SXSW in Review; We Love Ireland

So we saw some bands, Zebastian and I were kidnapped by drug dealers (for real), Zachary spent some time in Cincinatti, Ohio on the way from Los Angeles to Austin, the band played perhaps the drunkest set ever (check out THIS eyewitness account), and somehow we wound up partying all night with Lizzy Jagger and a dude wearing Keith Richards' scarf. Also, we met Dave, the Brian Jonestown Massacre's tour manager for the first half of DIG!


The problem--and the best part--with SXSW is that all the alcohol is free, so it makes it sort of hard to remember that you're seeing all kinds of great music. Like, when it's open bar, John Lennon could be roused from the dead to perform an impromptu set with the Traveling Wilburys
right in front of me, and I'd be all, "wait, you're telling me I don't have to pay for drinks?" So even though we saw some great bands, I only kind of remember the whole thing.

Here's a sampling of the music we saw over our last two days at the festival: The Ponys, Bloc Party, Gossip, The Black Lips, Pete and the Pirates, Dengue Fever, The Horrors, The Bravery, Oh No Oh My, Matt and Kim, Stylofone, the Pigeon Detectives.

I love you,

Ben Lee Handler

Oh, Ireland! We'll come for you as soon as we can, and we wholeheartedly apologize that we're missing you on the rescheduled tour. Some of our greatest tour experiences have taken place in Belfast and Dublin, so we're trying to get back there as soon as possible!

Ireland in One Fell Swoop

“Where’s the party at?”

This is a question we often find ourselves asking.

Zachary is tired. In Belfast, the party is certainly not at Zachary’s space.


Zebastian certainly is down to party, as am I. But we are only a party of two! We want more! More people! More beer! More everything!


Jamie and John, W.A.S's merch and light-tech men, respectively, have a pizza, and pizza parties are always fun, but this is not the kind of party we’re looking for. We want the crazy! We want the clean, wholesome fun!


Au Revoir Simone always know where the party’s at, but they like adult parties, and frankly, we’re not grown up enough for those.


We like parties with music!


And dancing!


Someday…

Someday…

As it turns out, Zebastian soon revealed that he had seen an old Irish woman hovering over Zachary’s bed the night we arrived in Belfast, and Zach was a shell of a man ever since… a curse! Fortunately, something had possessed Nathaniel as well, actually increasing his party aptitude, balancing out Zachary’s virtual disappearance and helping to maintain a net prosepctive party loss of zero.


For the duration of our first trip to Northern and Southern Ireland, the singer insisted on us calling him Shameless O’Drunky, and she spoke only in limericks.

There once was a boy from the bay,
With behaviors so strange friends would say,
“Shameless O’Drunky, you’re one bizarre monkey,
but I’ll drink with you here anyday!”

That kind of thing.

Galway was beautiful, and provided perhaps the best We Are Scientists show I have ever witnessed, and I’ve seen a lot of them lately. Keith was a combination of drunk, inspired, and hopped up on goofballs and held every one of the 225 people in the audience under his thumb for the duration of the set. (There is plenty of room for crowd surfing and dancing like a maniac under Keith's thumb, mind you.) It was pretty amazing.

Then we came to Dublin, where Nathaniel managed to exorcize Zachary of his malaise via a mixture of Irn-Bru and vodka he named the “Irn-Bru Fuck Ben Lee Handler.”


Through the power of this elixir, the old Zachary returned in time to rock the fuck out of Dublin, drink a shitload of Guinness, get in a fight with a bouncer, and set off some fireworks.


How we had missed him!

Other exciting things that happened in Ireland:

-Chalkie had a nice cry at a very emotional gas station.


-We partied with the inimitable Eddie Argos of Art Brut.


-We had cyber-sex with Keith Murray of W.A.S. while we were all in the same room.


-Nathaniel bled a lot, cried a little.


-We spent a very long time in the tasting lab at the Guinness factory.


-A certain someone had a very special day, but I’m not allowed to mention it here.


-We met a horse.


I love you,

Ben Lee Handler

Coming very soon: Kris's Korner - A new blog feature wherein Chris Cain will type about how he feels about me at any given moment. Or maybe something else. It's up to him, really.