The Official Grand Opening of Beauty Ballroom with NYC’s This Ambitous Orchestra featured a tribute night to Bowie and Elvis with many of Austin’s hometown favorite bands taking part. Check out Octopus Projects version of Space Oddity here.

On January 27th and 28th, the Beauty Ballroom threw a Grand Opening party to celebrate the 2nd and newest location in Austin! Thanks so much to all of the performers and everyone that attended, who made the night such a special one! We’d especially like to thank The Ambitious Orchestra, Lady Circus and Bro Circus, and our amazing list of special performers:

DANIEL JOHNSTON
ALEX MAAS (Black Angels)
YVONNE LAMBERT (Octopus Project)
MIKE WIEBE (Riverboat Gamblers)
JASON REECE (…And You Will Know Us By Our Trail of Dead)
CHRIS HECKENDOM (All My Friends)
CHRISTINA MARS (Asylum Street Spankers)
JASON MORRIS (The Clouds are Ghosts)
JONATHAN TERRELL (Not in the Face)
EVA MUELLER (One Hundred Flowers, Hot Cotton)
JACKIE ADAMS (This Ambitious Orchestra)
LISA D (This Ambitious Orchestra)
TROUPE GAMMAGE (Speak)

Here are a few photos from the night taken by Nash Cook (more here!)

In terms of afterparties, Fun Fun Fun Fest 2011 was truly epic. Hell the whole festival was incredible but Beauty Bar definitely held it down from Thursday through Sunday. The mayhem began Thursday night with the Check Yo Ponytail tour, featuring DJ sets from Beauty Bar homies Devlin and Darko (Spank Rock), Rusty Lazar (Big Freedia), and Franki Chan. Friday night was headlined by funk and soul legend Andre Williams (dropping all his dirty, old man jams, closing with “Pu$$y Stank, But So Do Marijuana”). Black Joe Lewis side-project Ice Pick opened to night, proving that the buzz around the leather-jacketed frontman is justified to say the least. Saturday we followed the lead of our Chicago branch with the Turntable.IRL party curated by our boy Bojan of The Windish Agency. Beyond just amazing DJ sets from 27 managers, agents and artists, Sexy Sax Man standing on top of the speakers performing “Careless Whisper” to a packed Beauty Bar may be the highlight of the weekend. May be…. if it weren’t for the surprise Diplo DJ set on Sunday. Austra and MNDR got things going early, and by the time Diplo hit the DJ booth, the bar was a seething, sweaty dance party. Even the weekend’s most tweeted about celebrity sightings, Ryan Gosling and the curly haired stoner from Workaholics, stopped by.

Big thanks to Fun Fun Fun Fest, The Windish Agency, Transmission Entertainment and the entire Beauty Bar family for making this a weekend to remember.

Death From Above 1979 brought the house down saturday night at Beauty Bar Austin — LITERALLY AND FIGURATIVELY! Hundreds of fans trying to get into the sold out show ripped the back fence down inciting a mini riot. Thanks to Austin PD, Beauty Bar and SXSW staff the crowd was contained and the show was able to continue. The situation was more a result from a few unruly fans outside of the gates rather than the crowd as a whole and no one was seriously hurt. We want to thank the fans, staff and DFA 1979 for controlling a situation that could have turned very bad. In the end the party was a success and we are thankful to DFA 1979 for reuniting after five years to play the AM Only/Undocumented Management SXSW Showcase. If you missed them here you can catch them at the Coachella music festival in Indio California on April 17th.

Thanks SXSW, that was one HELL of a party!! Check out the videos below and more to come in the next week.