I made a list of all of the bands that I saw during SXSW last week that I really enjoyed, and I have to say that it was a pretty damn good week for some great performances by some seasoned vets as well as some new upcoming acts. Pt 1 consists of some of the bigger acts that played as well as some that I just can’t seem to get enough of their music and their performances.

• Dead Confederate: Long time favorite of mine, Athen’s Dead Confederate played a total of 7 shows this year @ SXSW, and I managed to catch a bit of 3 of those. The one more interesting set consisted of covers of two Sonic Youth songs, one of which is a Sonic Youth classic in my opinion, “Diamond Sea”. I’m not generally one for cover songs, in fact I usually despise them, but DC covers Sonic Youth almost better than Sonic Youth covers Sonic Youth. An outstanding 2 song set that lasted at the least, 20 min. I lost track of time awash in the sea of sonic dreaminess. In a time when our attention span seems to be shrinking into bits and bytes, Dead Confederate are not afraid to jam the lengthy jam.

• Silversun Pickups: I know I might catch some flack for this one, but you have to understand my history with these guys. I first saw them perform 3 years ago @ SXSW and they completely blew me away. The experience of seeing them @ the Filter party on the Cedar Street Courtyard stage, and on the patio of Moonshine will be hard to replace with anything I will ever see from them again. The 2008 ACL performance was atrocious and almost painful, but their opening spot @ Stubbs before Metallica renewed my faith in the bands ability to put on a good show. I may never be the fan that I once was, but the memories of that little band 3 years ago will always be there. The band has a long awaited follow up to their debut hitting streets April 14th.

• DEVO: One would think as long as I’ve been around and being the music geek that I am, I would have seen these guys before, but unfortunately I had not. I was half expecting a bunch of older guys to come out and do a competent job of rocking through their extensive catalog of hits while I relived my youth, but not the case. DEVO came out to play, like a young successful band, with some new material that they had to sell, and they sold it well. They were loud, they were animated, the LED screen accompanied the show with fun imagery, and they rocked both the new material with the hits. Bravo DEVO!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 25th, 2009 at 3:31 pm and is filed under live shots, SXSW.