Photos by Trent Maxwell
Pro tip for this year's SXSW: don't go to the bathroom. Chance the Rapper's abruptly cancelled set on Tuesday night at Red 7 Patio, shut down by the Austin Fire Department due to capacity issues, has proved to be a strange and frustrating bellwether for festival attendees in the days that followed. The trend started rolling at Warp and LuckyMe's impressive showcase that took place the following night at Empire Garage, just barely across the street from Red 7 Patio, which was ultimately hampered by the Fire Dept.'s capacity-aware presence. Empire Garage's layout is fairly plain: a large parking lot-esque courtyard in front of the venue—which is, yes, literally a big garage.
Big enough, in fact, to safely hold at least twice the number of people that were actually allowed into the venue, which preached a strict one-in-one-out policy without, y'know, actually practicing it. The restrooms are located in the courtyard, which meant that if you left the garage space to do your business, you had to tag along on the back of an amorphous, increasingly frustrated queue that continued to grow without, despite the considerable amount of folks occasionally streaming out of the space, diminishing by way of allowed entry. The saving grace was that, thanks to Empire Garage's wide-open design, you could easily experience what the showcase had to offer—UK enigma Sophie's heady happy-hardcore treats, electro-R&B vocalist Kelela's skyward flourishes, Cashmere Cat's rap-rooted abstractions—without setting foot in the actual venue.
Not so much for last night's Brisk Bodega showcase, though. Held at the-performance-space-formerly-known-as-Emo's venue the Main, it took less than an hour for the event to resort to the even-stricter one-out-nobody-in policy, despite the dance floor never being more than halfway full. Adding insult to injury: the showcase was held in the Main's indoors venue, and the venue's restrooms are outside—so if you left to do whatever it is you needed to do, there was a pretty decent chance that you were not getting back into the venue.
My heart hurt when I witnessed a concertgoer angrily demanding a refund for the festival-wide permissive wristband she purchased to attend events like these. When we bemoan the difficulties of dealing with these admittedly small-potatoes problems, it's important to remember that there are people attending this festival who have paid good money not to report on buzzy acts or recycle the same complaints about SXSW, but to simply enjoy themselves while they can.
Oh yeah, the music: it was pretty good. Hypebeasting rapper Deniro Farrar continued his never-ending-mass-email streak of maintaining his "pretty okay" plateau position, while Atlanta up-and-comer Que brought on Houston rap mainstay Trae for a guest verse, which fired up the largely Texas-minded crowd quite a bit. It was clear, though, that people were there for Georgia wünderkind trio Migos, who lit the room with their hyper-linguistic chant-rap that, despite the current rap market's constant trend-chasing, still remains impeccably fresh after last year's excellent Young Rich Niggas mixtape.
Granted, not everyone was a fan: a concertgoer tapped me on the shoulder in the middle of Migos' can't-get-you-out-of-my-head "Hannah Montana" and said, "I feel like all this rap sounds the same these days." He went on to namecheck A$AP Rocky, and I plainly stated that I prefer Migos to Rocky, which provoked the kind of reaction you'd get when you tell someone they've been drinking Sanka instead of regular coffee. Either way, the room emptied after Migos' set, leaving R&B auteur Ty Dolla $ign to weave his exquisite, lucre tapestry of ratchetness (and, yes, he played "Or Nah") to a crowd size that was thinner than he deserved.
After I left the Main, I walked a few blocks down to meet up with some friends so we could head home together, and despite the impossibly pedestrian-crammed roads and according blockades at every corner, I remained nervous, careful, and mostly just nervous about something as simple as walking down the street after I was a first-hand witness to the strange, terrible aftermath of the tragic accident that had taken place at SXSW the night before. Almost every move I could make—physical, mental, and otherwise—seemed outsized when considering what had previously taken place. It's not that bad things don't usually happen at SXSW; it's that bad things can happen at any time, and since death is a constant presence in all of our lives it's especially important to live our lives enjoyably, but also carefully.