba band playing the whole time, and lots of people in full Carnaval attire -which means anything but full attire. Lots of very attractive girls wherever you looked (there was this skinny topless chick dressed as a Hawaiian hula dancer… unbelievable!).
