sxsw part two (interesting bands and their outfits)

Originally uploaded by al-zahra

it's a pity i didn't get more funny pictures, but it's hard to sneak up on people and take pictures with the phone when you are doubled over laughing. i mean, i just can't stop myself from laughing. it was bad enough with troy because we'd look at each other and make faces. i did however get this one pic of jrockers outside elysium. it was a pain in the ass to try to stand behind them, because their hair blocked the view of everything. i have absolutely no idea who they are or if they are famous.

these are few crackberry pics of the bands that i saw. they ranged from the pretty charming and aggressively stylish to the insane.

the japanese show is a useful starting point, because the (admittedly few) bands i saw there were interestingly dressed, as were the spectators. pictured to the left is the band "the emeralds" who wore leather pants and jackets with polyester shirts. they also wore big ugly plastic sunglasses, as part of a pseudo elvis tribute.

the fans wore a wide range of things, with minis, legwarmers, etc. it was very much like second life becoming real life.....people were wearing whatever, like anime characters or covered in tatts and piercings.

the band "mad juana" was very interesting. this is the violin player. the rest of the band wore an intriguing meld of roma, spanish, mexican, and hipster outfits. this guy scared the freaking hell out of me because i bumped into him in the hallway not noticing and i just wasn't expecting to meet death so soon. he was also wearing halloween spectacles that distorted his eyes in addition to the heavy make up and improbable combo of mariachi suit and afghan hat. i liked the black polka dot skirt-velvet corset plus piano shawl and tophat that the accordion player wore, and the lead singer looked like the greaser girlfriend in the movie grease--with plaid capris, a satin 50s letter jacket, and a rose in her hair.

the most austerely stylish were the moog, from budapest. they had us laughing because they were so into their style and appearance that the band members would duck into the bathroom at least every 15 minutes to make sure their hair was utterly perfect. the lead guy especially was very chichi, with uber tight black jeans, pointy toed shoes, red shirt, vest and jacket and ascot.
it was hard not to stare at him when he was off stage because he was just so easy on the eyes.

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honorable mention: monareta


they are zany, but it takes balls to wear a silver helmet with a bicycle wheel mounted on top of it. that and dancing energetically around, and climbing balconies........i mean it's not really an outfit, but i thought it was hilarious.

i also saw a band of street performers, half furry, who were a type of brass band with trombones and things. they weren't entirely furry, only partly, but wore bits and pieces of marching band uniforms....the one human was dressed sort of like a sweet little country rodeo clown.........

urban tribes

Originally uploaded by al-zahra, who appears to be from the pseudo hipster tribe

the language of clothes is a way to encode all sorts of things...one of the most fascinating things to me is to "read" people in a crowd, to learn about them and understand them in the context of the world by the things that they are announcing and saying about themselves in their dress.

sxsw has been fun to stare at all the urban tribes, because the streets are literally thronged with all nationalities, ages, conditions....all the different little groups we belong to, because we believe or we want to be a certain style or way of living.....

i often feel that as i get older i am losing my handle for the language of the urban tribes, that perhaps i can't get the finer nuances of why tight jeans plus pointy toed shoes and glasses=hipster and whatnot. i never really felt an allegiance to a tribe, other than the weirdo-american community, and so tend to freely mix things up. i wonder though what it is that these little whims translate to, what i am really telling people with the way i dress.

right now i am totally in love with miniskirt plus leggings plus goofy tshirt plus chucks. but i saw very few people wearing this combo. instead there were tons of women wearing miniskirts and boots. it being texas, naturally the cowboy boot predominated, but the 80s-ish slouch boots and those weird flat heeled boots were very much in evidence.

i didn't go to any goth, punk, or major subculture bars so i didn't get any firsthand observations on those tribes. i think one of the funniest things about the bleed through of SL into RL is the skewed perspective on fashion. maybe it is just me but it seems that because i am used to seeing the most bizarre things on an avatar, that i have come to regard that as normal even for RL....which can be funny.

i notice too, in my limited forays into sl fashion, that there seem to be tribes in SL. maybe they mirror the urban tribes i see in the real world. it seems to me that there is a group of sl fashion types who seek to replicate real life fashion very closely, and those that seem to embrace the unrealistic possibilities of SL.

i was too much into everything to take major notes but i also tend to really scrutinize the noticeably foreign because they always seem to be the ones who are wearing the freshest styles..........