10 Years At SXSW

Somehow this will be my tenth year at South By Southwest.

The first year I came, in 2006, I didn’t know anything about the festival.  I came for work, which meant I was doing product demonstrations in the Convention Center from 8am – 5pm.  At night we’d go to showcases.  It was an exhausting and exhilarating 11 days.

At Emo’s I saw Eugene Hutz jump into the crowd during a frenetic Gogol Bordello show.  I watched a tall blonde girl sing along to every word at MF Doom.  My company sponsored a small party that Sleater-Kinney played and we shyly met them after their set.

I had a flip phone that allowed rudimentary texting – you had to hit a button multiple times to select a new letter – but a co-worker sent me a text to show up to Stubb’s for a surprise show.  Pre-Twitter and iPhone and mobile internet access it really was a surprise.  People filed in and we watched the Beastie Boys play “Intergalactic” and “No Sleep Till Brooklyn.”  I heard people talking about another secret show in a fenced off parking lot near what was once a Spaghetti Warehouse.  Underneath the white tent top the Flaming Lips covered “Bohemian Rhapsody” and the crowd sang loudly and bounced beach balls.  It felt amazing to be in this space with all these people experiencing this.  It didn’t feel like we were attendees at a distance, it felt like we were active participants.   

That first South By became sort of a pivotal moment.  It helped change the way I wanted to experience music.  I wanted it to be up close and personal, I wanted to be right next to it. 

Gogol Bordello at Emo's (2006)

In the years that followed, South By became my annual pilgrimage.  I’d fly from San Francisco or Oakland or San Jose, wherever I could get a flight from.  One year I fell down a flight of stairs on my way to the airport.  I tripped over the strap on my suitcase and toppled onto the concrete outside my apartment.  A man driving by jumped out of his car to see if I was okay, leaving his car running in the middle of the street.  I thanked him and said, “I have to get to the airport.”  I slid myself into my car seat with a throbbing huge bruise on my right hip.  Another year all the San Francisco flights were cancelled so we sped to San Jose and pleaded with them to let us out.  I was a woman obsessed.  I didn't know too many people in Austin, but I knew I wanted to be there.

Two years in a row I stayed at the Town Lake Holiday Inn.  The second time was an accident – another hotel lost my reservation, but I got in a cab and the driver said he’d take me around until I found a place to stay.  The Holiday Inn had one room left.  Rainey Street had yet to be developed, so if I wanted coffee the closest place I’d really stumbled on was the Hideout, near Sixth and Congress.  (Little did I know what that spot would come to mean to me in the years that would follow.)

I started writing more about music, covering shows for 7x7, SPIN, and Ground Control.  South By was my chance to commune with other music writers and talk about who we loved and who we wanted to see.

Vampire Weekend at Stubb's (2008)

Surfer Blood at La Zona Rosa (2011)

At the Parish we saw one of She & Him’s first shows.  At La Zona Rosa we saw Editors and Secret Machines and Cold War Kids.  Band of Horses played Central Presbyterian Church and it was the closest thing to a revival I’ve experienced.  One year I ended up dancing at the Mohawk until 4am to a guy remixing 8-bit Nintendo sounds.  I saw Deer Tick completely channel Nirvana in an all-cover set that ended with them smashing their instruments.

In the last couple of years though, I’ve noticed more bands that seem to be exhausted from playing so many shows in a short span of time and fans that are anxious to move on to the next thing.  There’s always a better party and a better band and something you absolutely shouldn’t be missing somewhere else.  (With the proliferation of free daytime parties sometimes the nighttime showcases can seem a little shortchanged.  On a couple of occasions I’ve noticed that a band might pack a free daytime party, but not have a huge audience at a nighttime show.)

My worry is that folks may now be driven less by the want to see a certain band or to discover something new than by the fear of missing out on seeing something.  Not that this fear didn’t exist before, but it feels more tangible now.  Maybe part of what made those early years so magical for me was that I wasn’t really aware of what I missed out on.  I just knew that in that moment I was with a dozen other people watching the Black Lips start a mosh pit at Beerland.     

So, enjoy the moment – before you know it, 10 years will go by. 

Strip Down And Unplug

It’s been a few days into the all-you-can-hear musical buffet that is South by Southwest, and I’ve managed to see some pretty great acts. I’m still waiting to be stunned and amazed, but there’s a little time left before I surely succumb to my death by second-hand smoke.

March 16 – Essential Listening:
The Apples in Stereo – “Energy”
Scissors For Lefty – “Ghetto Ways”
Honeycut – “Shadows”
Bonde do Role – “Melo do Vitiligo”
The Faint – “I disappear”
The Good the Bad and the Queen – “Herculean”

4pm
I wandered down to Habana to get a dose of snap-happy rock from The Apples in Stereo. With their feel-good tracks “Can You Feel it?” and “Energy” at the start of the set, The Apples in Stereo’s sound lies somewhere between Sister Hazel and The Flaming Lips. While the keyboardist took the stage in a silvery pseudo-space suit with cape and yellow-lensed glasses, the rest of the band seemed exceedingly normal – a bunch of middle-aged guys happily singing about the “Same Old Drag.”

5:15pm
Spiro’s hosted a special showcase of San Francisco bands – including Minipop, The Lovemakers, Audrye Sessions, Honeycut and other local faves. Scissors for Lefty opened it up outside – playing their sixth of seven gigs at South by Southwest. If the boys were spent, you wouldn’t guess it, as they piped out “Lay Down Your Weapons” and went on to “Ghetto Ways.” While The Lovemakers’ Lisa Light sucked on a cigarillo, SFL’s lead singer, Bryan Garza, oozed a merry falsetto into the CB radio attached to the microphone, and jumped into the small crowd near the front to dance with the ladies. When he unbuttoned his jeans, I feared a Jim Morrison re-enactment, and shielded my eyes at the glare of tighty-whiteys. Keep ‘em buttoned, man.



9pm
Scurrying into the back of Antone’s I joined the crowd in front of the stage for Margot And the Nuclear So and So’s. They played a few new tunes, all working in their sound of mellow non-diagnosed depression, and then onto “Paper Kitten Nightmare” and (my fave) “Skeleton Key” from “The Dust of Retreat.”

10pm
When I heard that Sufjan Stevens’s collaborator My Brightest Diamond was performing, I was intrigued enough to lend an ear, and what I got was the pure vocal prowess of Shara Worden. While she surely can’t be more than five feet tall, her voice is huge, best evidenced when she covered Roy Orbison’s “It’s Over” toward the end of the set.

10:50pm
There was a line around Beauty Bar extending up past the next venue, as concert-goers turned out to catch Brazilian sensation Bonde do Role, and avert-your-eyes topless rap divas Yo Majesty. Go figure.

11:10pm
Licensing, schmicensing. Sao Paulo group Bonde do Role mix Portuguese rap over often-recognizable tracks like AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long” and selections from the “Grease” soundtrack with such flair that it’s a wonder ASCAP doesn’t just waive the normal constraints. Like the better-known CSS, Bonde do Role gives an edgy sound to highly danceable tracks, best exemplified on “Marina Gasolina.”

12:10pm
Squeezing into the Eternal just before The Faint took the stage, the venue was hot and about to get hotter, as groovy kids and older groovy kids danced to “Call Call” and “I Disappear.” The show was good and energetic – the right mix of psychedelic imagery in moving lights and pictures and reflective synth beats. And seriously, only a handful of men can get away with wearing eye liner after age 25 – David Bowie, the dudes from Depeche Mode, and Todd Fink from The Faint.