ACL Parties: Night TWO

Peel opened the night with a rousing set and a solid turnout, considering it was all of nine-thirty when they went on – while they played downstairs, we started the evening by toasting our friend’s birthday with consecutive vodka shots, which in retrospect was a very, very bad idea for all parties involved. 

The Interest Kills were introduced (as expected) by the offbeat Scandinavian aspiring comedian Benedict – whose final punchline (not as expected) was in fact not “apple turnover” as we’d promised.  But trust us, that joke killed last time.

Diego Garcia-Olano and company rocked out with a set incorporating several catchy new songs as well as our favorites, “Pseudo-Narcoleptic” and “The In-Between is Ending”, and later we overheard a few drunk girls giggling at the bar about the bandmates’ charming good looks.  Call us, ladies – we’ll put you in touch.  Or just call us.

By the time Visitors took to the stage and pummeled the audience with their explosive pop-emo-punk barrage, both the downstairs and VIP areas were quickly becoming packed - we’d long since run out of gift bags and the ravenous hordes had devoured all of the food we’d had catered.

Our friend brought all her gear to do a bit of fire dancing for the crowd, but it was clear there was no way we’d be able to clear a space for her pyro antics - alas, there’s always next time.

And in between playing the douchbag bouncers enforcing the upstairs VIP quarantine and repeated trips to the bar, we stumbled into several random friends we’d met at Coachella earlier this year, who were reclining quite happily on the Sumo beanbag chairs scattered near the waterfall.

Belaire were clearly thrilled to be there, which showed in their smashing performance - the highlights of which included guaranteed crowd pleasers “Dadada” and “Back Into the Wall”. We're sure they'll be wowing the folks in St. Louis, Chicago and Lawrence, Kansas when they head out for a brief mini-tour next week.

Finishing off the night – and our special favorite, as it’d been ages since we’d last checked them out at a house party  – The Black Angels brought us back to those heady days when Lou Reed and company cavorted with the likes of Andy Warhol and Nico. By the time they started playing “Bloodhounds on My Trail”, we and our mates were absolutely smashed and hanging onto consciousness by the thinnest of threads, only to be yanked back from the near-dead by that awesome bit in the middle of the song that goes “one, two … three!” and follows with a riotious orgy of drums, guitars and, yes, fucking tambourines. 

We stumbled out of the club with a $400 bar tab – most of which we blame on the musicians, you drunken lot! - the undying gratitude of the ecstatic bartender, and a killer headache, which as far as we were concerned meant for a pretty damn good evening. 

But seeing as how it was only 2am, the night was still young, so we ambled over to a cab and made our way down south to the Jane Magazine party at the Old Bicycle Sport Shop. 

Nic Armstrong and The Thieves had already played what we were told was a fucking ridiculous set – clearly the boys were still riding high on their explosive performance at ACL on Friday afternoon.  Once past the gates, we knew almost instinctively where the nearest bar was, weaving a beeline through a crowd of disaffected, drunk, and totally dashing hipsters to get our clammy hands on their complimentary wares.

After hanging out a bit with Johnny and Nic of the Thieves and toasting their fantastically prodigious two months here in Central Texas with several reinvigorating Tito’s-and-sodas, we made our way inside to the dance party – the DJ was from one of the ACL bands, but we couldn’t make out which.

At some point we ran into FactoryPeople’s Le Popov, fashionista-extraordinaire and host of one of the night prior’s afterparties, exchanging slurred greetings and intending to admonish her for not making it out to our party before, but, sadly, giggling instead. We shook our collective asses along to the slapdash mix, which ran the gamut from Jacko classics to perennial indie staples to … Kelly Clarkson.

Oh, come on. Like you haven’t before.

Before we finally left, we fought our way past an army of hipster zombies to nab one or two bags (Okay, four bags. Each.) chock full of jeans provided by American Eagle [One Austinist kid: “Now I can dress like the kids on Laguna Beach, or whatever!”] and various party swag.

By 4am, with the effects of standing all day in sub-Saharan conditions finally taking its toll on our wearied, beaten bodies, we closed off the evening with tearful farewells to our friends from faraway places, happy hello's to our newfound Austin pals, and a quiet curse towards the general vicinity of the bar. It was, in all ways, a fantastic night.

Austinist thanks each and every one of you who came out to party with us this weekend. And trust us when we say there will be many, many more to come.

Tons more pictures are up on flickr, tagged "Austinist".

All images are copyright their respective owners, including (links to flickr): Ben Brown, Katie Spence, Kristina Barnett, Allen Y Chen, Benedict, Matthew Wright, Breanna Rollings, Linda Doyle, and Bruce Levenstein.