SXSW Tuesday Recap: You Didn't Really Want To See The Foo Fighters Anyway

The worst kept secret at South By Southwest Interactve was that Dave Grohl was coming to hijack the closing party last night (Tuesday) at Stubb's to promote the new Foo documentary Back and Forth. Going to SXSW to see the Foo Fighters is sort of like going to France and eating at McDonalds. You may not be doing it right. 

So, strapped with added brainpower from getting our SXSWi cherry popped, we hit the streets. It's bad enough that SXSW Music now begins a day early -- but even by skipiping the Foos, we were still painfully outnumbered by amazing options.

Boston's home-away-from-home has long been Emo's, the legendary 6th street club that's always at the center of the good shit -- not to mention within rock-throwing distance from the Iron Cactus. And now that Emo's is being booked by longtime Middle East dude Kevin Hoskins, it just feels like home. Especially when you're hanging out front and EUGENE MIRMAN stops by to say hi before popping across the street for a 20-minute set. (You know where you can see him doing a 10 minute set this afternoon, yes?)

Last night's Emo's party was a Pitchfork affair -- guaranteeing none of these bands will rate below a 7.0 in the next year -- with an assist from the video-game quarterly Kll Screen, whose latest issue (which we saw making its way into the paws of many a hipster) includes a feature by Phoenix gaming crusader Maddy Myers. (Addtionally, Kill Screen managing editor Chris Dahlen has a great piece in next week's Phoenix about the tech behind MIT Media Lab guru Tod Machover's new robot opera, Death and the Powers.)

At Emo's we caught NO JOY -- '90s-timestamped noise-punk by girls who might be able to get Thurston to leave Kim -- and got sucked in by WEEKEND, who may do for West Coast shoegaze what Queens of the Stone Age did for stoner rock, and whose drummer is better than Grohl. (Bro-rock outrage commencing in the comments section . . . now?)

Here's some of Weekend: 

We can't say too much about what happened at Spill later on, except that Chris Faraone will be checking in shortly with a love song to (and video of) DOMINIQUE YOUNG UNIQUE, who was one of our 50 Best New Acts in the USA back in 2009.

And we also caught a solo set by DIAMOND RINGS, fresh off a stint opening for Robyn. He reminds us of a young Stephin Merritt, if Magnetic Fields had just stuck to synth-pop: 

We're off to put on a fucking show this afternoon at KLUB KRUCIAL with DOM, the aforementioned EUGENE MIRMAN, HOORAY FOR EARTH, THE GOOD NATURED, FUNERAL PARTY, THE SEEDY SEEDS, GIRLFRIENDS, and YOUNG ADULTS. It's free.  You should totally come.