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The Oxbow Incident: A Riot in Austin

Most Frightening Bouncer-Audience Fight:
Oxbow at Spiro's Amphitheater Friday night at 1am. Anyone who's seen San Francisco art-meddlers Oxbow perform in the 20+ years they've been a band knows one thing is true: frontman Eugene Robinson hates pants. I guess the bouncers at Spiro's, who strangely all wore neon light necklaces, have never seen Oxbow before. As usual, Robinson started the show fully dressed, with his ears covered in gaffer's tape. But when he got down to his undershirt and his underwear, I noticed the bouncer behind the stage wasn't just looking uncomfortable, he was downright angry.

After their fifth or sixth song, Robinson said, "The constabulary has informed me I need to put my pants back on. This is our last song." Guess what? He didn't put his pants back on. About three minutes into the song, a guy walks to the back wall and cuts the band's power. In a fit, Robinson threw the mic to the floor as hard ash could. Drummer Greg Davis kept playing and the bouncers started swarming him. Guitarist Niko Wenner and bassist Dan Adams picked up drumsticks and played along in solidarity. Some of the guys from Pelican ascended the stage to intervene with the bouncers and one made the mistake of spitting at a bouncer. That's when the riot began.

The bouncers start fighting with anyone they could, and they tackled the member of Pelican, three of them swarming on him. I tried to pull one of the bigger guys off him and was successful but then he started charging me and I got out of his way. Everything seemed to calm down for a minute and I tried talking to Hydra Head co-owner Mark Thompson, who then pointed towards the stage. The bouncers were stampeding in a horizontal line towards anyone in their way and out into the alley. Again they swarmed the member of Pelican, who apologized for spitting, and that's when I saw the cops starting to arrive. As with most riots, that was my cue to leave.

The next day I called South By Southwest's office to no avail and have subsequently written them a letter about the hostile, fascistic, homophobic (were it a woman stripping, it would have been different) and shortsighted actions on behalf of the club's security staff. After meeting up with some of the guys from the night before, I was relieved to hear no one was seriously injured, luckily. Oxbow performed again Saturday night and Robinson made a joke that he hoped there wouldn't be two nights/two fights. Guess Spiro's just isn't ready for subversive intellectual types.

Update: Thanks to those fuckers at Spiro's, my camera's got something rattling in it now. They're lucky it works.

Photos by Chris Summerlin