by RomanEmpire » Mon Mar 17, 2014 12:47 am
Went to the free SXSW concerts the past few days and got to see Los Lonely Boys, Vintage Trouble, Young and Sick, Washed out, Foster the People, Snoop Dogg Lion Babe, The Cool Kids, and Childish Gambino. These were my first concerts and I had a lot of fun. All of them were held outdoors at a big park. I went with a bunch of friends and we all got to hang out. The first day we were mostly at the back, but the second and third days we were nearer to the front, with me being at the rail that went down the middle of the crowd on the third day.
First day we went was pretty much just to chill, I didn't really know either one of the bands that were playing so we didn't mind too much, just wanted get an idea of how it went and how the next few days would go.
The second day was Young and Sick and Washed out, an I didn't know either one of them but I really liked them and am looking forward to check out their albums. Foster the People were great, they played songs off of Torches, but they also played quite a few songs off their new album which releases on Tuesday. They were the main performance of the night so it was my first Major concert. I didn't expect the crowd to get as hyped up as it did, it was definitely worth standing for 3.5 hours to see them.
Third day started out with us trying to go to different place to see The 1975 at noon, but it was a very small place with only a 250 max capacity, and the line was super long. The came to our part of the line and said we probably wouldn't make it in so we went back the Butler Park (where we had been the previous two days) after grabbing something to eat. We set down some towels and sat on them playing some cards. A DJ came out that went by the name DJ Filipino Fist who threw mentos into the crowd after saying "You guys want some mentos? I got extremely mentos" and threw packets of them out periodically. He was pretty alright, not bad at all. After he performed more people started to show up so we had to stand up to try to keep our spot and move up. My goal was to get as near the front and to the rail on the side as possible. There was a soul group playing, and Snoop Dogg came out near the end and did like 2 or 3 songs, nothing major.
I was already standing for a few hours and I had a couple more to go, and my legs hurt pretty bad but I tried ignoring it. At 6 PM Lion Babe played a couple songs, they don't have very much material from what I understand. Then The Cool Kids who I thought were alright, I didn't like them very much. Felt generic I guess, not sure what term to use. I eventually got to the rail and was able to lean on it and sit for a while. At around 7 PM people started fainting and passing out left and right. It was either drugs or dehydration, the security guys were doing their best to keep everyone hydrated. They ran up and down the aisle that split the audience in two with water bottles that had a hole poked in the cap, and sprayed it in people's mouth whenever they asked for water, or just sprayed the water all over everyone. There was one guy that would just be walking calmly with a water bottle with no cap, and then splash it in peoples face, seeing their reactions was pretty funny. They tried really hard and I have to give those security guys props for trying so hard, as well as interacting with us and being overall cool guys. I asked two of them for a hug, one of them said "No you're all wet and sweaty and I'm a germophobe" and laughed about it. The second one said "No but I'll give you a high five." So I high-fived him.
Gambino started around 8:15, before that they had a projection up on the stage, and if you tweeted something and used a certain tag or something your tweet would show up on the screen, and they also had a way for people to doodle on it, I'm not entirely sure how it worked, but there were many penis drawings up there.
Gambino got everyone hyped up by teasing us. There was a sound playing of a phone ringing, and it would hang up, it happened repeatedly. It wasn't until he "answered the phone" that it began. His entrance was crazy, he had a really cool animation playing on the screen and voice recording. The whole concert had a lot of visuals and sound recordings and cool stuff like that. Gambino's brother Steve G. Lover also came up on stage for a song. He got the whole crowd really hyped up and ended up doing three encores, but he did the first two one after the other. For the last one he did a freestyle with his brother, it was really cool and I tried to record the whole thing but my phone ran out of storage space so I only got half of it, but I did get his entrance and a couple snippets of other songs.
The whole thing was a really great experience and I was super glad I was able to go. I've lived here for several years and always wanted to go to SXSW, but never had the chance to, luckily this year one of my friends offered to take me and a couple other friends. Pictures in the spoiler