One of the weirder South By Southwest events I have attended was the Tricky Kid party at Randy Palmer’s South Austin Gym. My friend Roy AKA Tricky Kid was looking for places to throw his SXSW showcase and this guy Randy Palmer reached out to him. Randy had wanted to do shows at his boxing gym for a while and figured SXSW was the perfect opportunity to get things going and let his space be used for free. Roy told him he would do the event at his gym if the bands could play in the actual boxing ring and Randy said yes and the event was on.

I got there a bit late and I all but missed the first band (Here Holy Spain) but the second band The Blind Pets were pretty fucking awesome. They sounded a lot like Mudhoney. One of the guys in the band told me that he had never listened to Mudhoney before they started the band but ever since people started bringing up the similarities he has become a huge fan. I didn’t think they were too derivative or anything and they rocked a lot so it was fun to see. They also helped set up the show which turned out to be not such an awesome thing in the end but they were a great band.

When I heard that The Death Set were going to play a show in a boxing ring I couldn’t stop thinking about how fucking amazing it would be if the show had 300 people there instead of 60. A boxing ring seems like the ultimate venue for a band like the Death Set who brings all their fans on to stage with them.  Even with the small crowd I knew things were going to get out of control. They were using the back line of the Blind Pets and as soon as the Death Set brought fans on stage the Blind Pets started freaking out. They made all the fans stand on the outside of the ring.  That didn’t last long. By their third or fourth song everyone was moshing in the ring and the Blind Pets frontman was losing it. Evidently Randy Palmer was not happy that people were possibly tearing up the ring and told the Blind Pets guy to get everyone the fuck off stage.  This quickly escalated and they eventually pulled the plug on the Death Set.  They were allowed to play if they got everyone out of the ring but the Death Set said fuck it and that was the end of that.

The next band was a metal band called The House Harkonnen. I don’t really get the appeal of metal like that but they had a ton of people really excited to see them.  A ton of people who were really upset when the cops showed up and finally shut the whole show down.  New Yorkers Wildstreet and special guest Moistboyz didn’t get to play and everyone was pissed.  Luckily for me it gave me the chance to head down to see the DFA’79 show which turned out to be one of the craziest moments of my SXSW.

But yeah, the show was really cool, but unfortunately it could have been a lot better. I want to build a venue with a boxing ring in it really badly now. It seems like nothing but good stuff could come from that.  Anyway, there are some pretty cool pictures of the madness.

Click here to see Tricky Kid’s SXSW Brawl For All featuring The Death Set at Randy Palmer’s South Austin Gym.

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