Anthony Lovato, 26, former lead singer for the band Mest, was booked on suspicion of murder and held on a $1 million bail after he called police and claimed to have stabbed a romantic rival in Studio City. The victim, Wayne Hughes, 25, of Cathedral City, was declared dead at a nearby hospital, police said. Lovato was freed on Tuesday after prosecutors determined he had acted in self defense after Hughes had sent him threatening messages, climaxing in Hughes challenging Lovato to a fight on Sunday.

Velvet Revolver lead singer Scott Weiland is out $10,000 worth of clothes (his estimate) after his wife torched his wardrobe outside their Toluca lake home after the couple brawled at the ultra chic Graciela Hotel on Pass Avenue, causing over $400 in damages. Mary Weiland, 31, was booked for investigation of felony arson vandalism after officers responded to a call Saturday night that a female was burning clothes. The couple's children, ages 4 and 6, were placed in the custody of family friends. No telling how this impacts plans for the forthcoming Velvet Revolver tour, scheduled to launch April 10 in Chile.

Rush has announced its "Snakes and Arrows" tour (we like the title too) starting June 13 in Atlanta, and will have 45 more North American dates before it heads over to Europe. You think Geddy Lee would wear a "My Snake Is Bigger Than Your Snake" t-shirt?

Well, it looks like we're finally coming to the ends of our memory cards. Best I can determine is that we (the club kingsnake staff) got photos of at least 58 bands or musicians in one form or another (and Dan Rather) during SXSW 2007, as well as several hours of HD video, numerous interviews, and a whole lot of articles. We still have a lot of little things left to publish and post but the majority of our SXSW experience is now online. Enjoy!

Pubic Enemy Pete Townsend

The Zico Chain Hugh Cornwell Iggy and The Stooges Bird Blacklist The Hourly Radio The Gray Kid Lions In The Street Cog Canada Pete Townsend Dan Rather Lemon Sun Voxtrot Loudon Wainwright III Del Castillo Patricia Vonne Wes Hutchinson The Hush Sound Say Hi To Your Mom

Pawn Shop Roses Thomas Dolby Apollo Sunshine Apostle of Hustle New Violators Minsk Spod Paul Collin's Beat The Dollyrots Bible Of The Devil Krum Bums Burning Star Core John Ralston Nothington Slough Feg PB's The Breakup Society Clorox Girls Rock Plaza Public Enemy

Kenny Wayne Shepherd Hubert Sumlin The Buzzcocks Garland Jeffreys Shirock Robbers on High Street Pela Oakley Hall Mink Lions in the Street Robert Rodriguez and Chingon What Made Milwaukee Famous Brothers and Sisters Kings of Leon Serena Ryder Tom Morello X Clan Melee Mobile

photo by clint gilders - staff photographer

SXSW 07 ended Sunday. The barricades are down in Austin, the swarms of international press have left, most of the bands have returned home, a few stayed behind, and the general tone and tenor of life has returned to Austin's entertainment district.

One thing that hasn't left is a persistent hacking cough that seems to have impacted Clint Gilders, at least one of the SXSW official photographers, and me. I'm still exhausted and ill, having seen my doctor twice and blown about $400 on meds since Monday. This afternoon I started to finally feel a little better, though, so maybe there's still hope. If not, I wish to have my ashes scattered throughout Austin's entertainment district, with a little left over for where the Dillo used to be. I'm sure we aren't the only ones still feeling, or reeling from, the after effects of SXSW 07.

The Zico Chain pose with Austin's infamous Leslie photo by jeff barringer - staff photographer

I talked to Chris Zico on the phone today. He and the band are somewhere in Arizona, trapped in an SUV with a couple of NME guys, watching for snakes on the highway, and heading off to some gigs in L.A. they landed while at SXSW. Wish I felt well enough to jump on a plane to catch them, but I'll send a few friends their way. I talked to a label today that may send an AOR guy to check them out, and I may send a bunch of reptile heads to their set as well.

Paul Collins and his band The Beat made it back to Spain after some nasty weather-related delays, and it appears Hugh Cornwell made it back to the U.K safely as well. I've already posted Hugh's video interview, and am finishing the edits on Paul and the Beat, as well as the Zico Chain interview. I should be posting those tonight. I'm very happy with how most of the videos have turned out so far; it looks like we have most of our technology issues finally ironed out.

photo by clint gilders - staff photographer

A super big thank you to Gabriel and Matt over at B & H Photo, they were lifesavers. After the guys at the Sony booth recommended I try to trade in my brand new 3 CCD Sony camcorder for a new one that was just released with XLR inputs that cost $2000 more (DOH!), Matt came to my rescue with a third party add-on designed to do the same for about $400. Not only that, he got in touch with his audio guys and set me up with just the right microphone combos. Over the last year, I've bought a lot of gear from a lot of different camera companies, and this is the first time I didn't feel like I was dealing with someone just wanting to "sell" me something - and this from a camera company based in New York! Matt set up the deal and Gabriel got it delivered to their hotel room, and by Thursday morning we had the hook-up. B & H has basically scored us as a corporate customer for life. Maybe we can talk them into working with us on our photo contests.

Speaking of the photo contest, we must have handed out close to 1000 business cards or flyers to photographers we saw at the trade show or at gigs. It should make for a much more interesting contest this year, but as of yet we haven't had a huge influx of photos for this month's contest. At the moment this would be the easiest month to have a chance to win something, but that could change tomorrow if everyone starts posting. Tom Zinn did post a few SXSW pics to our galleries, including a nice Pete Townsend performance shot. Anyone participating in the contest may request their photo gallery space be bumped up to 100Mb of storage, rather than the standard 10Mb we give everyone; just let us know when you need it.

SXSW, illness aside, was a blast for all of us and we will definitely return again next year. I want to thank everyone who helped make SXSW so special for us this year, including Christie Keith for working in the booth, doing all that live blogging, and the interviews and reviews, Christie's mom for taking care of her dogs, Clint Gilders for coming all the way from the great white north to shoot all those great pictures and videos, his wife Andrea and their kids for allowing him to be away for 9 days, Therese Kopiwada for doing the toughest job of all, just working that trade show booth, John Rucker for coming up from Houston to work the booth and reviewing some shows for us, my sister Susan for working at the booth, and making emergency runs with supplies when we ran out, my brother Jim and his wife for printing our flyers on short notice, and my parents, who took care of my large and varied menagerie (four tortoises, two hundred-pound dogs, two aquariums, and an African Grey parrot who would make Joe Pesci blush) for ten days.

A huge thank you to the staff of our PetHobbyist web communities for keeping the regular business going while we were all away, and the users of those communities for choosing not to start the revolution at that moment. I would also like to thank our winners of last year's photo contest, Jay West and Gary Miller, for showing up at the booth every 30 minutes and making us all jealous with who they just shot. Also a big thank you to Bob and Sherry Ashley over at ECO for helping us get all the "My Snake Is Bigger Than Your Snake" shirts in time, and to Brian Potter whose attempts to hook us up last minute with our ever elusive Slash interview were most appreciated, but in the end proved futile. We tried, buddy, maybe next time.

Finally, I would like to thank all the great bands and artists we saw, met and interviewed, especially Hugh Cornwell, Chris, Paul, and Ollie of the Zico Chain, Paul Collins and his band The Beat, Miles Winter Roberts, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Troy Campbell, Roky and Sumner Erickson and The Explosives and the 1300 odd other bands and artists that made SXSW so special.

Now... who's ready for ACL Fest?

where did you guys get those cool matching t-shirts? - photo by clint gilders - staff photographer

I need out, coach....

We tried to do too many things in too short a time period with too few people. The killer was probably the trade show booth.

Not that it was a bad idea, in fact we did so well "My Snake Is Bigger Than Your Snake" t-shirts were probably seen second in number only to SXSW t-shirts. I saw them in virtually every venue I went to, I saw them in restaurants and bars, and time after time I was stopped in the street by people asking where they could get one. That sure gave me a warm fuzzy.

Unfortunately, that warm fuzzy wasn't enough to stave off the wickedly variable Texas weather, and combined with being constantly on the move from air conditioning to the outside, to hot steamy clubs, with intermittent rain showers to crashing thunderstorms and temperatures that varied from the low 50s to the upper 80s, I was bound to at the least come down with a cold. On the second day of the interactive trade show (Monday) my voice was starting to get a little froggy, and by yesterday it was struggle just to force sounds out to do my last interview with the guys in the Zico Chain. My average sleep was about 4 hours each night, and by today I was existing on bottled water, a few cigarettes, and a handful of Dayquil/Nyquil liquicaps. My $17 Hilton omelette went half uneaten, as did the chili-cheeseburger from The Iron Cactus the night before. At breakfast today I asked for a pitcher of ice water and just gulped as much as I could after I couldn't force the omelette down, just to try to at least rehydrate. I have lost 9 lbs. since SXSW started. No joke 9 lbs... Literally a pound a day. And I live here.

I have come home now. Tonight my platinum badge goes unused, I will miss the Buzzcocks, the Stooges, the Meat Puppets, Peter Case, and Les Claypool and his Electric Apricot. While I am sad that I won't be going to their shows tonight and that the last night of my badge will be wasted, I know that I'll have the opportunity to see most of them again in the near future along with a number of the smaller bands I missed out on earlier. I did get an opportunity to see about 100 bands and performers during the 9 days of the SXSW Interactive and Music festivals. I also got an opportunity to meet a few neat people like Thomas Dolby and got to interview some of them as well, like Hugh Cornwell, Paul Collins and the Beat, and the Zico Chain. I even got to film a few live performances as well.

I did leave the festival in the good hands of Clint Gilders and our new staff photographer Gary Miller, and I'm sure Jay West will be posting a few of his shots from tonight in this year's photo contest as well, so we should have considerable coverage without me being there.

All in all, I would say we more than accomplished the goals we set out for ourselves during this year's SXSW.

I'm going to take a few days off, then I'll start planning for SXSW 2008 while this year's event is still fresh in my mind.

I feel like I have been poleaxed.

I think my downfall was drinking a few beers with the Zico Chain after their sound check. After going to dinner with the guys and possibly having a few too many for the pending task, we wandered off up to Stubbs just in time to catch some band from the UK doing a bloody awful version of the Heads' "Life During Wartime." Chris Zico looked at me and laughed and said they had the current #1 in the UK. From where I was standing a handful of audience members hooted the band down for the same, but were drowned out by the amplifiers.

Leaving the guys from Zico I wandered off to cover Blacklist, Bird, then Hugh Cornwell at Austin's Eysium. I finished my night with the Zico Boys as they trashed the stage at the Dirty Dog.

I will post more later, if I am able to make words into at least poorly formed sentences that our editors can decipher and fix.

Bands good. Food good. Need sleep.

photo by clint gilders - staff photographer

If my head was swimming yesterday, it is completely awash and in danger of foundering after today. First, the rumors are flying... Townsend's going to play here, no he's going to play here, no, Roger Daltrey is coming and they will reform the Who with Sean Lennon. First Yoko Ono is playing Antone's, then she's not. Now, and take this as confirmed as posters appeared overnight all over downtown, the Jefferson Starship will land in Waterloo Park on the 14th and play a FREE SHOW!

Dan Rather had his interview today and we bumped into him in the hall at the Hilton. Clint got some great photos. I hooked up with the people from B & H photo to get some camera gear shipped in on the redeye for my interviews this week. Ray Wylie Hubbard and Troy Campbell stopped by the booth to say hello, and Troy invited us to film the Roky Erickson show on Thursday after my Hugh Cornwell video interview. That should be a great show because my understanding is that Peter Buck from REM will be playing in his band - and you never know who will show up when Roky plays, as his legendary 60s band the 13th Floor Elevators massively influenced a whole generation of musicians.

After the trade show the club kingsnake staff (Christie Keith, Therese Kopiwoda, Clint, and I) went out for dinner at the Iron Cactus. Clint and I ran into Kent Nichols and Douglas Sarine, creators of the wildly popular Ask A Ninja short films ,who promised to stop by because they liked our black t-shirts. The shirts were a HUGE hit, with people seeking us out all day asking for them, and they could be seen in great numbers, over the shoulders or on a substantial number of participants in the halls of the conference and on the trade show floor. We still have plenty left, though, so come on by the booth (I14) and pick one up!

After dinner Clint and I blazed over to La Zona Rosa for the Austin Chronicle film party, but I'll let Clint tell you about that when he wakes up...

clint gilders (center) with Ask A Ninja co-founders Kent Nichols (left) and Douglas Sarine (right) - photo by jeff barringer - staff photographer

SXSW is here, with interactive and film trade shows, as well as panels, movies and parties, parties, parties. Every Bar B Q caterer in Austin must have their grills stoked 24 hours a day just to cover all the buffets and banquets.

club kingsnake is definitely in the house, giving away thousands of free t-shirts over the course of the event. Clint Gilders, Christie Keith, and I passed out shirts and business cards all weekend, with a little extra assistance from my sister Susan Barringer, seen here modeling our latest in fashionable outerwear for the spring club season.

As the trade show ended, we all headed out to hit the party circuit, with Clint and I first trying out the brisket and potato salad at the ASCAP film party at Maggie Mae's before heading off to find some bands. We ended up at Robert Rodriguez's film party at Antone's, where we caught Patricia Vonne performing, followed by Del Castillo with an exceptional performance, followed by Robert's own band Chingon. Afterwards we swam back to the car in a driving rainstorm. Watch for a review and pics of this gig by Clint tomorrow.

If you can get there in time, 3000 free club.kingsnake T-shirts will be given out March 11-16 at the SXSW Interactive, Film, & Music Conference in Austin, Texas. We will try to limit the number of shirts we have on hand in our trade show booth so that he have some shirts available each day, and we will make some available at a few select Austin locations and events that are open to the general public, locations and times to be announced next week. Watch this space for further details....

First Place Winner - photo by Gary Miller Second Place Winner - photo by Jay West

club kingsnake is proud to announce it is now accepting submissions for its 2007 concert photo contest. Last year's contest attracted over 500 photo entries from photographers around the world. This year we have timed the announcement to occur during Austin's SXSW festival.

The 2007 contest will be handled a bit differently, with monthly winners instead of weekly, and with larger prize incentives to the winners. This year's contest prizes are as follows:

Monthly Prizes: (selected at the first of each month)
1st Place - $100 Best Buy Gift Card
2nd Place - $50 Best Buy Gift Card
3rd Place - club kingsnake T-Shirt

Year End Prizes: (selected at the beginning of 2008)
1st Place - $2000 Camera Shopping Spree
2nd Place - Fuji F31 Point N Shoot Camera
3rd Place - $100 Best Buy Gift Card

This year's contestants will not have to worry about last year's winner. Moondog (Gary Miller) has decided to abstain so that he may join our volunteer staff as a staff photographer and help us with this year's contest. Moondog is not only SXSW's official photographer, but also a staff photographer for the Austin Chronicle, as well as the house photographer for a number of Texas major concert venues. Gary just got back from shooting Eric Clapton and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and hopefully will have some of these as well as many other concert photos to show us this year. Welcome aboard Gary!

SXSW participants will be able to view not only Gary's prize winning photo of James Brown, selected by a panel of judges that included Alice Cooper, but also second place winner Jay West's photo of Cee-Lo of Gnarls Barkley, and other select images from our gallery.

So how does it work? Simple - just upload a concert photograph that you have taken yourself (with a camera, not off someone else's web site) to our photo contest gallery. Make sure to include the artist's name and any other pertinent details such as the camera and lense used in the description. Every month 3 winners will be chosen, and at the end of the year the 3 best will be selected. This is kind of like American Idol for pictures except our contest judges have been told to keep their rude snickering to themselves.

Gentlemen (and Ladies)... Start your memory cards and POST AWAY!, the 2007 club kingsnake photo contest is now live! Post your images at http://clubpix.kingsnake.com/index.php?cat=521

The first person to enter a photograph in this years contest will get a FREE club.kingsnake T-Shirt!

Contest Rules

• You may enter as many concert photos as you like AS LONG AS THEY ARE PHOTOS YOU HAVE TAKEN!
  
• Entries must be posted before the end of the day on the last day of the month, according to the clocks on our systems.
  
• You must include a valid email address on your post for it to qualify.
  
• Staff and volunteers of OnlineHobbyist.com, Inc. and its associated sites are ineligible to participate in the contest although they may certainly post their photos as well.
  
• Anyone may enter, regardless of age, although for persons under 18 a parent or guardian must claim the prize.
  
• No purchase is required to participate.
  
• You must have a physical address somewhere on the planet earth that can receive parcels sent through the U.S. postal service.