There were children dressed as peacocks and peppermint. There were tiny puffs of disco cotton candy for sale, with twitching french tickler rainbow lights in them. And a giant French boudoir curtain. No one told me I was going to a slumber party. A dirty, slutty slumber party.

Will Sergeant and Echo and the Bunnymen are Eighties unsung heroes – or at least undersung. As guitarist for this seminal group Sergeant brought a psychedelic sound into the chilly post-punk landscape that truly set the Bunnymen apart from a lot of the day's sounds. The band is currently touring and stop in Austin tonight, May 7.

You can't read a thing about Joan Wasser, better known as Joan As Police Woman, that doesn't mention her many prestigious musical cohorts. With the release of her latest The Deep Field and US tour, which hits Austin at the Parish on Saturday, she gets closer to becoming a household name herself.

[Our intrepid managing editor and all around lady music maestro Cindy Widner had a chance to chat with everybody's favorite prom date, JD Samson, who is bringing her band MEN to Austin. MEN play the Beauty Bar Thursday, March 31. See you there! – Kate X]

Biking though, then past the central density of SXSW, I think to myself ‘I really need a helmet.’ Wind ripping at my bike’s balance, I rode quickly through thick traffic south then east. I ran into a friend who tells me the Hunx & His Punx show is running two hours late. Trailer Space, she told me, was packed, and hot.

Wild Flag put the moves on at their Waterloo free show with Carrie Brownstein and Janet Weiss leading the sound. Their Sleater-Kinney days no doubt forged a bond that hasn’t withered. Weiss’s beats are hefty and energized; and Brownstein’s vocals kicked with fast, unhesitating energy, making the two a forceful duo in the Wild Flag quad.

Hopefully by now you've heard the news that Austin's own film wunderkid PJ Raval has made OUT magazine's 100 VIPs for 2010. We've got questions, here they are:

Fred Schneider, the iconic yelp-yap-yowl of the B-52's and all-'round great fella cum bon vivant paused for a Q & A on the brink of a special B's show next week in Galveston, Texas (to where we are headed, hell yeah) and on the occasion of the release of a Christmas album, Destination… Christmas! by his other band, the Superions.

I am officially placing the time of death for your interest in Savage's It Gets Better campaign as the moment you press play on Perez Hilton's contribution.