yo adrian: let’s kick off sxsw with gurf morlix
Running doesn’t really fit with the musical hipster image, but then neither does changing diapers, (unless they’re skull diapers as designed by Shepard Fairey), and I’ll be doing plenty of that this week, and very little sleeping, so I’m thinking, considering the marathon nature of not only this event but also now this sentence, I had best abandon any pretense of sleeve-tattooed, dangerous, cancer-ridden cool, and train like Rocky*. We don’t have a walk-in freezer, or sides of beef, but I like to cram myself into the Kitchen-Aid and swat at frozen packs of Pedialyte. Don’t kid yourself: this is how De La Hoya does it.
Today it all begins in earnest: I have marked down kickoff with Gurf Morlix, he of the absurd, Gurn Blanston-inspired name, at Fado Irish pub at 12:40. Gurf (”Gur” to his friends) is a local legend; he had a fiery and fruitful span of years as producer and bandleader for the much higher-profile artist Lucinda Williams, and has released several acclaimed honky-tonk albums under his own name (including Toad of Titicaca: I could not make that up). An Austin musical education requires some Gurf in your grape-nuts, so I’m out to get mine today. From there I start to resemble a musicaholic on a bender: Black Joe Lewis, the Crimea, Deer Tick, the Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Tallest Man on Earth, M. Ward, and those are all before nightfall. I should be fine: I have snickers, and I’m told they’re packed with peanuts, and sure to satisfy.
*actually, as this photo shows, Rocky trained in black high top Chuck Taylors: so why insist on this false split? Runners, hipsters: you were brothers in footwear in 1976, you can be brothers at heart in 2009.