MOG

I regret that I failed to attend any MOG parties in town, I was out of the loop as I haven't been around for a while. Plus, way too busy juggling family and SXSW Fastball stuff. We did various local TV and radio performances as well as 3 shows which all went very well.

I didn't see any bands at all! I was all business; just got in there, did my thing and went home. I guess that's the beauty of living in Austin after 15 SXSW years. I can turn it all off! There are actually many great shows coming up this month. For us Austinites SXSW just marks the beginning of the spring/summer music season. Loads of road shows to look forward to. Dengue Fever's coming, very excited about that... Anyway, back to the big week; Thursday was our first showcase and we played with some bands I never saw because I was wandering around town on foot having a drink now and then up until the time we were set to play at 1 am. I felt very old and didn't really see anything all that interesting. It was all very Mardi Gras-ish, I was sadly, slightly bored. Perhaps if my friends whom I was supposed to meet up with returned my numerous phone calls, I would've had a better attitude. By the time we played I was rather buzzed and we played a blazing set with what had to be the worst stage sound I have ever experience. It was like trying to play in an aero-dynamics test facility! Luckily no one could tell but us and I certainly wasn't about to be phased by it! The next day we played a party at 4pm for the Austin Music Magazine with Billy Joe Shaver and the Paula Nelson (daughter of Willie)Band. For some reason it was 95 degrees f that day. After the party we did an 8pm gig for Bug Music at Cedar Street that went great. I left straight after so I missed all the great bands. One free gig I caught was by mistake but it was a happy one. The Wombats were playing a party early in the day I checked out a few songs and liked 'em. I missed High on Fire with Motorhead free at stubbs and also The Breeders, also free! What a tool I am! Last but not least, Miles and I got to have a nice chat over a glass of wine with REM bassist, Mike Mills in his suite at the Driskill. Yes, we recorded the whole thing and it will be another installment of our Expensive Winos webcast we produce for our website. We've actually got two new episodes (?) in the bag just going through final editing. You can hear our previous four at FASTBALLTHEBAND.COM. By the way, here's a little sample of new material Fastball will be putting on our new album. Hope you like it! Tony