Seattle threw a party for itself on Saturday. It happened at the Palm Door on 5th and Sabine, and it brought a Seattle vibe to SXSW that Austin is sorely lacking—that is, it was safe, subdued, and kinda boring.
The best part of the show was near the end, when Common Market (DJ Sabzi and rapper Ra Scion) took the stage and burned through a four-song set. Ra Scion switched out for Geologic, and the Blue Scholars, Sabzi and Geologic, played a solid set of mostly new material.
They rocked. But the event itself was sorta meh, and if the point of the whole thing was to promote Seattle artists, I don’t think it happened—it was mostly music journalists, having drinks on the patio and talking biz. The mood was very restrained, and it isn’t that the bands were bad—Mt. St. Helen’s Vietnam Band and Hey Marseilles are two local favorites who played very professional sets. But the crowd mostly bobbed their heads and looked uncomfortable.
There was something familiar about the lack of energy because it wasn’t like most of the wild shows at SXSW. I heard repeatedly from a lot of folks, and once, off the record, from a Seattle promoter, that Seattle wouldn’t be able to have a festival like SXSW because Seattle’s a little too mellow.
Something about the smallness and “weirdness” of Austin gives SXSW a one-time-only feeling of energetic goodwill. Austin is small enough to shut down for the weekend and big enough to draw a huge, international crowd. It also doesn’t suffer from Seattle’s pathologies about booze. Did you know that in Austin you can drink a six-pack of beer and operate a kayak at the same time? Without getting in trouble?
Luckily, I wandered around town a bit after the staid SXSeattle party, stumbled on Erykah Badu’s super-short free concert at Auditorium Shores, which got me in a great mood—and propelled me to hike it clear across town by myself to see No Age.
It was the epitome of my very unsafe Austin party weekend. No Age are a great noisy punk rock band, and they played a packed midnight show, free, of course, back at Ms. Bea’s. Beer cans were flying through the air, dudes were hanging like monkeys off the stage roof, wasted girls were crowdsurfing and yelling.
The band couldn’t keep their cables plugged in because of all the wild fans jumping around on stage. It was total drunken pandemonium. It was the most fun I had at SXSW. I hope my ears are still ringing when I get back to Seattle.
Blue Scholars at SXSeattle
