I surrender. I couldn’t get the day 3 lineup posted before I had to head downtown myself. I tried to go see The Editors at Ritz (As wae pointed out, it’s still the damn Ritz. There’s a huge sign that says Ritz. That makes it the Ritz.), but it was insanity out front of that place and I couldn’t deal. I stopped briefly at Casino El Camino on the way to Redrum Annex (ie the parking lot behind the Gas Pipe ). E., the door man at Casino, ended up working when he thought he’d be off. I’m sure he’s sorry that he took it out on all you unsuspecting revelers.

I arrived at Redrum Annex as they were setting up for Dir En Grey, a crazy metal band from Japan. They appear to have gotten their stage clothes from a Loudness clearance sale. They had a following of teenage girls in the front who screamed every time it appeared they were about to take the stage. The singer made bug eyes and careened from lounge crooning to screeeching. About three songs in, he purposely cut the inside of his mouth and started drooling blood and smearing it on himself. I’m glad I wasn’t in the front for that display. It certainly was entertaining, which is more than I can say for the bands I saw Thursday night, but I’ll get to that later.

Helmet was up after the japanese circus. Page Hamilton appeared to be his own guitar tech last night. He seemed in a jovial mood until some tool spilled a drink on his pedal board and fried it. The audience was full of drunks up to all sort of antics. Hooray for the SXSW / St. Paddy’s Day combo. Chris Traynor is the only remaining member from the last tour and has moved to bass. The drummer (Charlie Walker?) has only been playing with them for a week, last night’s show being his second gig with them after the day party that they played on Thursday. Page plugged Gang of Four and Gogol Bordello and attended the Gogol Bordello showcase at Emo’s Thursday night, the showcase I should’ve checked out. They played songs from all of their albums, including “See You Dead” and “Smart” from Size Matters, “Wilma’s Rainbow”, “Milquetoast’ and “Tic” from Betty, “Unsung”, “Ironhead”, “In the Meantime” from Meantime, “Pure” from Aftertaste, “FBLA” from Strap It On and “Just Another Victim” from Judgement Night soundtrack. They didn’t play anything new. Page finished by saying “See you in June”. They’re currently working on a new album. Here’s more commentary on the evening from their forum.

Thursday night started out at Auditorium Shores with Blackalicious. We didn’t make it into the fence until their second or third song. They were good. The weather was nice. It was chill. Spoon followed Blackalicious. They were also good, although we were on the organ side, which meant the mix was a little organ heavy for us. We passed the time between sets texting messages to the big screen next to the stage and seeing what we could get away with; an Office Space reference got through, but no dice on a reference to “donkey punch” or a plug for my own band’s show yesterday at Lovejoy’s. We decided to skip Echo & the Bunnymen and stopped by the Red Bull House for a bit on our way to Sixth Street.

Since my partner in crime wouldn’t make it into the Emo’s show, we opted for Eagles of Death Metal at Exodus and threw in our lot with the two bands before them in the hopes we’d luck out. It was not to be. End of Fashion just didn’t move me one way or the other. Forgettable (maybe it was the beer and the shots). The Lovemakers were memorable, but not in a good way. The music was underwhelming and then the guitar player decided to take his shirt off and do some sort of striptease. And not in a good way.

Eagles of Death Metal finally took the stage. I know it’s not the beer talking, although I’d had quite a bit by then, but they too were crushingly underwhelming. I wanted to like them. I wanted them to blow me away. They didn’t and I am sad. I didn’t know they had two drummers, Josh Homme and a blonde chick who I liked. Two drummers didn’t save 38 Special and they couldn’t save Eagles of Death Metal either.