RSVP-free since 2005.
volume 05
issue 03
march 2010
No loud music! • Chair massages • Bad ass bloody mary bar • Free t-shirts for first 50 people• Free beer ONLY with Texas ID • Photo booth • Video game tournament sponsored by Birds • Free Food + Bring your own BBQ (early)
• Come check out WOXY Radio showcases every day during SXSW • Local show Friday the 19th featuring: Butcher Bear & Charlie, The Rubies, Ghost Knife, The Roller, Sugar Sugar Sugar, Fingaar Bangaar, and When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth. Show starts 7pm. Way better than Cheap Trick! • Saturday 20th: wait in line outside Stubbs with 1,000 other people to see Muse or just come have a drink with us! No show- just good times!
1016 East 6th St • Austin, Texas
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hollaback@misprintmagazine.com
email to the directors I represent the Brooklyn-based band Pretty Good Dance Moves. I was curious if there was any opportunity for the band to play any shows affiliated with your mag during the South by Southwest stretch. Band's new record cut with Bjorn Yttling (Peter Bjorn & John) drops March 9. Cool mag. – Demetrios (Editor's Response) We don't really have any response, per se. We just wanted to underline everything that was horribly wrong with that email. We also bolded the extra horribly wrong stuff, too.
Hello, I am writing to request a press pass for myself, and a photo pass for my camera(wo)man for the 2010 Coachella Music and Art Festival. I have extensive experience writing for local music and art publications and weeklies. This would be a unique opportunity to have such a talent at work for your publication. I personally know several of the emerging artists that will be featured at the festival, thus our coverage will be revelatory and intimate. I've covered bands such as the Soft Pack, Girls, and King Khan and the Shrines. I've also been personally acquainted with Thom Yorke, and look forward to authoring a review of the three day festival as well as conducting personal interviews. –Timothy (Editor's Response) Who the fuck is Thom Yorke?
vol 05 issue 03 march 2010
SHITMYJORTS.COM
END LIVE MUSIC
directors
board of advisors
contact
Harvey Merrybottom
Kip Hollingsworth Bronx Wontgomery Mannhiem Wasselhoffer L. Fauntleroy Callahan O’Callahan Adolph Curmudgeon Abelard Fiddlebits Miss Theliz Jan Tschichold Yngwie Malmsteen
www.misprintmagazine.com hollaback@misprintmagazine.com
Director of Co-Conspiritories
Chadwick Pennyrich III
Director of Visual Arts & Languages The views expressed here are strictly those of the authors, and do not represent the views of Misprint Magazine, which is kind of weird because the ideas of author and entity are actually entirely codependent of one another, but fuck it. This also applies to all our advertisements.
Send us your free shit! Misprint Magazine c/o The Side Bar For inquiries, kudos, hate mail and the rest, e-mail Misprint at the above address.
continued Are you dudes putting on any parties or any shit during SXSW? You see, the reason I ask is because, just like every other dick in Austin, I'm in a shitty band. The biggest difference about me though is that I'm fat, so I'll never fit into Britt Daniel's pants no matter how hard I try. Also, my guitar is tuned down to C, because I never wanna get a girlfriend. Anyway, I really want to get lost in that sea of mediocrity and vodka Redbulls. I'm gonna send you this demo we did at our practice spot a few days ago. This song is about fucking the wrong astronaut. We haven't played any shows yet, so, obviously its a good idea to put a ton of faith in us. – Jason/Visitors (Editor's Response) I can really sympathize, man, because I once fucked the wrong astronaut, too. Hopefully playing the super secret Misprint sewer show behind the Dog & Duck will make up for it.
I represent Kim Cameron and her Side FX Band who will be touring in the Austin area the middle of February as part of her first world tour. While the band is relatively new, they have jump-started their career over the past year and a half with both media coverage and a fan base including: · Over 2 million Google searches · Pentagon Channel · American Airlines In-Flight Programming · Fox Sports music placement · MTV Philippines Since she will be performing at the Highland Mall on February 13th, I thought you might be interested in an article? (Editor's Response) Seriously? The Pentagon Channel? I just called Time Warner and they've never heard of it. Sorry. PS: My black-market organ dealer in the Philippines has never heard of you either.
A few words from the Directors... it’s that fucking time of year again and preparations are in full swing here at Misprint HQ. We’ve got the bunk beds set up and the grappling hooks oiled and primed. The interns are at the ready to feed the squid in case something happens to us. Crates of Tito’s and organic horseradish and tomato juice are on ice in the walk-in cooler. We have a few hundred extra cases of Pedialyte and an RN on staff with a saline drip. We even installed a salt lick. Rest assured, we are ready to party. Chadwick Pennyrich III
Harvey Merrybottom
That being said, sitting down to write this quasi-semi-quarterly missive to the devoted Misprint readership, I feel a little conflicted. Part of me wants to say, “Fuck SXSW. I see bands all the fucking time. Let’s just take the jet to Romania or go camping or some shit.” And after spending the last few months on a vigorous campaign to end live music, it would be hypocritical to abandon that mantra at the first whiff of free beer. On the other hand, part of me wants to go for it. Part of me wants to wring every conceivable iota of fun out of this dumb festival. So if that means flashing my fake Jortfire Media credentials so I can inject leopard adrenaline into my eyeballs with Chloe Sevigny and the flute-playing man-goat hybrid on the roof of the Austonian, so be it. Even after all these years, the thrill of selling drugs at marked-up prices to a B-list celebrity still feels exciting. (I’m not sorry about that shitty weed, Frodo.) Here’s the thing: SXSW is like a year’s worth of hard Austin living compressed into a week. But remember, you live here (unless you don’t). So you’ve seen every band and gone to every party and you never had to send out a single rsvp. So honestly? SXSW is just another nice spring day in Austin. And whether you spend it on your porch swing with a good book and an ice-cold Pimm’s Number One Cup or at Emo’s punching yourself repeatedly in the face, it doesn’t really matter. Fuck all y'all,
How to Salvage Your Sinking Bar In retrospect, it might have been a bad idea to follow Misprint’s advice and open a hot new eastside bar (Vol. 5, Issue 2). Turns out we can barely keep our shitty magazine afloat, let alone give reasonable investment advice to retired Emo’s barbacks looking to mentor a new generation of dudes in the art of picking up empties. But if you’ve plowed your 401k into some crappy former Tejano bar and now find yourself inundated with yuppies “slumming it” and frustrated by the lack of credibility that comes from no longer being the “eastmost” bar in Austin, don’t lose hope. Help is on the way. Here’s a few surefire strategies to pack them in every night of the week. Cockfighting
Hookah Night
Before the yuppies took over the eastside with their goats and ferns and Saabs, cockfighting was the de riguer, a sport of kings for the east Austin elite. Seriously, it was like Best of the Best II every day, but for cocks. Perhaps it’s long overdue for a comeback? Don’t get all self-righteous about it being barbaric, either. It’s a well-known, 100% true Misprint fact that cocks are total bitches. If they had opposable thumbs they’d be tying all kinds of razor blades and shit to their legs just so they could fuck up other cocks for looking at them funny. Fuck those cocks—they’ve been muscling the black market egg trade and driving up the cost of breakfast tacos for years.
A hookah is a bong that wouldn't look out of place stashed in the glovebox on a Dune spice mining rig. East Side Pies and the hippie that sells frisbees in Pease Park have been profiting off Austin's marijuana-addicted masses for years and there's no reason your bar can't either. Even if someone has as many nuggets as the downtown Wendy's, there's no denying that smoking a hookah has that whole Lawrence of Arabia-style coolness to it, especially if your eyes are really, really blue. Besides, after eight straight hours of playing Mario Kart more exquisitely stoned than a Bernini pietà, it's always good to get out of the house, head to a bar and stand around freaking out and looking super awkward.
Board Games
Inviting an impassioned Risk game into your bar is a double-edged sword. Players will easily run up a grillion-dollar bar tab slamming dry gin Churchillstyle while attacking Argentina in a vaguely racist fit of drunken rage. But you’ll have to hire extra security to handle the inevitable meltdowns when lifelong friends try to cut each other’s faces with broken bottles after a dispute over Irkutsk. Movie Night
If your brilliant plan is to let your idiot buddies take shots for free and quote along as they screen Waterworld, this idea will sink faster than Kevin Costner’s boat after a Smoker attack. It’s been proven time and time again that playing movies at bars doesn’t work. Maybe skip the usual action movie or ironic classic and screen a dub of hardcore porn instead.
You’re the DJ
Deep down inside, every single person in Austin knows, at some primal level, that they have better music taste than everyone else. That’s why 45 nights have been such a success. People will wait around for two hours for the chance to show off their crate-digging prowess by playing some super-obscure Gandalf 7" or that ultra-punk Teen Idles first pressing. Even if the place is packed, a bar owner has to wonder if being surrounded by that many assholes rolling cigs while they nod their heads to some Bulgarian psych band is worth it. You’ll make some cash for sure, but you’ll be longing for the days when you could play that scratched Social Distortion CD over and over for the brew-swilling broken. h
SXSW Interactive Survival guide Most of the magic of SXSW revolves around the relative ease in which humble Austin beardos can exploit suckers with money for free beer. LA record labels, energy drink vendors, even misguided factions within the Danish government come to Austin believing the absurd fiction that, with enough beer and tacos, you might actually care about their products. But for the web savvy, there’s a whole other SXSW to exploit. It’s the same vibe, but this time it’s about getting drunk WITH YOUR LAPTOP! So if you don’t mind chatting up a few goateed Linux administrators while some nerd with a Kaoss pad raps over the Megaman 6 theme music, it’s easy to get in on the action at SXSW Interactive. Talking the Talk
Let’s be frank here. If you’re reading Misprint, you don’t care about improving your personal brand or leveraging next-gen collaborative web topologies. The key to maximizing your free booze opportunities lies in convincing your fellow attendees that you truly are on the bleeding edge of new media. Fortunately for you, coming up with futile SXSW Interactive concepts is about as difficult as coming up with a plot for Alien 5. The dumber your idea, the better. So even if your jillion-dollar startup is really just iDong, a wobbly semi-flaccid dick application for your iPhone, as long as you describe it as “a wholly novel synergistic approach to phallocentric mobile platforms” you’ll be laughing all the way to the open bar. Looking the Part
Dress code: denim, more denim, mock tees, halfassed goaters, Matrix-style cassocks, brass goggles and those dumb sneakers with the individual toes are in. Ties, correctly fitting pants and being female are all totally out. There are only four girls there and they’re either on the clock, reluctantly dating some venture capitalist, or the ceo of eBay. Any way you slice it, they’re not interested in you. But all the dudes who recognize you as one of their own will be that much more likely to cut you in on their sweet stash of promotional usb drives. Sticking to the grueling schedule.
If your employed friends ever talk about conferences, it usually implies experts exchanging critical ideas. Fortunately for you, SXSWi has about as much relevant technology discourse as the average 6-year-old’s birthday party at Chuck
E. Cheese. There is no illusion about trying to accomplish anything more meaningful than getting fucked up with @ev and @biz. All the “content” starts at 11am, ends at noon and leaves you with plenty of time for a few margaritas at lunch. And the exhibition hall starts pouring at 3pm, so that leaves plenty of time to get intoxicated and make some really bad decisions in First Life. The Part Where You Blog About Doing Something
After about 30 minutes of free beer, you inevitably learn what every SXSWi attendee must: Web hipsters are even worse than the regular kind, because their inflated sense of self-importance extends beyond the “scene” and onto the entire internet. Worse, even with that free taco in hand, you still feel like you’re stuck in the comments section of Kanye's blog, except it's real life and you can’t just start some anonymous flamewar. After three beers, you’ll be so sick of talking about the internet that given the chance, you would enter the World Code and destroy technology forever, just like Snake Plissken did at the end of Escape from LA (Hint: The code is 666.) So if you still feel the need to “synergize citizen media hash-tag clouds” over a delicious Miller Lite, by all means go for it. Just remember you might be better off at home with some oldfashioned low-tech shit: a case of Lonestar, a little weed and some analog pornography. Besides, you probably want to rest up for SXSW Music, where at least it's the same beardo assholes you’re used to dealing with. h
The Annotated Misprint Bar Tab 2010 Beard and Moustache Competition
Upcoming Shows Wed March 17: Strange Powers, Midstates and Choir of Ghosts, The See, Bloody Knives Thur March 18: Ugly Elephants, The Slants, Spain Colored Orange, The Mussels Fri March 19: Ugly Elephants, Betaplayer, Miracle Dolls Sat March 20: Introverb, Rich and the Obits, Blue Chanel Jazz, World Racketeering Squad 1213 Corona Drive • nomadbar.com
Welcome to Austin, Asshole One of the testaments to the mythos of Misprint Magazine is that people seem to think we put out a SXSW issue every year, despite the fact we've completely ignored this bullshit since 2007. The only reason we're doing it now is because we ran out of money and need the expanded ad revenue to pay for our 10,000 gallon squid tank/underwater gentlemen's club and a couple burritos with real meat in them. I know this issue will be larger than our usual readership of 20, so I want to take this moment to speak directly to you, the reader, reading this very article. If you are reading these words and are here from out of town, I sincerely hope you leave as soon as possible. Until then, here are a few handy Austin tidbits to get you through your week. Alcohol is Hard to Come By
Since this isn’t much of a drinking town, you can drink with confidence knowing you are absolutely paying the local's price for alcohol. Scrupulous downtown bar owners (who are definitely not affiliated with Lebanese organized crime) would never dream of taking advantage of pleasant, simple folks from New York City partying on an expense account. Party at the Moontower
Austin's remaining 16 moontowers (arranged in the shape of a slightly erect penis) are the only remnants of Central Texas's 19th century steampunk party scene. Even though you can't tether your dirigible to them anymore and the brass bongs got replaced with a shirtless Matthew McConaughey jamming the bongos, the parties still happen and are an authentic alternative to the fake-Vietnamese energy drink Moontower party last year. Ghosts
Unbeknownst to everyone, Austin is one of the most haunted cities in America. There are tons of ghosts hanging out downtown this very minute, just waiting to be hunted. One night, my thermographic camera led me to Cheers Shot Bar where a really pale and creepy ghost kept trying to communicate with me. Apparently, he wanted me to complete some sort of task, which turned out to be downing a couple of Dirty Girl Scouts with him and his ghost bros.
Stay Off the East Side
I read on the side of an electrical box that yuppies should not venture to the East Side. Since electrical boxes are city property, whatever is written on them must be true. So not much is known about the ominous land east of I-35, but it has been told that it is inhabited by fierce bands of smelly bike messengers fueled by inexpensive yet mouth-watering breakfast tacos. Mixed-Used Developments Throw the Hottest Parties
If you find yourself shut out of the totally sick Cockbeat Records showcase at the Mohawk and start to feel glum, fret not. Insiders know the real SXSW party is in the reasonably affordable loft-like dwelling across the street. If you take ten of your buddies and jump on the parking garage entrance sensor, you will be magically transported to a verdant paradise full of ferns, hourly Erik Estrada sightings, hyper-intelligent super-simian bartenders and perpetual Eurodisco. Do Touch the Bats
Austin is home to the world’s only domesticated free-tailed bat colony. If you ever find yourself lost in the 2nd Street Shopping District, just give the highest-pitched whistle you can and wait a few moments. Several friendly bats will alight upon your head and gently guide you to safety. The bats are completely disease-free and also, quite cuddly. And surprisingly good around small children. h
Mexican SXSW As hip as: Slamming timed shots with Lou Diamond Phillips. Comments: There is only one better place than jail to start your hangover and that’s on a red-eye bus to Mexico. That’s why I trust Todd P. He’s from Brooklyn. He knows this SXSW thing is pretty much played. Too bad SXSoftheBorder sounds like a great way to ruin an otherwise killer drug trip through Mexico. Who wants bargain-basement Austin bands and the same degenerate assholes you see on Red River spoiling your vacation? I've got no sympathy for the dudes who end up in Monterrey with no toothbrush and their Beerland tab still wide open.
Rodeo As hip as: Riding the zipper with Hannah Montana. Comments: The thing that’s so great about a rodeo is that you just show up to get loaded and leave with a comprehensive pile of sire catalogs and your own live longhorn. Since it's basically just SXSW for rednecks, you'll feel right at home in your $300 western shirt and real-tree camouflage cap. Rodeo clowns? BBQ cookoffs? Spurs? Getting fucked up and trading web-development consults for a milk goat has never been this rewarding. Rating:
Rating:
spring break 2010, bitches! Tour With Your Band As hip as: Beating your drum machine at I Spy. Comments: Believe it or not, live music grinds to a halt in LA, NY and Portland during SXSW. I'm sure most of the live music die hards who don’t care enough about music to go to Austin are probably fucking stoked at the chance to see some act in the bottom 30th percentile of the Austin rock scene who couldn’t even get a gig at the Napster showcase. Rating:
Master Cleanse As hip as: The Misprint Sober Bar Crawl. Comments: Living on lemonade and cayenne pepper isn’t really any more unreasonable than your usual diet of beer and cigarettes. Except detox is complete bullshit. While cleansing, you’re destroying your body with the whole no food thing and worse, annoying the shit out of friends with your self-righteous hippy pseudo-science. Your friends will no doubt be quick to rightly mock your pointless self-induced sobriety, so it's important to remind them that you are totally caught up on Lost and that fasting made your dick get wider. Rating:
LAME <-----------------------------------------------------------------------------> AWESOME
people who fought the predator The Girl That High Fived the Predator in AvP
Carl Weathers
Danny Glover
Dutch
Alien
Finish that Master’s Thesis As hip as: Birdwatching on trucker speed. Comments: You owe it to yourself (and to Will Sheff) to crack the books and finish up that ethnomusicology degree that you started in 2001. While everyone else is out shotgunning Joose and tearing their wrist bands off too early, you can be bullshitting your way through the last 32 pages of your tragically futile life's work with a level of disinterest rivaled only by your attendance at last year's free Echo and the Bunnymen show. Rating:
That “Other Music Festival” As hip as: Showing your Leader-1 tattoo to Michael Bay. Comments: Say you’re a regular Austin bro. You write software, live in the Riata condos off 183 and sorta think live music is alright. You decide to check out this SXSW thing, only to find a billion blazered oldsters shutting you out of your usual spots. Fortunately for you, there’s the Red Gorilla Fest, a nonaffiliated SXSW-lite music festival in choice nonaffiliated venues like The Chugging Monkey and The Gagging Guppy. It’s a great way to approximate the oppressive sounds and smells of SXSW-proper without any of the cost, hassle or associated cool. You settle for a biker band playing ZZ Top covers instead of the Stone Temple Pilots, but is it really all that different? Rating:
anybody want to party? “Alternative” Spring Break As hip as: Saving yourself for marriage. Comments: There's nothing better than spending a week rocking that trusty old flannel and reconnecting with some bros, some brews and some Dinosaur Jr. bootlegs. Except you’re bound for a shock when you get out to fucking West Virginia or wherever and find your retreat group is a lot less Reality Bites and a little more Veggie Tales. Even worse, no one is high and you're on a ropes course next to a dude with an MXPX tattoo. Worst spring break ever. Rating:
SXSPadre As hip as: Beach-camping next to an oil refinery. Comments: Fed up with the soul-crushing bleakness of seeing Emo’s in natural light? Then it’s time to trade hand sanitizer for cocoa butter and hit the sunny sands of South Padre. Just imagine: pristine beaches, nubile coeds, shit tons of Nattys and not a band in sight. And you can bodysurf! You should probably spend most of the night at the Beer Bong Showcase, but try to sneak over to the Wet T-shirt Expo Hall because that's where the Jäger girls hang out. Rating:
House Swap In Europe As hip as: Soliciting a prostitute at Legoland. Comments: Thanks to the inverted, fucked up economy created by SXSW, for exactly one week per year your shitty Austin rent house is somehow an even trade for a luxurious flat in the old country. While you’re enjoying your time on the continent, try not to think about the eight pissed off Belgians sleeping on the dirt floor of your shed because there was "some confusion" about the size of your home. Just explain that you were trying to give them an authentic Austin experience and you have no fucking idea how big a “square metre” is. Rating:
The Misprint SXSW Survival Kit Misprint proudly presents the indisputable, all-encompassing package for a totally mediocre, yet successful, South by Southwest. Once you're armed with this survival kit, your entrance to any party is guaranteed by simply walking through the load-in door. One note: this is not to scale. Don't look to me to tell you how to get a grappling hook and a goat in a fucking guitar case.
2
1
1
Shit tons of beer. Waiting in line for free beer is a sucker move. Either pay the $4 or bring your own.
2
Drink tickets of every color. No poor, overwhelmed bartender can keep track of whatever lame Bushwick Freegan Asshole Touch Me Party is going on and will take whatever ticket is handed to him.
3
Wristbands of every color. Wrap them up and down your wrist and whenever you see a marketing director with an RSVP clipboard at the club entrance just wave your arm like you're trying shake off the last scrap of your dignity and walk on in.
4
Pimm's No. 1. Local Shit Beer can adequately fuel 90% of your bad decisions, but if you find an open parking garage door leading to the garden rooftop VIP wankfest (which you will, trust me) that calls for celebrating with something a bit more refined.
5
Apples. You're seriously not going to eat nothing but breakfast tacos and pizza for ten days, are you? Hollow out an otherwise useless apple, smoke up and hope you can absorb some of those sweet antioxidants.
6
Hand sanitizer. Nothing like a sunny spring day to illuminate the absolutely deplorable conditions of your favourite Red River hangout.
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12
11
4
10
6
5
9 3
7 8
7
White bar towel. The only line worse than the free beer line is the bathroom line. Shove this in your back pocket, pretend it's your shift, cut the line and promise the irate masses you'll make it up with some four second pours.
10
Mag light. Perfect if you're lost and scared at 4am on the eastside. It also sort of looks like a lightsaber, which might land you one of those Slave Leias hanging out with all those dorks in stormtrooper costumes at the io9 party.
8
Tooth brush. Pro tip: the edge of a coaster is not a substitute for proper oral hygiene.
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9
A goat. It will eat every single shitty promo CD, flyer or novelty candle that gets shoved your way. Also, you need a goat to execute a goating: tossing a goat over the walls of a packed club for hilarious results.
Crocodile Mile. There's always going to be one blisteringly hot day during SXSW. Just make sure your buddy doesn't try to do a line of cocaine down the Crocodile Mile, because he'll probably break his damn neck.
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Stunt kite. Stunt kites are totally bitching.
13
Grappling hook and rope. No, this is not to be used to scale the walls of some stupid exclusive party. It's for hooking the DJ booth and tying the other end to a Lonestar truck and being responsible for Shepard Fairey's last DJ gig ever.
SXSW Timeline (Projected) ATTENDING SXSW
NOT ATTENDING SXSW
Eat a breakfast taco.
9 am
Eat a breakfast taco.
Drink a Lonestar and smoke a pack of cigarettes.
10 am
Get my car inspected.
Become the mayor of Shittown, Austin (aka Beerland) on 4SQ.
11 am
Start to log into Twitter. Immediately change mind.
Annual visit to Red Eyed Fly. Still sucks.
12 pm
Crate dig at Cheapo's.
Throw up.
1 pm
Work on my novel.
Slamdance in the pit at Emo's, down two J채ger shots.
2 pm
Play some Fri'golf.
Ghostride the MySpace bus.
3 pm
Take a dip in the springs.
Free beer line at Fader Fort turns out to be the free "sandblast your own raw denim" line.
4 pm
Smoke a bowl and watch Crank 2.
Eat five ice cream sandwiches at the French Legation.
5 pm
File my tax return.
Take a shit at Latitude 30.
6 pm
Edit the Wikipedia entry for the Svaalbard seedvault.
Annual visit to Buffalo Billiards. Still sucks.
7 pm
Eat a salad and some hummus.
Listen to five LA record executives talk about Miller Lite.
8 pm
Give my mom a call and say hi.
Brush my teeth at Prague.
9 pm
Listen to Live at Leeds on expensive headphones.
Wait for Stone Temple Pilots to get on stage.
10 pm
Watch Scott Weiland masturbate on Chatroulette.
Sneak into the Cockbeat Records showcase with Jortfire Media credentials.
11 pm
SHOWER TIME!
Drink 14 Red Rockets out of a traffic cone with Frodo Baggins.
12 am
Read Gravity's Rainbow to fall asleep.
Get "Taco Time" knuckle tatts.
1 am
Sleep (on back).
Whippits with Zooey Deschanel at the chop shop next to Side Bar.
2 am
Flip pillow over to get the cold side.
Dump a pound of salt on Steve Aoki's laptop so nothing will ever grow again.
3 am
Dream about an exotic mermaid.
Look for Courtney Love underneath the Pedestrian Bridge.
4 am
Get a drink of water.
Cry.
5 am
Sleep (left side).
No, I don't know where any fucking cocaine is.
6 am
Hug my second pillow.
Chooglin' in an eastside shed.
7 am
Cuddle my stuffed cuttlefish.
Wake up in a goat pen to a goat caressing my face.
8 am
Wake up to natural light caressing my face.
Eat a breakfast taco.
9 am
Eat a breakfast taco.
SXSW Cut-Outs
A few more fun, helpful items to get you through the week.
BLOTTER ACID: LICK HERE
One Large Condom
CONDOM PLATINUM BADGE
(Your Name Here)
Senior Social Media Consultant 2411 East MLK Blvd. Austin, Texas 78702 512 476 5223 hollaback@jortfiremedia.com Firing your brand. Shitting your jorts.
BUSINESS CARD
EMO'S STAMP: QUICKLY PRESS WRIST HERE
WRISTBAND
The Cruel Calculus of SXSW Contrary to popular belief, downtown bars just don't double the price of all their drinks. There's a method to the madness behind the seemingly arbitrary SXSW drink pricing. Crack Misprint mathematicians have finally uncovered the secret equation behind the price of your fucking beer.
$3 +
Lonestar
ℓ × Ω × ∂ × ¤(••) × ¥ €×n×µ
×
≈ $6
we don’t love to hate. we hate what we love.
SXSW Lonestar
ℓ = number of blogworthy bands on today's bill Ω = wearing sunglasses inside? (1: no ; 5: yes) ∂ = number of portable electronic devices you're currently fucking with ¤ = blood alcohol content •• = number of testicles you have ¥ = zipcode (in miles from 78702) € = amount of cocaine done by bartender (in hectares) n = length of beard (in metres) µ = how well the bartender knows you (1: first name ; 2: first and last name ; 4: home address) = Misprint constant we don’t love to hate. we hate what we love.
Worst Misprint Ideas Ever We're pretty dialed-in most of the time, but even Misprint has been known to make a few mistakes. During this momentous season of the year (and with our 5-year anniversary fast approaching) we thought we'd spend a half-page dwelling on our most spectacular failures.
Hiring a shitty ZZ Top cover band (with fake beards) for the first Misprint Beard & Moustache Competition. Those first two years when we gave a shit. The Beerland lock-in. That seventh shot on Saturday. Buying dickmyjorts.com. Article about brocabulary from 2007. Misprint personal ads. Hiring a male intern. Buying 50,000 bees on the internet.
Not fighting The Arm when they tried to jump us outside of Plush at 2am. Calculating the volume of the cupholder in Nick's minivan while trying not to throw up on the way home from Pflugerville. Booking shows at Flamingo Cantina. The off-off-white center spread in the first acl issue. Hiring a facepainter for the Summer Jortacular. Those Voxtrot tattoos. Trusting that people wouldn't steal our banners after blacking out and leaving the Mohawk. Starting this shitty magazine.
Misprint doesn't care about a
single band at sxsw this year. But because this is sort of the sxsw issue and people continue to think we're a real magazine, we feel obligated to write a few words about all those cruddy bands. However, the idea of rendering a bunch of fighter planes and having them battle each other sounds much more satisfying to us. So, you're getting the two combined here. Fuck all y'all.
CHEAP TRICK
Zombie Eaters This year’s “secret” Sword tribute performance features Austin’s finest Doobie Award-winning ax-wielding half-orc paladins playing a set of Faith No More covers. If you don’t know how Misprint feels about this (or if you think I’m not going to be there with a thousand hairy dudes and a one-hitter) you’ve either never read Misprint before or you didn’t see the big fucking tentacle on the cover.
Is it possible for anyone to be remotely excited about this band? They have the worst "famous" logo of all time that looks more like the sign above a porno bookstore/sandwich shop than anything rock 'n roll. And the five neck guitar that one dude plays? Filling the roster out with four corn-fucker rhythm guitarists from the Illinois bar circuit would be less embarrassing.
JAPAN NIGHT If you want to know what the future looks like, just go to Japan Night at Elysium right now. The Japanese are already ten years ahead and offering a peak at all the hot shit their slower, dumber Western ally will eventually adopt. Get ready for 3-sleeved shirts, advanced sex robotics, square watermelons, panty vending machines, extreme tentacle porn and khaki dickpants.
STONE TEMPLE PILOTS
THE XX After watching these totally boring goth C-grade Limey primary school Foot Locker employees mope through their show late last year, I can't help but think that I would have been more entertained watching them cobble together their set list whilst eating beans-ontoast rather than seeing them actually perform.
The first time around, STP was nothing but a band-aid to tide me over between Pearl Jam records. But now Scott Weiland is out of rehab and has nothing better to do than call up the poor, broken dudes in his old band to come party with him and his 12-step sponsor Courtney Love. I've seen the Behind the Music and I think it's pretty bogus that a guy who's sold 41 million records went to jail for smoking crack. Even Whitney Houston avoided the clink. And Scott, just in case you pick this up in the gutter outside of your tour bus, I want to state for the record that Velvet Revolver sucked my mossy balls.
Demolished Thoughts I want to have high hopes for this Thurston Moore, J Mascis and Andrew WK collaboration because all three of these dudes are pretty righteous. But here’s the thing: First, supergroups have always sucked. Damn Yankees? Audioslave? Weaker than celebrity DJs. Worse, J and Thurston are going to be stoned to the bejeezus and want to fuzz out some extended drone jams while Andrew WK is going to want to pound Guinness and snort amphetamines and do karate kicks. There’s a reason cokeheads and stoners don’t hang out, and that’s the same reason this project reeks of lame.
MUSE If Metacritic were a dude, he'd have a giant boner for Muse, the world’s most perfectly inoffensive band. Muse is rock designed by committee. It’s having your amps turned up to five. It's all the okay tracks from a sort-of-okay record. It's all the things you don’t hate about bands that you sort of like. If you blend these totally mediocre elements together, what comes out is a bitchingly average soundtrack for an extremely statistically normal sort of hip urbanish 30-something. So if that’s your thing, you'll probably really slightly enjoy this band.
DAMAGE PANTS The Pants are playing Jaime's Spanish Village on Saturday, March 20, 2010 at 5pm. They are awesome. I'm going to be there eating a shitty taco, breastfeeding and ignoring all the rest of these crappy bands.
SHE + HIM The only reason this "band" is noteworthy is because 5,000 dudes will show up hoping to have sex with Zooey Deschanel. And news to every bleary-eyed 20-year-old fawning over 500 Days of Summer: it was the exact same thing when Garden State dropped, and now that shit is just embarrassing. No offense to M. Ward (who was probably super bummed that the singer from Death Cab lost all that weight and now gets to bone Lady Z) but go back to what you do best: wearing your baseball hat and cutting lo-fi jammers with Yim Yames.
Okkervil River + Roky EriCkson Have you ever read a John Updike novel and wished it were a little more Carlos Casteneda? If so, you’ve probably watched Okkervil River and wished you could dose that band with a shit ton of Misprint blotter acid and just wait for things to get weird. Since Will Sheff’s devoted staff won’t let me anywhere near their sandwich platter anymore, we’ll have to make do with ice cream enthusiast/Austin’s druggiest native son to bring the strange.
Man or Astroman? I saw some singing Tesla coils last year during SXSWi, but even with 2-foot sparks it was totes boring. But if it’s “Tesla's Incredible Elektro Ray Furnace” and it’s backing the deep south’s finest surf nerds, for the first time in FOREVER there’s a reunion worth getting excited about. Starcrunch and Coco the Electronic Monkey Wizard flew all the way back from fucking Jupiter or wherever and with a little luck they brought some wonky televisions, ill-fitting labcoats and a giant ray gun to fry the non-believers.
Old Bar/New Bar Keeping up with the dizzying changes in the Austin nightlife scene feels like a full-time job. Fortunately, there are a handful of immutable truths you can always count on: your band sucking and your favorite bar eventually shutting its vomit-stained doors for good. It pains me to do this, but some credit has to be given to all those idiots who run those West 6th St. bars. You know, the ones that get rebranded every few years when tastes change and the love for Clockwork Orange set design, kung-fu saloons or fetid shark corpses starts to wane. But that part of town is simply content to keep the perpetual motion machine of shitty watering holes alive. Red River and the eastside, however, are under a constant onslaught of hipper, newer, more gentrified, further east bars. Sadly, Misprint has witnessed some that have gone the way of the brontosaur only to be promptly replaced by new warm-blooded mammals with bank accounts. 710
Valhalla
Iron Gate
Iron Gate
In the spirit of true Red River innovation, the folks at Valhalla really shook things up by taking the bold step of moving the pool tables from one side of the bar to the other. But the only really important change was one Misprint has been advocating for years: Ending Live Music. Cheers to them for doing what the smoking ban, an aggressive campaign from an influential local media outlet and literally thousands of performances from terrible bands could never achieve. Their reward will be hanging out at the legendary round bar of Valhalla with Amplified Heat for all eternity.
Hiring a guy with neck tattoos to work the door and serving Tecates out of a cooler doesn’t really count as a "grand reopening", bros. Perhaps no change of management better captures this city’s twin spirits of eastside gentrification and profound apathy than the rebranding of the Iron Gate. They didn’t even bother changing the jukebox. Turns out all it takes to replace tattooed Tejano bikers with tattooed fixiebro bikers is to stop serving Bud Light and charge more for drinks. Jamming Los Tigres del Norte has never felt so ironic.
Da Mail Box
Austin sci-fi fans were crushed by last year’s tragic closing of Spiros, once one of downtown’s trillest spots. For months, the thousands of Austinites who watched Avatar and wished they were tall, blue and on Pandora had to endure their crippling depression alone. Fortunately for us all, there is now Encore, the world’s first Avatar cosplay bar. Named for an anagram of Ne’ Reco, the 6-legged horse ridden into battle by Neytiri, the revamped interior features 12-foot doors and bioluminescent urinals making it the perfect adult playground for you to live out your wildest Na’vi fantasies. Best of all, the entire bar is actually in 3-D so the Lonestars look like they’re coming right at you.h
Barbarella
Despite the fact da legendary Mail Box was open for about as long as it takes to mail a letter across town, Austin’s first hangout exclusively for disgruntled postal workers is sorely missed. Who could ever forget the barstool hanging above the bar signed by Cliff Clavin from Cheers and the interminable lines for everything? This makes the juxtaposition of the staid, reliable efficiency of the U.S. Postal Service with Barbarella’s den of depraved 20-year-old nubile alcoholic beard fetishists even more jarring. I might be showing my age here, but all I want is a comfortable place to buy stamps and register for selective service without feeling like I’m in a theoretical American Apparel commercial. Is that too much to ask?
Spiros
Encore
we don’t love to hate. we hate what we love.
It's rare that Misprint gets a chance to meet a true Austin icon. But one sunny Saturday while out cruising for chicks at the Triangle's dog run we ran into Bob Schneider! Lucky for us, he was on a break from editing his own Wikipedia page and took a moment to talk to us about cephalopods, being really, really awesome and Jay Trachtenberg's mossy balls.
Misprint: So your new record, Lovely Creatures, has moms humming along in their hybrid minivans all over the country. Some are saying it’s your best record yet. What inspires Bob Schneider? Matt McConaughey’s abs? Queso? Grunge? Schneider: You know, life, love, being a dad. My songs aren't autobiographical at all. I try to imagine myself into situations and write about that. M: Do you think that's how Britt Daniel does it? S: I have no idea. M: Have you ever written a song and then said, “Wow, that's really gay, maybe I should try to sell it to Chris Martin or someone?” S: I do a lot of writing and I try to toss the turds, but every once in a while a turd pops through. Most of the time though, whenever I write something I just get that feeling that it’s
really, really great. And most of the time, it is. I'm not even sure what you mean by a “gay” song. M: Nevermind, let’s talk about the new album cover. What’s with the squid and weak beard and the 70's porn backlighting? S: I actually hadn't thought about it. The design team who does my records said that kids like squids now. I think it’s all right. M: It has nothing to do with rumours circulating around the blogosphere that you’ve been injecting black-market cephalopod cartilage into your genitals to treat your erectile dysfunction? S: What? No. M: Speaking of kids, I heard you’re part of some kind of "cool dads club" around town, could you tell us a bit about that? S: Sure. Me and Matt Bearden and Lance and a couple of other
dudes get together at Amy's Ice Cream and drink beer and talk about how awesome our kids are. Usually Matt gets drunk first and makes Sandra Bullock jokes, so we prank call Sandra a few times. Then we just go back to smoking weed and playing Xbox and listening to Lance talk about himself. M: Sounds pretty killer. You built your career here in Austin. What was it like trying to make a name for yourself here in the 1980's? Did Jay Trachtenberg really have moss on his balls? S: It was the 90's and Jay had really clean balls back then. Aeilli was the one you had to watch out for. He was always doing naked yoga in Studio 1A. It was a different town then. I was playing with the Scabs, who were actually a bunch of Sunday school teachers who thought it was fun to pretend to be “boozer ruffiantypes”. Tito's Vodka hadn't been invented yet, people actually liked live music here and the town wasn't full of tattooed people.
M: You've said before that you can't tour with the Scabs anymore because you "get into too much trouble"? Could you define "trouble"? Do you mean like banging old punk rock chicks with stretched out tattoos or having the van searched for parking too close to an elementary school? S: What? Nothing like drugs and shit. And it was just a coincidence we were always parked in school zones. I really am running out of time... M: Just a couple more. Any idea how far you want to take this thing? Is Bob Schneider trying to be the next Spoon? S: No, I'm Bob Fucking Schneider and thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fine with me. M: I should mention that I was talking with Britt a couple of weeks ago and he said you need to shave that half-assed beardshadow thing. He also said he could beat you at skee-ball.
S: No way, he's a huge pussy. Last time I saw Britt he was wasted and he tried to slap me with a glove. So I dangled him off a balcony by his scarf. M: He also told me he caught the "Pussy Fever" from you. I love that song by the way. S: I guess that's possible? M: Do you want to play our SXSW day party? S: Is it at Antone's?
M: Uh, no? S: Well, then no. M: You've been all over the country with your little bands, what's your favorite city to play? S: OKC, baby, Oklahoma City. No question. It's God's country up there. When I retire I'm moving to Oklahoma. h
Free Shit We Got
A thinly veiled attempt, disguised as journalism, to score more free promotional hogwash.
Thrills, Chills and Bone-Crunching Spills Contact High Five
I’m going to come right out and say it. This is the best goddamn seven inch I’ve ever heard. Here’s why: 1. The cover has Truckosaurus with a giant robot dick (and gas can testicles) fucking an SUV while shooting flames out of his nose. At the same time, some dude on a trike is jumping into the giant fucking robot while a huge piece of artillery shoots beer cans at him. If you like StABBA, Austin’s finest punk rock ABBA cover band, you’ll love Contact High Five, mostly because it’s all the same dudes. And even though I would rather have StABBA play every single one of my wholesome family events for the rest of my life than listen to this record again, I’ll back these guys. Their frontman is one of the best bartenders in Austin and just like an alchemist can turn the most common can of berry-flavoured Joose into pure unicorn piss. Stop by the Brixton on weeknights before nine and ask for a Jooseldorf. Tell 'em Misprint sent you.
Send us your free shit! Misprint Magazine c/o the Side Bar
For reals. Drop that shit off at the Side Bar.
Skull Salesman
Their story begins like most bands: a retired matchbook seller solicits a 12-year-old drum prodigy on Craigslist and convinces a master jeweler/member of What Made Milwaukee Famous to cut out the mom rock and come along for the ride. The result is Salesman, jangling psychedelic fuzzed-out folk with a frontman whose “stage pants” are so tight it makes me cringe to even think about compressing my genitals to such an extreme. Even better, their new CD is totally Etsy-ed out. These kids jury-rigged some kind of record lathe and employed a tongue-amputated eunuch to take on the crushingly tedious task of hand-cutting a record groove onto the top of every CD. You can actually play the CD on your record player for an extra lo-fi jam that they swear will not fuck up your turntable. I have to admit it shows a handmade ethos and dedication to their craft. It reminded me of the old days when each issue of Misprint was a labour of love, as opposed to today where I just sip Pimms’ while half-assedly “supervising” the staff of underage interns who actually produce all this shitty content. It actually made me listen to this album rather than just throwing it out like I would have under normal circumstances. The record is about a mythical Robin Hood figure arm-wrestling a Danish alien abductee for his prized collection of cow skulls while listening to the Misfits box set. Or something.
Gossip! Gossip! Gossip! Cedar Park cannot be stopped! Our considerably less weird neighbour to the north already had a lot going for it with top-notch public schools, affordable tract housing and a Cheddar’s on the 183 access road. After luring away Austin’s shit-hot minor league hockey scene, the city council launched a real shot across the bow with their very own Dad-friendly live music venue, The Cedar Park Amphitheater. Now, Cedar Park (better known as New South Waco) has set their sights on that final bastion of Austin cool: watersports enthusiasts. The geniuses behind Schlitterbahn recently announced a new adult-themed water park and conference center. Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy has already signed on for the grand opening, where he will perform a solo acoustic set while boogie-boarding on the Lazy River. ------------------------------------------------------------After one too many awkward encounters in LA porno theaters, Chris “I’m a reformed longhair spoon-player turned John Varvatos pinup boy” Cornell and Kim "I roll joints the size of teenaged dugongs and party with Sunn0)))" Thaiyl have decided to bury the hatchet and get Soundgarden back together. Naturally, insiders report they’re going to shake that rusty cage at Stubb's as "special guests" this SXSW. Even though Cornell has a closet full of $800 cardigans, wager even money that homeboy won't be wearing a shirt his entire time in Austin. ------------------------------------------------------------Prominent ‘zine “The New York Times” recently profiled everyone’s favourite former Austin homewreckers/mainstays of the Portland vegan airstream cocaine trade Spoon. After being named “Most Critically Acclaimed Band of the 00’s" and releasing their platinum-selling Eurodisco epic "Transference", frontman Britt Daniel went on to completely alienate their Austin fanbase by emphatically declaring in the pages of the Times that “This beard shit is over. Spoon is not, nor will ever be, beard rock.” This led to thousands of disgruntled bearded Spoon fans gathering for a ritual burning of well-worn copies of “Kill The Moonlight” in the Emo’s Courtyard.
With world famous “gay-friendly cabaret” Beerland shutting its doors for good this summer, Austin’s nascent queer punk scene appeared to be without a home. Fortunately, downtown mainstay Red7 has chosen to abandon their communist metal aesthetic and adopt a gay sailor/homoerotic pirate theme. Red7 principal Johnny Sarkis told insiders, “we’re sick of catering to the old Ritz crowd and we really want to clean the bathrooms.” To celebrate the changeover, Sarkis has booked gay punk legends Pansy Division, The Dicks and the recently out-of-the-closet Riverboat Gamblers. ----------------------------------------------------------Early accounts of Robert Rodriguez’s Predator reboot continue to sound more or less like the raddest shit of all time. Fighting the Predator this time around is a cadre of ruthless badasses including a Yakuza enforcer, a Mexican drug cartel hitman, a frightening Russian man-bear and an accountant-type whose unassuming façade masks a dangerous secret. An insider reports that four truckloads of cow bones were purchased on Craigslist and hauled onto the 51st Street set for a recreation of the Predators' home planet. And if that doesn’t make you shit your jorts I have three words: Arnold cameo, chubies. ----------------------------------------------------------Representatives from the Misprint PO Box (aka The Side Bar) confirmed that they are in fact taking over the adjacent, disused chop shop on 7th Street and turning it into the world’s first combination five minute oil-change/shot bar. Customers can enjoy a variety of automotivethemed cocktails in the colors and consistency of various automotive fluids. Tentatively named “The Side Car” it will feature the same friendly foursecond pours of antifreeze you’ve come to expect from The Side Bar. h