Yup. I have to admit, SXSW was probably the single most thrilling experience of my life, thus far. Seeing Dir en Grey was amazing, and now I am severely depressed now that it is over and they are all the way in New York about to put on another show without my being there. I'm going through such withdrawl...
But yeah... and the rest of the shows were pretty BADASS. I was in the first row of every concert. Here's what went down...

Flogging Molly: The roughest concert I've been to. I was in the front row so allllllll the moshing was effecting me very much. I was trying to brace myself on a speaker (it was virtually the only thing holding me up) and this guy who was gaurding the speaker kept pushing it away from me and it was like "Dude, look at me. Look how scrawny I am. Do you seriously think I'm holding myself up in this crowd? No. So give the back the damn speaker so I won't get trampled on and die". At one point I did go down, but the speaker man grabbed my arm and pulled me up. I still don't like him, but I'm grateful. People kept crowd-surfing, but they were all guys and a lot heavy than me. So of course, they all get dropped on me. I ended up with so many asses dropping on my head, it's not even funny... At one point Lizzy got heat stroke and went understage to throw up while I needed to get air so I pushed out of the crowd to the far back. Then... I started to get hit on by a drunk 30 year old, so I pushed myslef alll the way back up to the front row. How did I do that?.... All in all, Flogging Molly gives a Hell of a concert and are superb live. No disapointments at all... Plus this bad ass band, Zox, opened for Flogging Molly and I loooved dem.

This next part, you probably won't understand why I'm all freaky-outy, unless you too are a fan of Dir en Grey. So if you get confused and think i'm a total psycho, it's okay...

DIR EN GREY:

The waiting~
The reason I came to sxsw. It was amazing, incredible, marvelous. Of course waiting in line was awful because we had the stereo typical fan girls( you know, the kind that say things such as "Die-sama", pronounce things, including names, wrong because they think they're japanese and end up totally butchering the band members names) behind us and they would not shut up. But, haha, it was an industry only show and they didn't have wristbands and we did, so nah-nah. They were so pissed saying they were Dir en Grey's biggest fans, and how it was doing them injustice not letting them come in. Bullshit. Don't wait till last minute to go buy tickets and expect to see them... But Lizzy and I also met some cool kids and ended up making concert friends... Plus, Lizzy and I were interviewed for a jrock magazine.
Before the show~ We got in early and were in the front row. It was so cool, I was in a spot where I could see directly where the bands were coming out behind a corner before anyone else could. There were three bands before Dir en Grey. First band : Street Drum Corps. Bad ass awesome guys, a great opening. They are kinda like the blue man group, but without the creepiness and a whole lot better looking. The would get drum sticks and bang around on kegs, propane tanks, garbage cans, it was great. I met the lead singer (the hottest one) and he had such a cute smile and glorious abs. The next band sucked, the band after that didn't suck as much as I thought they would and then...

Dir en Grey uses the porta-potty too.~
So like I said, I was in the perfect spot where I could see when the band was coming out. Suddenly, I spot Shinya. "HOLY CRAP! IT'S SHINYA! AHHH!" and then everyone else starts to scream and he comes on stage, and we're all freaking out while people are setting up his drums. He is totally ignoring everything. After five mins of screaming and setting up drums, everyones voice is wearing down, but not mine. So I yell "Shiiinyaaa, don't ignore us, you know you looove us!" The girls started to scream and laugh and scream again and Shinya would glance at us every now and again. Then he went backstage so he could later come on with the band after he set up his set. So we're all waiting a bit and then out of the corner of my eye, "DIIIIEEEEE!!!!" Crowd: "AHHHH! DIIIE!" and Die is just walking and everyone is screaming, and suddenly his head goes down and instead of walking on stage, he goes into a porta-potty next to the stage. It was hilarious, the crowd just went from "AHHHHHHHHH!!!" to "AHHHhhhoooohhhhh??...oh..." XD
Later, he came out and we all started screaming his name and he just smiled and kinda chuckled and went back around the corner...
Time goes on and they still haven't come out and the stage seems ready, and we are all growing impatient and more and more excited.

The show and everything holy that happened that night~
Soon the lights grew dim and the heavy intro techno beat like in the DVDs comes on and we all start to flip out. Dir en Grey comes out from behind the corner in a line and pile onto the stage, cept for Kyo because he has to make an interence and come on by himself. And I am stuck right smack dab between Kyo and Die. I pretty much had the best seat in the house. They were only on for a little over an hour, but it was the best time of my life. They all looked great, no creepy Alice Cooper Toshiya or Kyo with braces, just superb sexyness. Kyo did everything: stood and jumped off his plateform, cut the inside of his cheek (in which I cringed and had to look away, did his funny eye thing, stared people down (but pretty much looked right through them), and even took off his shirt and belly danced which is the sexiest thing I have ever seen. It was funny. Kyo began to unbutton his shirt and everyone began to scream. As soon as he saw this he began to tease everyone by doing a little strip tease (probably making fun of us, but who the fuck cares. Kyo is undressing himslef and I'm in the front row), and making all these sexy sexy faces. At one point he came over to where everyone was touching him and rubbing his abs. My arm was a little bit away, and I did my best not to violate him, to be polite. But this girls arm knocked my hand that was out stretched and I touched his arm. GASP. So I thought "Oh well, my hand is on him..." so I gave him a little rub and Kyo is suprisingly soft! XD Then I gave a bunch of attention towards Die (who was fabulous) and he smiled, took a sip of water and spritzed it all over us! Lizzy and I began to yell and laugh and he laughed back, smiled, and dumped his whole water bottle all over us!I mean... on us. WE WERE ACKNOWLEDGED AND DRENCHED BY DIE! I was lucky enough to grab the straw ( in which Die put his lips on) that was poking out of the water bottle after he had poured his water on us and then tossed the bottle into the crowd. They all did a splendid preformance and at the end, Kyo pulled his plateform off the ground and tossed it into Shinya's drumset, in which Shinya than gave a "wtf" kind of look, but I'm sure he's used to it. Oh, and during Child Prey, Kyo kinda "looked" at me. If you've seen Dir en Grey perform, Kyo will stare down people and make his eys go wide while looking around the venue and do all sorts of weird stuff with them. ANyway, he was looking over at my side of the stage and his eyes did that wide thing when they got to me and I was like "eeeee!". It was pretty great. After they got off stage and the show was over, I hoped up on my bum, leaned over and knocked on where Die was standing for good luck. It was the best show EVER. I adore that night so much and will remember it for the rest of my life and after I'm dead.

Peachcake: The next day Lizzy and I went to go see Peachcake, the synth pop group whom I adore, adore, adore. It was at salon, but everything had been moved out and turned into a venue. It was a small secluded concert that Lizzy and I by chance heard about. Before they went on a j-rock group known as The Emeralds went on. I had heard about them before and knew they were well known in Japan, but I had not heard their music. Turns out, they are super awesome and I totally love them. They were so funny trying to speak English. I could understand the bassist a bit, but understanding the lead singer was impossible. They put on a really good show, and I could swear the lead singer was looking at me but his eyes were veeeeery squinty when he sang. As soon as their show was done, the lead singer came down and shook mine and Lizzy's hands. The bassist came and talked to us, he was very cool and the drummer made sure to wave a sweet goodbye to us when they left. Then Peachcake came on and they were very fun, jumping around in the audience and making sweet fools of themselves. Very good show. We met them afterwards to and they were super cool.

All in all... I had an amazing time in Austin and I am suprised if one has read all this, but know that I appreciate it if you did, because i've never had so much fun in my whole life (thus far).

cool facts:
* I found out where Dir en Grey was staying but choose not to stalk them by knocking on everydoor of the hotel. However, I really wanted to walk the streets around there because I has heard that while everyone was in line for their show, they were walking around the place.
* Kaoru and Toshiya noth wore cowboy boots, and Kyo wore the same white shoes he has been wearing since Gauze, which I thought was totally amazing, considering they were ripping apart at the foot... XD
* I gots a cowgirl hat! Yay!


I adore and love everyone who read this. My heart belongs to you.
<3