My project originally was planned to be based solely around Austin, Texas. However, I have realized that for purposes related to where I am staying, I am going to have to expand my project location to the bigger, common parts of Central Texas (Killeen and Austin).
The airplane ride here was treacherous. I’ve flown over 20 times and have never felt more scared than I have during this trip. At first, it was Seattle to Houston to Killeen. Then, the plane going to Killeen (from Houston) had to divert backwards into Austin because of inclement weather. On the flight from Houston to “Killeen,” I thought my life was going to end because of how heavy the turbulence was. There was so much fog that I don’t think the pilot could see anything. Once we ended up in Austin instead of Killeen, we waited about an hour before we lifted back off to head back to Killeen hoping that the weather would be cleared by then. If it wasn’t the pilot would have had to fly us back into Houston. Luckily the weather had cleared and it was a successful landing into my original destination! It was a pretty stressful start for the trip…when I finally landed into Killeen at midnight, I was incredibly relieved and met up with my significant other, who I’ll be spending most of this trip with. We drove a few miles to her house (I will be staying here for the majority of my trip), and I slept soundly through the night.
I had planned from the beginning to study the music scene in Austin and its connections between the culture and history of Texas. So a few days later, on Monday, April 13, we got a hotel in Austin for two nights to be able to easily access the live shows. It was a vintage hotel with a wide view of the beautiful Lake Charles. The architecture was obviously refurbished and influenced by the Mexican-American style that seems to be prevalent throughout Texas which was interesting to me. This helped to expand my curiosity of Texas’ history, which I’ll definitely be studying heavily during this quarter. The inside of the hotel seemed colonial-styled so it differed from the external aesthetics.
The travel time from the hotel to downtown Austin was about 20 to 30 minutes. When we finally arrived downtown on the 14th of April, I’d gone into this thinking that I would spontaneously show up to live concerts. Well, it turned out one of my favorite 80′s bands, Artillery, was set to play at the very moment I was downtown. Artillery, a Danish band, played a particularly fast brand of metal called ”thrash” metal that was a forerunner to modern metal. When we arrived at the concert, a few opening bands had played. They were obviously all thrash mental influenced but were underground local bands. After the second opening band had played, which had a very progressive metal sound to it, there was an interlude of about 30 minutes in between where Artillery was setting up for their main set. During that in-between time, we had walked along 4th street and encountered four different local bands playing inside of the restaurant/bars, all blues, country, or rock. We stopped at an Irish bar to get a bite to eat, in there was another local band playing blues-rock who was able to keep the entire restaurant entertained by their music. After 20 minutes, we walked back to the venue to see Artillery play. Even though they have considerably aged since they released their first slew of albums, they played a fantastic set and once we left, I couldn’t hear anything but a distinct ringing. (My hearing is back to normal now.)
After that, we headed back to the hotel for one more night’s rest. The next morning, we had breakfast and made the hour trek back to Killeen. On the way back, turns out, my mom had won four surprise tickets to see The Who.
On the 27th of April, I will be seeing The Who in Austin after observing some local bands around the same area. During The Who, I plan to interview some old-timers of Austin’s local music scene from the 60′s (or before) to now and hopefully find out some interesting information.