And the winners are:

Best Song
Bayadera-”Red Shoes”

Best Alternative
Bayadera

Best Male
Jonathan Blake

Best Female
Jessica Callahan

Best Pop Rock
Lunar Fiction

Best High School Band
Marliese

Best Jazz
Rare Form Band

Best Instrumental
Evan Stone

Best Surf
Reventlos

Best R & B
Jimi E

Best Country
Fertitta and McClintock

Best Classic Rock
Shawn Jones

Best Indie
CPO

Best Folk
Marianne Keith

Best Electronic
Dead Amps

Best Punk
Longway

Best Blues
Pamela G

Best Rock
Union of Saints

Best Hip Hop
Brawdcast

Best Urban
Mic Moses and C4mula

Best International
Juan Coronado

Best Out of County
A Living Daylight

Best Hard Rock
Star Off Machine

Best Swing
Gary Tole

Best Live Acoustic Band
The Fallen Stars

Best Live Acoustic Female
Robin Lore

Best Live Acoustic Male:
AJ DeGrasse

Best Metal
Sacred Storm

Best Live Electric band
Franki Doll and the Broken Toys

Lance Romance Memorial Award
Franki Doll

View images of the event here.

Saturday afternoon, sunny and 80º+—it seemed like a good idea to go to Waterloo Park and sample the musical and comedic talents that some enterprising soul had cobbled together. This would ensure that I'd be dead tired by the time the sun set. But that's cool—sometimes one does one's best work while running on fumes. Of course, those SXSW Day 4 Blues hit with a vengeance. But enough about me... Onto the entertainment.

Newly signed to Rick Rubin's Def American label, Howlin Rain play grizzled Southern rock redux, but with so much fire in its belly and soul (and with chops to burn, especially keyboardist Joel Rabinow) that the retro-ness of it all doesn't pall. Along with Ethan Miller's flagrant guitar solos and gritty, testifying vocals, Howlin Rain create ideal hot sunny day outdoors rock that almost makes this vegan want to eat a slab of bbq ribs while riding a Harley 100 mph on some south of the Mason Dixon line highway. Hee-yah, or something.

After this, I ambled to the comedy stage, where Aziz Ansari was yukking it up. He was followed by Reggie Watts, Hard N' Phirm, Paul F. Tompkins, Leon Allen and a woman from the Sarah Silverman Show whose name escapes me. Watts and H&P stood out with their spot-on musical parodies. Tenacious who?

Day 2 of SXSW

In my last post, I predicted Holy Fuck's set would be very hard to surpass. Well, I think it was at least equaled by a few artists on the bill at Barcelona—all instrumental hip-hop artists, in fact (Nosaj Thing, Free the Robots, Gaslamp Killer and Flying Lotus). Who would've thought such types would be standouts at SXSW? I mean, there wasn't a guitar to be found in the joint all night...

But first some gigs that preceded the Barcelona extravaganza. At Soho Bar, Blues Control—a weird psych band from New York—kind of disappointed with some spectral, relatively mellow blues rock that wasn't as expansive as their self-titled LP on Holy Mountain Records hinted. Their attack was muted somehow. Consisting of a guitarist and keyboardist who manned a drum machine, too, the duo churned out restrained turbulence, saving their best track for last, "Boiled Peanuts," one of the most sublimely lugubrious songs of the decade, a liquid bummer of mood elevation (paradoxes rock).

Over at Vice, Fucked Up puked up a bilious barrage of metallic punk. FU are fronted by an ornery, bald, bearded fat man who strips off his shirt and roams into the crowd to shout in your face his indecipherable lyrics (possibly about the importance of maintaining efficient digestion). At one point, he head-butted the mic. Later he ranted about the copious amounts of piss on the men's room floor. Someone needs to address this rampant problem in rock clubs and I'm glad Fucked Up's on the case.