Here it is at last! Our little chat with Graham in Austin. He talks about his new folk direction, and, more importantly, the one thing we’ve all been dying to know. Are Blur going to do Mr Robinson’s Quango at Glastonbury?

Better late than never, day three of our SXSW blog. Jam packed full of bands, can you spot them all? Highlights have got to be us getting together with the legend that is Steven Van Zandt (aka Silvio from the Sopranos) to chat about his Underground Garage night, and that weird Wu Tang/Black Lips collaboration…

There’s more to come from Day Three, in the form of a hilarious video interview with Ian St Pe from the Black Lips, stay tuned. xx

ROTR’s SXSW headquarters. Pure glamour.

We’re here. After ten hours on a plane, then forty minutes on another plane, we found ourselves in sunny Austin yesterday afternoon, speeding down the Interregional in a cab driven by an 83-year-old gospel blues piano player.

Now we’re getting ready to head out for the first day of the music festival – frantically scouring invites and flyers, kidding ourselves we’ll be able to do anything but go with the flow.

Bands we’re excited about seeing: Cursive, Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson, The Pack A.D, Sebastian Grainger, the Hold Steady, The Black Lips, King Kahn and the Shrines, the Sonics…seeing as the list of bands playing exceeds 2000 it’s hard to pick a handful. Needless to say we’ll most likely be running around like headless chickens within an hour of leaving the hotel this morning.

Remember we’ll be armed with a flipcam as well as a camera, so we’ll be uploading our video blog of the day tomorrow as well as a few photos and our lowdown on what was cool and what sucked.

Stay tuned.

Sian B Rockin’

xox

Guess what – ISSUE #4 is now here for you to view and download. And let me tell you, it’s gorgeous. Interviews with The Black Lips, The Pack A.D (plus their guide to tour snacking), Sebastian Bach, Diagonal, Pulled Apart By Horses, Bo Ningen and the Cut in the Hill Gang. All brilliant, all pretty, all Riot on the Rocks.

Click the link on the right to download the pdf!

Within a matter of hours we’ll be on a plane to Austin so by Wednesday our blogs will start to come through from SXSW – video interviews with every musician we can lay our hands on plus reviews of all the best shows and our own little festival diary. Superb. Superb.

If you want a hard copy of the zine then drop us a line and we can send you one with a lovely free badge.

Sian B Rockin’ xox

SXSW: The week that bands, musos and fankids are drawn to Austin like moths to a flame. Burning out, running out of money or appearing uncool are all to be avoided. We asked Canadian garage ladies and SXSW aficionados The Pack A.D., otherwise known as Maya and Becky, for their tips on surviving a week in rock and roll mecca…

Photos by Justine Warrington

THE PACK A.D.’S CHEAP ASS GUIDE TO DRINKING AND EATING YOUR WAY THROUGH SXSW ON SOMEONE ELSE’S DIME

aka Flowers in Rain: A Young Girl’s Journey

Alright, so you’re a band. For the sake of this page – you’re us. You’re hot, young and fucking broke. Nobody knows you. They should know you. But they sure as hell don’t. Bastards, all of them. This is something very true in music -it’s chock full of despicable people and, like, two good ones. This is not being bitter. This is just being honest.

So, we’re playing SXSW again. I cannot possibly give you a guide on what will happen this year (what do I look like, a fucking genie?), but I can give you a guide based on last year.

You - which is to mean us - arrive in an extremely hectic traffic situation in which you turn in to oncoming traffic to find your hotel and… no one honks at you. Go figure.

Step one: Check into your hotel, which will end up being covered by a tour grant courtesy of our fine country, Canada.

Step two: Split a meal at Denny’s to save money and be served by a very charming transvestite.

Then, in no particular order:

Eat Texas shaped waffles and purloin non-perishable food items for later consumption. Drink all the hotel’s crappy complimentary coffee.

Register at the Convention Center. Get free bag of crap and then sort through ‘discard’ tables to get more free crap that other people deemed too crappy even though it’s free (sort’ve like when people download the free iTunes ‘single of the week’ and then have the balls to complain about it).

Play show. Drink everything you can get. Ignore the free BBQ. Instead, go to your label’s hotel room and order room service and charge it to their room. Regale all with obnoxious stories that only you and your bandmate think are funny, and then leave.

Stumble up and down 6^th Street, randomly popping into venues to watch five minute sets by bands you’ve never heard of, while looking for more complimentary drinks. Take flyers from everyone – especially hardcore Korean bands that are cute.

If you need to puke, use the empty cooler in the van instead of a toilet. Get your bandmate to wash it out.

It’s all about saving the planet, one pile of vomit at a time.

 Signed,

The Pack A.D.

Check out the new issue of ROTR zine, online and on paper from March 14th, for a full interview with The Pack A.D plus their illustrated guide to tour snacks… rockin’.

Opening the night were female duo PLUG, keeping it simple with drums, bass and vocals.  Really it’s slightly too simple, although the drummer/singer has a beautiful, haunting voice and some amusing lyrics involving ‘coma/comb over’ wordplay. LITTLE DEATH are part Cure on a happy day, part Pixes on an average day, but mostly Manic Street Preachers in the older days, mainly due to the Bradfield-style vocals.  They would have won the prize for most attractive band of the night – and I’m sure there were a fair few guys converted by the bassist’s stage outfit. 

Live, TITUS ANDRONICUS turn the already raucous yet catchy (and sometimes slightly shambolic-sounding) tracks from their album The Airing of Grievances in to, well, even more raucous and catchy, yet far from shambolic, ones.  At times it seems like Tim Armstrong has grown an impressive beard and stolen Andrew WK’s keyboard, and at others like The Jesus and Mary Chain have recruited a harmonica player and started writing songs about the American Civil War. In all fairness that sounds pretty dubious, but it couldn’t be further from it.

The set starts loud and fast, still managing to pick up pace as it goes on, and after a splash of 50’s surf and an energetic cover of The Modern Lovers’ ‘Roadrunner’, even the crowd stuck to back wall are moving. By the time they get around to playing the self-named ‘Titus Andronicus’, which has more than a ring of Nirvana circa ‘Molly’s Lips’ to it, people at the front have got the right idea and have start a riotous, if slightly sparse mosh-pit, that frontman Patrick Stickles is welcomed into during the closing minutes.  You can’t help but dance to this stuff, and more than that, you want to get covered in someone else’s beer, grab the person next to you, jump up and down and sing along like you’re listening to the Pogues.  Just as it should be.

Last friday saw three ROTR delegates dashing out on our lunchbreak to catch a real treat – the Black Lips playing acoustic on a bandstand in Shoreditch. We interviewed Jared later that day – so look out for the new zine, it’ll be up here by mid March. Photos by Sarah Myring.

Go to www.bandstandbusking.com to see the videos of the gig.