Thanks to Julie, all-around awesome person and owner of Tricycle Records, Andre and I were billed as the “MCs” of the Bay Area Takeover showcase. Since we drove overnight and arrived some 4-hours after the showcase started, we didn’t get the opportunity to say much. But we did give a shout-out to the Glow, as well as the showcase sponsors, right before Film School took the stage. They’re a layered, complex, and interesting band, but see the Blacks’ particular brand of rock’n’roll drew me away. I walked in to catch “Never Say Never,” a Romeo Void cover that usually marks the close of their set. Cover or not it showcases the band’s strengths: Gavin banging out the demanding, metronomic beat, Mauri sneering the innuendo-fueled lyrics, JDK flailing around the stage, picking up the floor tom and doing, well, I’m not really sure what he was doing with it. The song’s chorus, “I might like you better if we slept together,” is kind of the way I feel about SXSW. It’s cheap and it’s expensive and there’s a lot of industry whores. Praise be to bands like the Blacks for making it worthwhile.

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