- Band Marino
- Rachel goldstar
- Tunng
- Eagles Of Death Metal
- Scott Biram
- The Mother Truckers
- The Boy Least Likely To
- Blase Debris
- Ex-Girl
- Black Moses
- Hot 8
- Tim Fite
- Zolar X
- Devin The Dude
- Mad Staring Eyes
- Mystery Jets
- Red Volkaert and Cindy Cashdollar
- Last Of The V8s |
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 F & F |
The Manager
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R D RR. 16th March, Happy birthday Monsiuer Fontaine! As the clocked turned 2am, I realised that I was no longer with anyone I knew and the bar was kicking me out. Drunk, and therefore needing a drink, I staggered through the streets of Austin in the hope of...something. This is where I bumped into these two chaps: Farzad and Farbod, 2 radio djs from Atlanta Georgia I believe, and the missing Marx Brothers. I asked them if they knew if there were any parties going on and just as the word "no" was leaving their lips, some girl came up and invited us all to a party. Horah. My birthday was saved. Sort of. We walked for a while until we came upon an apparent Super-club and stood in line until we realised that not only did everyone need to have a name on the guestlist, but they also needed some kind of novelty key around their neck. This did not bode well but I informed the boys of the ol' "Hi, I'm from England and I work for channel 4 (or 5 sometimes for a real laugh) and we have full permission to film here for an important documentary" line. That didn't flow with the woman at the door so I sneakily had a look at a name on the guestlist and murmered that. I think that due to the amount of alcohol I'd drunk since 11am that day, the look wasn't quite so sneaky, and my sudden name change didn't sound convincing. I was beginning to despair when the bouncer took me aside and informed that I couldn't film inside without a managers ok, so I needed to wait there while he radioed her, woop woop! Sweet, the idiot doorman saves the day! After about 10 minutes of waiting for the manager to come out, I had whined at him enough to let us into the lobby bit of the club. We were told not to move an inch until she came and that he was watching us. We walked into the club and this place was amazing, man. All the bars had free drinks and it was massive. We began exploring a bit, and had just come across the outdoor basketball section of the club, when a woman approached me and asked if I was Danny Fontaine, shooting for channel 4. Of course I was! turns out she is the manager and would love to give us a guided tour of the club! Awesome. I have Farzad and Farbod filming behind me and grabbing free drinks as we go, and we get taken around one of the most fantastical clubs I've ever been in. They have one room with a huge plasma screen that's actually got movement sensors built in, so that when you wave you arm in front of it, the images on the screen all move and swirl around accordingly. There is a circular room filled with weird synthesizers, full of effects and samples, and when the room is full of people you can hear the strangest music in the world! The club is pretty full and everyone is talking to anyone and I am drunk. Get in touch F & F. |
| This is a picture of myself and my ol' chums Jim and Zac of Black Moses. We ended up spending a lot of time with them, filming and drinking, and Zac ended up helping with a lot of the filming! These guys are the opitomy of Rock n Roll. In this particular instance we followed them to the Austin Hilton where they were led up to the penthouse suite for a live interview with KLBJ 93.7 radio. It was weird, there were these kinda porn-star-like girls strutting around in high heels and hotpants for no apparent reason at all, these huge leather massaging chairs, and this massive wall of famous peoples guitars. Very cool. They were of course quite drunk and we see Jim here holding a bottle of Guiness AND a bottle of whiskey. He managed to say "fuck" live on air and we all laughed a lot, well, Michelle and Ali and I did, everyone else just looked shocked and/or a bit angry. |
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When in Rome, do as the Romans. When in Texas, go to Allens boots on South Congress and max out your credit card on cowboy boots, shirt and a hat, then prance around like it's the way you always were. Seemed I was one of about 2 people in Austin that actually dressed like this. I think the other guy was English too.
The big guy is the tuba player from Hot 8 who were playing oustide the Continental club on the pavement: this was the beginning of what I started to find out about Anti-SXSW stuff, such as Fuck By Fuck You, and South by So What. This is the people from Austin kicking back against the amount of corporate stuff going on, and the fact that they have to pay $175 to get into their local bar! Fair enough really.
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| Kero! Kero! (Frog, frog) is the chant from Ex-Girl as they walk on stage in their fururistic robot outfits. I've been waiting all week to see them. Unfortunately I'm drunk and overtired and some absolute C*** is standing right behind me, slurring "we love you Ex-Girl" over and over and over again right in my ear. Ex-Girl have technical problems and spend about 30 minutes before they begin, trying to get equipment to work. I really want to punch this guy. He's a real sleazy pervy dude and he's big and I hate him. I watch Ex-Girls first 2 songs and then have to leave. What a C***. |
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This is myself standing behind Fyfe Dangerfield from the Guillemots. I like the Guillemots. I think they're gonna make it. We met them in the studio in London and the stuff I heard was really good, really kind of phil Spektor wall of sound stuff which I love. And they're always game for a laugh to. We interviewed them in a hotel in Austin and the spent most of it with their heads inside a silver serving dish lid. They had a bit of a crap time at sxsw I think, but they really did all the corporate stuff, I'm sure it'll pay off though. We followed them to this theatre where they were playing but ended up having to leave before they started. Not a complete waste of time though as this is the place where I found the wig and chainsaw pictured at the top of this page.
Hi Guillemots!
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| This is a picture of myself and Tim Fite. I love Tim Fite. I saw him in London supporting Buck 65 and he was awesome so we made sure we saw him again. After blagging backstage we had a couple of beers and waitined around until he and his brother came in. He agreed to do an interview and then proceeded to make me laugh solidly for about an hour. He's very good at English accents. We ended up playing an impromptu song on the piano together which might sound gay, but it wasn't. It was awesome. Hi Tim. |
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This is me with Red Volkhaert and Red the chicken, star of Ginny's Longhorn Saloon's "Chicken Shit Bingo." The rules are simple. Red (Volkhaert) plays some rockin country music - this week accompanied by the awesome Cindy cashdollar - and everyone in the bar buys a 2 dollar bingo ticket. Red (the chicken) is then brought into the bar and placed under a large cage on the pool table. The pool table has a board on which 54 numbers have been drawn. The board is covered in bird feed and as Red rocks on with his crazy guitar solos, Red begins to eat and eventually shit. Wherever the shit lands, the number wins $104, not bad! I have some extremely close up film footage if anyone's into that kind of stuff.
$1.50 Lone Stars all day. Nice.
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| This is myself and Happy Jack, well known in the Austin area for being...happy. I think his face must get tired though. He wasn't crazy or anything, had a pretty good chat with him actually. When sxsw finishes on Saturday night, the Austinites reclaim their town, and Sunday sees the Fullmoon Barn Dance at Slaughter Creek. We hitched out there, saw some great country music, played banjo by the creek, stroked a wild goat and then found ourselves in a thunderstorm with about 10 people under a makeshift shelter. Everyone else (literally the entire festival) had somehow managed to disappear immediately into the darkness and we realised that we were in the middle of Slaughter creek with 10 locals in the dark in the midst of a thunderstorm. Awesome. There was a guy there called Christopher Reeves who had fallen off a horse and paralysed himself when he was younger. He showed me his driving liscense to prove it. He had a tattoo of Superman on his arm. We were all shooting the crap, discussing the upcoming Kinky Friedman elctions for mayor of Texas, the evolution of the genetically modified Texan Giant Rat (seriously man, they bred these things to eat water weeds until the rats decided they preferred people's trash more - I saw one in the centre of Austin, they really are BIG, like a small dog, seriously), segregation, communes, and were just bordering on some slightly more uncomfortable topics of blood consumption when I decided to announce to the group that we needed a ride back to our hotel and that we were very sorry to put upon people like this etc etc. No one really said much to that, but one lady (who hadn't said a word all night) sort of mumbled something so that was fine. She was a bit weird. We got to her car but there was a box on the front seat and she told us to sit in the back. The back was completely filled with junk and the middle seats were down so we were sitting a good few metres back from where she was. This, and the raging thunderstorm meant that we couldn't hear a word she was saying. As the fear of death began to creep upon us we both (Michelle and I) burst out laughing. haha. She took us back to our hotel and we gave her 20 bucks which she took without quarrel. Thanks weird lady. |
 Happy Jack |
 The weird lady's car |
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This really was one of the craziest weeks of my life, man. Every 30 minutes I'd be somewhere new with people I'd just met, it was a proper adventure and FAR too much to write on this page. Like I said, I'm writing a book about the whole thing which goes in depth about the corporate and moral issues involving the conference, as well as loads of stories that happened to me and a load more photographs.
The MAIN thing however is the documentary which we are just about to start editing. If anyone is interested about finding out more than drop me a line.
If I met you in Austin and haven't been in touch then EMAIL ME, I'd love to hear from everyone again.
Danny Fontaine.
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