South by Southwest is the biggest, best music festival around. Sorry, Lollapalooza.
In comparison with most people I know, I’m a bit of a Luddite. I was an extremely late adopter on a number of fronts (cell phone, laptop, iPod). I only learned how to adequately text-message a couple of years ago. I still don’t have a BlackBerry — or something similar. More often than not, I write with pen and paper. More often than that, I write with pen and the palm of my hand.
I’m truly embarrassed by most of this. I’m too young to affect a nostalgic, back-in-my-day pose. We’re basically still in my day, and I’m behind the curve. Even if I wanted to cheat, guess what? The world wasn’t better before all those things. Perhaps we’ve gone too far, with the Bluetooth earpieces and all, but that doesn’t change my essential question: How did we used to do anything?
I always think about this during the annual South by Southwest Music, Film and Interactive Conferences and Festivals, which take place every March in Austin. Without a cell phone there, I would have been wandering around by myself. I would have had to rely on my friends and colleagues to be both punctual and unwavering in their plans. If you knew my friends and colleagues, you would know how hopeless that strategy would have been.
It’s even simpler than that, though: If you’ve been to South by Southwest recently, you wouldn’t even have to know my traveling party to know how pointless it would be to try to navigate that scene without the latest in modern technology. There are almost 100 clubs, close to 2,000 bands, and countless fans. It would be like trying to find a pin in a city full of haystacks. Here’s a good example: At one point during this year’s festival, the Who’s Pete Townshend got onstage with the Fratellis (whom you may have heard via their insanely catchy iTunes spot). My phone instantly started buzzing. A decade ago, I wouldn’t have found this out until the next morning, at best.
Somehow, we managed. When I started attending the festival, in 1995, I was still a student at the University of Texas. About a dozen or so of my friends would congregate in Austin for the week. None of us had cell phones, yet we all generally found each other amid the crowds. It doesn’t seem possible now, but it did happen.
Back then, though, we were at a different festival; it was more of a music-industry-only shindig. This was back when South by Southwest (SXSW) was thought to be one of those fabled places where an upstart band could perform, and if the right people found their way to the right show, the band could leave with a major-label recording contract. This didn’t happen too often, but the possibility remained, and that was good enough to keep those upstart bands coming.
After those kinds of hopes dimmed, the thinking changed, and the crowds did too. SXSW became a place where a band that had already secured its record deal could make a big splash. This relied less on the right people finding their way to the right show and more on lots of people, irrespective of their jobs or connections, finding that band. It seems counterintuitive, but the idea seemed to be to attract an interminable line of prospective audience members, few of whom had any chance of actually setting foot inside the venue. If you couldn’t even get in, obviously you had to be missing something. Right?
Now everyone pretty much takes the festival for what it is — and really always was: spring break for the music industry. That’s not to say that no one was working during this year’s installment (March 14 to 17). Reporters had to file stories; publicists had to try to get their clients into those stories. But now it’s less about the people working and more about the bands (the Fratellis, Mew, Kings of Leon, Spoon, the M’s, and the Pipettes, to name but a very few that made a mark this year) and their fans. Even as recently as a few years ago, it was possible for a then relatively unknown group to take over the town for a few days (the Strokes, the White Stripes) and then leave as conquering heroes, on their way to bigger and better. These days, the victors tend to be long-established names. This year, for instance, the reformed Stooges were responsible for the biggest buzz (and the biggest crowd).
This current trend has turned South by Southwest into just another music festival, like Coachella or Bonnaroo or whatever. Except for this: In many ways, it’s bigger than them and, I would argue, better. The bigger part requires no argument — more people and bands attend over more days. That’s just simple math.
The better part? I think that’s easy too. Unlike many of the other festivals, SXSW isn’t located in the middle of nowhere. It’s in a city with plenty of transportation, hotels, and so on. When you go to bed at night, you (probably) won’t be in a tent in a field with a few thousand of your closest friends (Bonnaroo) nor have a long drive out of the desert (Coachella). It’s during the spring, so the weather is better than average. When you go to see a band, the venues are small enough that you can actually see the band. If you can get in, that is.
That’s pretty much the only knock on the festival. It sets a new attendance record each year, and since the clubs aren’t getting any bigger, it’s harder than ever to get into the most-sought-after shows. But I don’t think that’s too big of a deal, really. If you can’t get into a particular show, sure, it’s a drag, but there are at least 100 other bands playing at the exact same time. You can just walk down the street and see something else great.
That scenario happened to me this year on the very first night. I went with a friend to see two bands at a club called Emo’s — the Mountain Goats and Blonde Redhead. There was a line out the door that blockaded the street. We could have hung around and maybe even gotten inside. But by then, we would have missed the Mountain Goats, and I’d already seen Blonde Redhead a few times before. My friend suggested a band he’d seen several times in Chicago, a sweet-sounding coed sextet called the 1900s. They happened to be playing just a few doors down, and there was no line. It ended up being the best thing I saw all week. At least, that’s what I text-messaged to someone during the show.
More Music Festivals
Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival (www.bonnaroo.com)
June 14 to 17, Manchester, Tennessee
Lollapalooza (www.lollapalooza.com)
August 3 to 5, Grant Park, Chicago
Bumbershoot (www.bumbershoot.org)
September 1 to 3, Seattle
Austin City Limits Festival (www.aclfestival.com)
September 14 to 16, Zilker Park, Austin
Keep in Mind for Next Year
Coachella (www.coachella.com)
Sasquatch Music Festival (www.sasquatch festival.com)
Hard Rock, Rocking
It only makes sense that the Hard Rock Cafe would eventually get into the concert business in a big way. Last year, the company did just that, kicking off the Ambassadors of Rock tour with a two-day stand at London’s Hyde Park that was headlined by the Who and Roger Waters.
Building on that success, Hard Rock is giving it another go and is starting at the same spot. This year’s Ambassadors of Rock tour starts with Hyde Park Calling 2007, a weekend of shows topped by Peter Gabriel and Crowded House on June 23 and Aerosmith on June 24.
Following the Hyde Park gigs, the tour will continue on to Caracas, New York, Chicago, Orlando, Nagoya, Singapore, Tokyo, Osaka, and Hollywood (Florida) with a different set of headliners (and all worthy of the title “ambassador”) performing in each city.
One lucky so-and-so will be able to attend four shows free of charge. It could be you: Visit www.hardrock.com/promo/ambassadors to register.
Sonny Smith, Fruitvale, (Belle Sound)
Bay Area pop eclectic Sonny Smith has made a lot of friends. Alt-country stars like Neko Case and Jolie Holland have handpicked him to open tours for them, and Green on Red guitarist Chuck Prophet essentially started his new Belle Sound label specifically to put out Smith’s latest, the concept LP Fruitvale. Smith’s been working quietly underground for years while accumulating this host of high-profile admirers. In 2000, he self-released his first album, a low-budget job called Who’s the Monster … You or Me? Its follow-up, This Is My Story, This Is My Song, found a home on the tiny San Francisco label Jackpine Social Club, which technically made it his debut. However, it had a belated 2003 release, and Smith had already moved on from those songs by the time the record started attracting positive reviews. By then, Smith was living in a funky Latino neighborhood in Oakland, one whose odd characters would provide the inspiration for Fruitvale, which plays like a postmodern barrio version of Our Town set to music. Featuring an ambitious song cycle, Smith’s album refracts the fragile pop of Daniel Johnston, the cracked bohemian poetry of Tom Waits, and the underdog narratives of Randy Newman — all through his own skewed kaleidoscope. Largely recorded in Chicago with arranger and coproducer Leroy Bach, who is best known from his time in Wilco, Smith’s funny, fragile voice infuses his strange little kitchen-sink dramas with a passion and a pathos that are hard to resist. — Bob Mehr