Austinist Indieroke had another successful outing last Friday on the patio at The Mohawk. From The Cranberries to The National, and from Led Zeppelin to Iron Maiden, we heard it all. As always, stellar renditions of The Cure and Journey classics were in the mix as well. Good times!...

Allow us to set the scene: you and your best girlfriends and/or bros are ready to get a liquored up, a little vocal, a little crazy. So you all pile into the van and head down to one of the karaoke rooms on North Lamar, bring in a Heineken mini-keg and hope for the best. The first in a list of disappointments is the song selection – mostly bygone hits, Helloween and chart-toppers from the Far East, and after warbling “Thunder Road” to your pallys, you get the big bill. Ouch. So at the end of the night, you’re right back where you started, which is singing The Smiths into a hairbrush, though you’re now poorer, hoarse, and the melancholy itch of “How Soon is Now” is ever more palatable....

We were hearing constant clamors for more weekend Austinist Indieroke events, and as a result, we offer up the latest edition next Friday the 25th at The Mohawk. Come on down and check out Buttercup and Elsinore inside at 9 p.m. but save your best for upstairs when Indieroke fever takes over The Green Room at 11 p.m. for another evening of wonderful renditions of classics and not-so-classics....

Austinist Indieroke took over The Mohawk’s Green Room this past Sunday for a night of thrills, frills, and plenty of awesome stills (courtesy of Nash Cook). We would like to thank everyone who came down and made this an incredible party, especially the early birds -- we had six songs in queue before we even had a bartender up there! Of course, very special thank you’s go out to The Mohawk for putting up with our shenanigans, and our rock star friends from Zykos, White Denim, The Boxing Lesson, and Belaire, all of whom turned in some magnificent renditions....

As you may have read somewhere, we are launching Phase Two of our almost-monthly Austinist Indieroke shindig this Sunday at 9 p.m. at The Mohawk. The event will take place upstairs on the deck -- please look for the “green light” on 10th St. and enter through there since there is a band (Colour Wheel) and a cover charge downstairs. Hopefully you have already added us as a friend on MySpace since all our nominees in the various contests shall have their sweet face historicized in our “Hall Of Mirrors.” Additionally, each winner’s mug will also be displayed on Austinist the following day. As promised previously, there will be a handful of local rock stars present to serenade us with renditions of their favorites -- Mike Booher (Zykos), Cari Palazzolo (Belaire), and James Petralli (White Denim) are all expected to take the stage during the course of the evening....

Austinist Indieroke: The Second Chapter begins next Sunday the 25th at The Mohawk’s sweet outdoor deck next to their brilliantly renovated Green Room. Fret not though because all the classic tunes you’ve grown to love in our karaoke collection are still available for you to enhance (or slaughter) with your personal renditions. But we are confident that you will love our new ideas and incentives. First off, there is an Austinist Indieroke MySpace page now. Get in there and add us as a friend -- photographs of all our contest nominees and winners shall be archived there in our “Hall Of Mirrors” because “even the greatest stars find their face in the looking glass / even the greatest stars live their lives in the looking glass.”...

As you know by now we have a passing interest in karaoke and when Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. was kind enough to invite Austinist to the launch events for the latest edition of PlayStation 3's SingStar, we had to take them up on the offer to get a sneak peak at the karaoke video game series before its U.S. (and Canadian) release on May 20th. As you can imagine, SingStar is not your average sit-at-home-on-the-couch-all-day type video game: players, preferably in a vivacious state, possibly in social settings, compete with each other to score the highest rating (out of 10,000) based on their talent and ability to sing on pitch. Pretty simple, eh? Well, SingStar for PS3 incorporates a community element, My SingStar Online, while also allowing users to download songs off an ever increasing database known as SingStore (with the matching music video to boot)....

Austinist Indieroke is back in action tonight. Come on down to The Mohawk and sing away your hump day blues. We are expecting some of our regulars to do wonderful renditions of songs ranging from "Young Folk" by Peter Bjorn & John to "Easy" by The Commodores, and from "Creep" by Radiohead to "Material Girl" by Madonna. But we definitely want to see some new blood in the mix. Will it be you who takes a stab at "Never Ending Math Equation" (Modest Mouse) or "All The Wine" (The National)? Or maybe you're just so excited about this breaking news that there's a performance of "Open Arms", "Never", or "Dream Police" lurking within you, waiting to be unleashed....

SXSW provided ample opportunities for all of us to indulge in mass quantities of live music and overwhelming amounts of events but really, what are we left with now? Besides the rumors, archived concerts, and what not, hopefully each one of us can look back now to realize we found fresh inspiration from some form of art or discovered a new idol whose work will get us through our daily rat race....

Austinist Present IndieRoke
Wednesday, January 9th
The Mohawk (912 Red River)
10pm-2am, free
[info]