Austria Performs in Buenos Aires and Gains Fans

As posted by the Buenos Aires Herald last week, this piece led up to a Lisandro Aristimuño show that included Austria on the bill. The preview closes by saying, "The doors open tonight at Konex at 8pm, with Austria, a band from Rosario, warming up at 8:15pm."

Well, I guess "warming up" could be used as a description.

More like "fired up."

Buenos Aires is for all intents and purposes, Argentina, much like London is England. It's the epicenter of the country and that includes the music industry.

Austria is no stranger to Buenos Aires; it knows of it's success from the country's third largest city, Rosario, where the group is from, and as popular as the band is in their hometown, from time to time there can be somewhat of a disconnect between Rosario and Buenos Aires, for the band.

Until now.

Due to a series of events, Austria was invited to play one show with Lisandro Aristimuño (a popular Argentinean artist in his own right), and it apparently awakened a sleeping giant. Austria played in front of up to 700 people, largely to a set of ears that had not heard the group before. Like Austria always does, it grabbed the audience's attention, coupling their exceptionally high-level songwriting with a splendid performance. By all reports, there was a spike in the band's social networking sites ("listens," likes," talking about this", especially "talking about this") the next morning, and fans wrote on the band's Facebook page about how delighted they were to hear Austria's set having no expectations of the quality of music they would be faced with while waiting for Aristimuño's set. Some fans didn't wait until the next day; they told the band how great Austria was right after the show and even told Lisandro, himself.

The scenario (and reaction) is all too familiar, especially if you caught the band's set in Southern California a few months ago: From "I have no idea who this band is that I'm about to hear" to "Wow, these guys are great!," Austria consistently prove themselves to music fans.

So, Austria grabbed a few headlines, so to speak, in the capital city last week, and was invited back before moving on to play a few nights later to an immensely enthusiastic hometown crowd that welcomed them back for the band's first show in Rosario since returning from the U.S.

The beginning of a very important trend? We'll see.