As one of these Luddites who doesn’t have an iPhone or any sort of
international roaming wifi machine, all the SxSW blogs have been stored
in my head and will spew forth in the next few days. I will begin at the
most natural place to start, the beginning…
I woke on Sunday
morning with a hint of a hangover from the previous day’s Six Nations
draw with England, with no idea why my alarm was barking at me, until
the penny dropped and I leapt out of bed. Of course, we were heading
towards SxSW today. The seven o’clock start wasn’t hugely appreciated
but the drive to London was aided by Gill’s “nostalgia beats” on the
stereo. We were staying at the flat at the 4ad offices in Wandsworth so
met Roger in the neighbouring pub for a beer and a crack at the pub
quiz, while Rog dished out some useful advice on how to stay alive in
Austin – “Don’t smoke roll ups, they’ll think you’re smoking pot and
they will shoot you; don’t drink in the street, they will shoot you;
don’t smoke indoors, they will shoot you,” etc.
We arose the next
day (same day) at four thirty a.m. to head to Heathrow. After 6,000
“passport checks” on route (hand in the pocket, there it is, walk ten
metres, hand in the pocket, still there…), we boarded the flight to
Dallas and settled in to watch numerous episodes of Monk and listen to
the country music channel. After 8 deep-vein-thrombosis inducing hours
rammed into a six-inch gap between two rows of seats, we landed at
Dallas Fort Worth and went to pick up our Chevrolet 6-litre engine SUV
(or “car” as they call them in Texas), and a van to pick up and
transport the gear we were hiring in Dallas.
This was my first
time in America and I spent much of the first few hours marvelling at
just about everything from the weather to the size of the
sky/vehicles/bottles of Pepsi/roads etc. It’s certainly true that
everything is that bit bigger in Texas. Dallas itself was not as
glamourous as I had been led to believe in 80′s TV shows, and it seemed
to go on for ever. Indeed, it took us about three hours just to get out
of the place, so we decided to stop near Waco for a massive plate of
unidentified meat smothered in barbeque sauce. It was around this point
that I realised this was not going to be the healthiest of weeks. And
that we realised we didn’t know what sort of “gas” was meant to go in
the van…
The drive down to Austin was one of extreme flatness,
peppered with massive advertising billboards and soundtracked by the
American Family Network radio phone-in, a rather worrying introduction
to the more uninformed side of right-wing America. Never have I heard so
many statistics made up off-the-cuff (and for my day job I work at the
MORI polls, so that’s saying something). We had been told that Austin
was a bit of a liberal outpost though so we were keeping our fingers
crossed…
It was around this time that we were pulled over by
the cops in an exciting low-speed pursuit, as Gill drove on looking to
find an appropriate junction to pull off at. These were nervous moments
as they do have both guns and tasers round these parts, so hands were
made visible and sudden movements avoided…
“Do y’all know why I
pulled you over?” said the lady with the flashlight and high powered
weaponry.
“Em…no.” was Gill’s honest response.
It
transpired to be nothing worse than a missing headlight, and as it was a
hire car that we were dropping off the next day they let us go on our
way, with the warning that Austin P.D. may pull us over again on the way
into town. I was delighted to be able to tick off one of the things on
my “Things to do in America” list, “Get pulled over by a highway
patrol”. I was going to offer to pay the officer to taser Gill as a
photo opportunity (and to tick off another item, “See someone getting
tasered”) but she seemed too nice to buy it so we went on our way.
We
arrived at East 33rd in Austin quite late on, about ten or so, and met
our hosts for the week. There was some nervousness on all sides here as
they had kindly offered to put up four large and hairy Scotsmen (and one
German) in each house, which must’ve seemed like a good idea at the
time until the practicalities of a large band actually bowling up to
your house come into play. For our part we had no idea what to expect,
and as everyone was knackered we made our introductions, had a quick
beer and a chat, and organised our beds, leaving the more serious
“getting to know you” business until the following day when everyone
would be a little more lively.
We had made it to Austin
unscathed, the question was, would we leave it unscathed?
Coming
up in our next installment:
Antics! Shenanigans! Gigs! Jalapenos!
Margauritas! More gigs! Shuffleboard! And more meat than you can shake a
barbeque fork at…
