Austin, Part 2: In which we meet some Arctic Monkeys
Arctic Monkeys.
This band is absolutely tremendous. They play stadiums around the world. To see them in as intimate a setting as we did at The Moody Theater was something we’d never dreamed of.
Apparently the performance will be airing on PBS early next year (wtf?) but to give you an idea of what it was like you can check this video of another stupendous band, Pixies, playing the same venue back in ‘04:
Now compare that to the clip of Arctic Monkeys up top and you’ll see just how fortunate we were.
The Austin City Limits TV show is also quite noteworthy. It’s been around since 1974 and it’s featured countless legends of popular music, massive names like Stevie Ray Vaughan, Ray Charles, Willie Nelson, Paul McCartney, Pearl Jam, B.B. King, and the queen Etta James among many, many others.
After the set was over we stood outside of the venue trying to plan our next move. I was looking through the crowd dispersing out onto Willie Nelson Boulevard when our old friend Mikey Hiney popped out of the crowd. We met him at the curb and started discussing how fantastic the show had been. He told us he was now headed to a little spot across town where the touring keyboard player for Arctic Monkeys was supposedly going to play with his other project, Mini Mansions. He invited us to come if we cared to and we figured why the hell not so we followed him out toward east 6th street and one of the wildest scenes we’d come across in all of our travels.
Image via Stephen Spillman/ for the AMERICAN-STATESMAN
This place was quite like Bourbon Street, a closed off road of endless bars blasting bombastic music, college kids and local drunks pouring out into the streets shouting and laughing, a good old fashioned shitshow as they say. Gabby and I were surprised by this sudden wild scene.
“This area is shit,” Mikey told us.
After we cleared that spot, we came around a corner toward an a building with a sign that read “Barracuda” above the door.
Image via Barracudaaustin.com
This was the spot. We paid the entry fee and began buying rounds of beers and awaiting the headliner. There was a great band with a killer female vocalist opening for them. I was standing there, rather transfixed by the music, when Mikey urgently nudged me on the arm. I looked up to see Jamie Cook and Nick O’Malley, the guitarist and the bassist of Arctic Monkeys wandering in. My jaw dropped.
Look at these sexy rock gods. You know you’d crap your pants too.
I’ve written on here before concerning my contradictory feelings about meeting people I admire. The situation is awkward; you know them, they don’t know you. It’s just plain impossible to say anything that isn’t painfully uncool. You don’t want them to know you have their picture as the background on your phone, or that you know their birthday, or that you just kind of wish you were them, but it seeps out of every one of your pores and you reek horribly of it no matter what you do.
You simply can’t be cool about it, but when that artist or musician or whoever it is that you admire is standing just few feet away from you, I think you’d be an absolute fool to do anything but approach them and vomit out whatever asinine words of unrestrained adulation come to mind. So, that’s what I did, but not before Mikey dashed up and shook their hands and offered them drinks and played up his Irish accent to endear himself to them further (they’re from the U.K.), or at least that’s what he told me. I was still standing a few steps back slackjawed… and ready to humiliate myself.
When I went to approach them I probably-not-so-cleverly used the excuse of getting another round of beers. I turned to them as I was retrieving the beers and said something useless.
It went a bit like, “Hey…sounded great tonight, boys!”
“Sounded great tonight?”
“Boys?”
Just awful. Come on now, Patrick. I like to think you’re better than that.
Now, I’ve met a bunch of musicians whom I admire before, but none of them were even half as massively famous as Arctic Monkeys. This was made evident by the distinct difference in the way they reacted to me. They looked up almost in horror, knowing they’d been recognized and that their moment’s anonymity was in jeopardy. For a brief second they said absolutely nothing at all. They just stared. Finally, they came to and sort of mumbled a few pleasantries as I began wandering off. It was a damned uncomfortable moment, to be honest. I’ll remember it forever.
We spent the rest of the night raising toasts and sort of glowing from the encounter, however brief and clumsy it was. It really didn’t matter. We were a thousand miles from home, experiencing a strange and beautiful new world, surrounded by new friends and old heroes. It was all some splendid fever dream.
The next morning we woke up drenched in beer sweat in the back of the van. I hopped in the cockpit and attempted to drive us straight to a bathroom. We found a good street and hopped on some Lime scooters to carry us to our thrones.
Outta the way, hombre, daddy’s gotta piss.
It took us around four attempts and a few miles to find relief. We stopped at a number of different Starbucks, all around the corner from one another. One was closed, the other bathroomless (?), another under renovation. Finally, we came upon a local café that allowed us the sweet release we so desperately sought.
The rest of that day was a lazy hungover one; lying in the back of the van in a Walmart parking lot, making phone calls and writing while Gabby napped. It was just fine. We needed a bit of a break anyway and that evening we were set to see Arctic Monkeys close out Austin City Limits. We needed our energy.
When the sun began setting we hopped in an Uber and it took us to Zilker Park.
Thousands of people swarmed the outside of it. They laughed and cavorted about, wearing wild and colorful outfits and holding giant signs. My favorite was a Yellow Submarine with LED lights running around the outline of it.
After a brief debacle trying to find the box office, we made our way inside the festival and headed directly to the Honda stage, where our great heroes were set to blow our minds in less than thirty minutes.
We made our way through awful mud in our brand new shoes (“screw it we’ll buy brand newer ones”) and found a nice little spot before the stage. The band did not disappoint. They played for a solid hour and a half, exchanging moments of unremitting thunder and thoughtful, measured cool. Their new album sounds like outer space lounge-y future jazz. It’s rather strange, but I love it. I loved the whole thing, really, and Gabby and I were both in awe to have seen these gentleman two nights in a row in both incredibly intimate and incredibly epic settings.
After the final chord was struck and the lights came back on, Joe Cocker’s rendition of “With a Little Help from My Friends” came on and we wandered back out into the night playing air guitar and singing gospel harmonies with surreal memories of those electric supermen still buzzing in our minds.
The following morning we had a great brunch at Chez Zee as cold rain poured down outside and then it was back into Fishtank once more for a long journey toward Little Rock, Arkansas.
