I had some great luck rolling the dice on a few bands I’d heard or read vague recommendations on Wednesday night. The best was Afrobots (pictured below), an L.A.-based dance-punk band that played some bad dance club as part of a showcase put on by the site/community board Afropunk.com. Their frontman was like a wild and unlikely cross between Biz Markie and Jello Biafra. He had one of the best lines of the night, too: “We got signed today but we’re already dropped tonight.”

Another adventurous band I caught was Bad Veins, a poppy but experimental duo from Cincinnati that somehow employed a reel-to-reel tape machine and a rotary phone receiver in its music. The singer actually sung into the phone’s handset, which was attached to a micrphone stand. As gimmicky as that sounds, he came off like a more high-strung Julian Casablancas.

Last but not least, Wyoming punk band Teenage Bottlerocket offered a refreshing respite from all the hipster-y bands in town. The classic skater-punk-sounding quartet counted off its songs Ramones-style and didn’t let up, cramming more songs into their alotted 45-minute set than most bands do in 90. In fact, one of its two frontmen apologized that it didn’t play the entire 45 minutes: “That’s a lot,” he said. That might be the first time a band has ever complained about having too much set time at SXSW.

For more SXSW coverage and photos by Tony Nelson, go here.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 13th, 2008 at 2:33 am and is filed under SXSW. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.