It's difficult enough to remain conscious throughout South by Southwest, the world's largest music festival, let alone comment on it. Among all the music, beer, magazines, bumper stickers, paraphernalia, the venues, Stubb's, Emo's, the Longbranch Inn, it's tough to feel anything at all. In the end you will invariably find yourself belly-up in Bergstrom International Airport, waiting in limbo with other scraggly, fatigued passengers. They all know where you've been, but it just isn't worth talking about post hoc.
No matter how many acts you saw at SXSW, someone else saw more. No matter how good the sets you saw were, someone else saw better ones. SXSW is an amalgamation of things that can be experienced and shared, and this is what makes it so important to the new American culture. Everyone at the festival is somebody: a blogger, a photographer, a journalist, a musician, all people with ideas for the future of music and media. If the past few years have taught us anything, it is that the future of news and communications no longer belongs to the big media corporations. The New York Times could only react to the festival, whereas the music blogosphere has been abuzz about the artists to see weeks in advance.
I stayed on Austin's north side with an old friend and manager at KVRX, the student radio station at the University of Texas. We glanced over the official SXSW lineup and its more than $600 ticket and laughed, opting instead to hop around the free showcases being thrown by music labels like Fat Possum and Kill Rock Stars. It was a shame the festival was so expensive, with great talent such as Ben Harper and Shiny Toy Guns going unheard and unseen due to my thriftiness. Still, listening to music became my job, and I saw some fantastic sets during my short time at SXSW. The Chicago-based septet Anathello ripped through a noontime set under the hot Texan sun at the Paste Party taking place at Ace's Lounge. Their music permeated 6th Street, the primary location of the free showcases, with intense layers of synthesizers howling above energetic vocals. Anathello's set was followed by
Samantha Crane and the Midnight Shivers, whose sound juxtaposes the feel of the old Wild West with a modern sense of disconnect and loss. Other acts that stood out were the almost tribal, always interesting Akron/Family, the sensitive guitar/violin trio of Horse Feathers, as well as the local Austin 1920's speakeasy throwback collective, the White Ghost Shivers.
What interested me most about SXSW is that it turns the city of Austin into its music venue, not the other way around. The concerts are littered throughout the town and are not limited to bars and clubs. KVRX-Austin took over the Ballet Austin to throw their annual SXSW/spring break party featuring the Monotonix, an Israeli punk band best known for their love of fire and destruction. Peaceful rehearsal space was turned into the epicenter of a raucous musical experience. If SXSW is anything, it is something to be experienced. Samantha Crane summed it up best during her set early on the festival's first day of music. After her quartet began to play a song at divisive tempos, the pint-sized singer with a big voice laughed and asked them to stop and start over. ""It's South by Southwest,"" she reasoned with a smile, ""You can do anything you want.""
