Monday, March 17, 2008

South By Southwest

We have a little music festival in Austin called South By Southwest.

1,700 bands over a five day period. That translates into 2,500+ shows, because most bands play twice while they're down here. It's insane--here's the band schedule.

Of course, no one who lives here actually goes to South By Southwest.

Here's the same basic conversation I have every year with Gloria:
"Hey, do you want to go see Damnation Troubadors during South By Southwest?" I ask.

"Sure," she says. "When are they playing?"

"3 a.m. on Thursday morning at a gas station," I say.

"Oh," she says.

"We could park at the shuttle lot and ride the bus in," I say. "Then two donkey carts and a pedicab ride and we'll be there."

That's one of the things about South By Southwest: if you're going, you need to stay in a hotel downtown where you can walk everywhere, because with 100,000 extra people, good luck getting into downtown.

Plus, of those 100,000 people, at least 10,000 will be wearing black leather pants. This just isn't a leather pants town, mostly because they'd have to use the Jaws of Life to peel them off you because of the heat. So even though a ton of totally cool people (I'm not including myself in this category, believe me) live here, none of them wear leather pants.

Another 10,000 of the people here this weekend look like they were in Duran Duran. Again, not a look that thrives down here, even though there are hundreds of live music shows every weekend representing every possible genre. So even if you play music like Duran Duran, you don't look like Duran Duran.

Every band you ever desperately wanted to hear played at South By Southwest--the year before you wanted to see them. Flight of the Conchords? Last year. Peter Bjorn and John (for whom I have an odd affection)? Last year.

In the next year, I'll "discover" half a dozen or so fantastic bands, all of whom are playing at South By Southwest.

This year.

Site Meter