Thursday, March 13, 2014

3/12/04

Day one was pretty interesting. It stared with a thirty minute drive to the White Horse, it usually takes ten in normal traffic... Needless to say SXSW traffic is awful.

The Ladies and I got up and did our thing. There was a decent crowd of people who had been day drinking and they were digging our sound. It's easy with folks like that, all we had to do was play "Bouncin" and they were hooked. "You Make Me Feel..." and "Selfish" just put them over the edge. Day drunks love songs about sex and drinking and we have a lot of songs about sex and drinking.

We finished up and I said goodbye to the ladies and Smitty, Tom and I hopped in a pedicab and went to the convention center. It was really nice that the Hickoids were inducted in to the hall of fame and on paper it seemed like it was gonna be really cool, but...

We go to the check in desk and get our passes then we were escorted upstairs to the green room. Escorted, as in they stuck some poor, adorable 20 year old intern with us. She led us up the escalators and over to the place where they gave us some wristbands. I'm pretty sure we could have gotten there ourselves, but this is a classy affair and they don't want to leave us to our own devices for too long. After that we just hung out in the green room for about an hour and a half bullshitting with folks.

The green room was pretty big and probably had a hundred people in it. They had a bar! But after we waited in a twenty minute line there was a cash register... My Hall Of Fame winning ass paid $14 for a rum and coke. They had food and I got excited about it until I heard they were charging for it as well... Pretty lame stuff.

We were told it was time to get ready and we were posed for pictures in front of a big banner (they were really trying to make it like the Grammy's or the Oscars with all of the silly pomp, but it doesn't work at all, this is Austin not LA) then we were told to wait. About thirty minutes later we were escorted by a different escort from the green room to a staging area. Then we waited in about three different places for about ten minutes each before we finally got up to the stage. In other words, there was a whole lot of hurry up and wait. And we were escorted every step of the way.

We accepted the award then they had us step down to a second stage that is right in front of the real stage so the same people who took pictures of us in front of the banner could take more pictures of us again. Then our escort (yes, she was still with us) walked us off the stage as they were announcing that Blondie was next! Holy Shit! That's Debbie Harry, Chris Stein and Clem Burke!!! I had no idea that was coming and neither did our escort. As soon as they were announced we looked at each other and she said "Well that's about the best fucking thing in the world!" She was right, it was pretty exciting.

Since we were finished with the awards show it was time to head back to the White Horse. Got there and the Grannies were on! They whipped it and we went on after. Our set was pretty short, but the place was packed and really in to us. It made the whole ordeal of the Music Awards worthwhile.

This probably isn't shocking to anyone but it's a lot more fun playing music than it is being awarded for it.

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