5 Things You Need To Know About SxSW: Day 5

1. AUSTRALIA DAY

There seems to have been a record amount of Australian showcases this year. With Chuggi's showcase plus the Splendour and Falls Festival combo show earlier this week, today rolls out another three. The Laneway Festival features one of SxSW's most-buzzed about bands, UK punk outfit Eagulls while I Oh You co-host a party at Wonderland with Kissability. The annual Aussie BBQ reached fever point this year. The lines are the longest they've ever been, and once inside there are more lines to get to the upstairs area.

At one stage more people stand in line before Dog Trumpet play upstairs than are watching DZ Deathrays on the ground floor. Before this point, the crowd upstairs had gotten so crushed that those in the side room were locked in with Chevelles (that's one way to get attention at SxSW). It would seem the Aussies might need to seek out a bigger home for future SxSW's showcases as their popularity does not seem about to wane.

2. ARMED AND CANTANKEROUS

Upset that there had been a talk held at SxSW that was deemed anti-gun by local pro-gun activists, those activists decided to rally at the centre of SxSW not once but twice. It's great to see the States' Freedom Of Speech ideology in practice but to see one hundred or so people congregating in the middle of 6th Street on a Saturday afternoon was a little disconcerting for overseas visitors only used to seeing licenced authorities armed like this – not adolescents. And, given they had already rallied once earlier in the week, and there had only been the one talk about guns, this second rally seemed a little tasteless given the double murder that had taken place at SxSW earlier in the week.

3. E IS FOR CIGARETTE

Last year e-cigarettes were just beginning to be marketed in the US. This year they were so prevalent that there are already moves to ban e-smokers from puffing their vapours indoors. However it seems people who smoke e-cigarettes are held in similar esteem as people who have loud phone conversations in elevators and public transport – wankers. To some of us though, it at first looked like Austin was really cool about people smoking meth pipes in public.

4. JAMESON & GINGER

With ice, thanks.

5. WHO'S GETTING TALKED ABOUT

There is no doubt that Lady Gaga managed to be the most talked about artist at this year's SxSW but probably not in the way she had hoped. Usually her name was accompanied with the word ”desperate”.

It was a one-horse race though when it came to the most positively talked about band, and that was Future Islands. Once word-of-Twitter got around, they became the hottest ticket in town. However by the end of the week they were closely followed by Diarrhea Planet and if you saw someone wearing a 'Diarrhea Is The New Fuck' t-shirt, you knew what they'd had to do to get one (they weren't available for sale)… you had to crowd surf to earn one.

Other 'top buzz' contenders: Eagulls, The Orwells, Glass Animals and everyone wanted a piece of Chance The Rapper (despite his Bieber and Skrillex associations). For Australia, it was a close tie between The Preatures and Vance Joy, it would not be surprising to see Joy's Rip Tide now cross into the singles chart in the States.

Andrew Mast was flown to SxSW as a guest of Warner.