SXSW III - Fun in the sun! And, uhm, insanity.

Ah! Last post! Yeah, I have a lot of pictures, but there is so much cool stuff, so I might as well post a bunch of it!

So! How about a game of "Thor meets random celebs!"


I met Zorro!


..And I met the Naked Cowboy! Although, I must point out that he wasn't actually naked, but I guess "Scantily Clad Cowboy" doesn't quite have the same ring to it.


I also saw Meat Loaf's bus, and he was apparently - and appropriately - playing at the Pig Pub.


Gotta love small town America. Except this is not a small town.


Seriously, it was a really nice town, and I can't even begin to imagine how awesome it must be to study in this town. I mean, the place must have 300 bars! This was, by the way, St. Patrick's Day, and so in ADDITION to all the SXSW stuff going on, you had a whole section of the city just closed off for a huge, ginormous St. Patty's party. The closest I came to celebrate St. Patty was by being drunk at noon and by watching Hank From Hell do a Riverdance. But more about that later!


I'm ashamed to say that I hadn't heard Bermuda Triangle before, but they were actually really great, even though they played a hella early set.


Marit Larsen is just as sweet and cute as you think. And she played some really good shows, so that was cool for everyone involved! Yay for Marit!


So was Marte Wulff..


..And Sissy Wish, who was really cool! It might interest you to know that we went to grade school together - Go Greverud Skole! Woo!


I hadn't heard Thom Hell live either, but it was pretty cool, although slightly less rockin' that I prefer it, but hey, anyone who has a Rickenbacker bass is per definition awesome.


What gives! This looks sad and empty!

Wait! Something is AFOOT!


Yay! It's Øystein from Big Bang! And what a fantastic voice that guy has!

Go Øystein! Dude, that guy played like 5 concerts that day, including a live radio broadcast back to Norway.


Hey Mr. Greni, how are you? Incidentally, this is where the free refreshments were starting to take a serious toll - hence the blurriness, which kind of prevails through the rest of the night. I vividly remember getting free champagne at this particular concert.


After that, I met a bunch of Norwegians from Houston, and shit went down, and I ended up taking a picture of some dude's butt.


We went to see Mew too. It's a Danish band, and I kind of thought they were a bunch of jerks, but that concert just blew me away, for real, it was out of control amazing. I tried to see them here in NYC on Thursday, but their show was sold out, unfortunately.

Then, for the highlight of the night, an awesome evening of punk rock at Emo's. Emo's is like the main awesome stage in Austin.

There were a bunch of cool punk bands playing, before, finally, the headliners:


Turbonegro!


Their sound check took like an hour, so I entertained myself with taking pictures .. uhm, of myself, before heading out to the moshpit to see my fav Norwegian punk band!

It was phenomenal! They opened with "All My Friends are Dead", Hank from Hell did the Riverdance, Euroboy - my huge guitar idol - stood on (!) the audience while playing "Prince of the Rodeo", and we all got our eardrums completely shattered. So yeah!

Good albeit blurry times! I have no idea how long they played, but it was fucking sweet!

Then, in the most anticlimactic turn of events in history, I headed back to NYC the next day, after meeting Damon Albarn at the airport, flew first class for the first time, sat in Dallas for like five hours, and came to the wonderful winter wonderland of Newark at like 3 a.m. early Monday morning. Then work 6 hours later? Brutal. But hey! It was a cool weekend, and fuck it, I will go again next year if I can!