flying nocturnal rodents and okkervil river: sxsw
Gearing up here for South By Southwest, the music festival that may have done more to put Austin on the map than Willie Nelson, UT football, the tower shooter, and flying nocturnal rodents combined.* SXSW, as it is known in shorthand, is a big deal. It is also, to my mind, and to many, many minds, consistently the single greatest music festival of the year. They do this right. How? I’m glad you asked.
Number one, it’s all about new bands. There’s always a handful of bigger names, but SXSW is primarily a showcase for up and comers, and they’re thrilled to be here. As anyone who’s seen Bob Dylan recently can tell you, enthusiasm matters. And new bands - and many many of them - means smaller venues, and smaller venues means better shows.
Two: sets are one hour long. I can’t get over how much this helps. Some of these bands don’t really have three hours of good material, but they can kill for an hour. And then you can move on. Provided you have the stamina, you can see six bands a night.
Three: it’s in March, in Austin. You want to be in Austin in mid-March: this is the payoff for August. It will be gorgeous. You will want to kiss men/women/bats/yourself. You will start looking at real estate ads. You will kiss real estate ads.
Four, parts a,b,c, and d: It’s compact - plenty of the action is on or near 6th St., so you can walk from seeing Delta Spirit to Okkervil River to Echo and the Bunnymen. No hassle. And hassle is often the death of these things. The older you get, the more you start asking: is it worth the hassle? At SXSW you can plan your schedule out to the minute, or you can just wander around in a lo-fi, alt-country, electro-metal-noise-pop-pysch-rock-freak-folk haze from bar to bar and street to street, for four or five days, and you’ll do fine. You’ll do better than fine. And it’s huge. There should be about 1,800 bands here for SXSW, and those are just the official festival participants. You can create, out of these, your own personal fantasy festival - you want SXSW to be all about electronic? Or hip hop? Or Islamic Heavy Metal? Or only Scottish bands with names containing at least one number and two x’s, all fronted by albino hairdressers who are over 6′3″? Make it so.
Now, there is certainly a legitimate, grumpier take on SXSW, which is, it’s too damn expensive. If you want the festival to be a no-brainer, you need a wristband, and those cost $500, $600, $700 dollars; if you divide that by the number of bands you’re likely to see, it almost…no, it’s still not that good of a deal. The festival is white-hot, it’s the biggest deal of the year, and this is what the market will bear. (There’s an argument to be made that I’m less jaded about SXSW because my ticket was free: did I mention what an excellent publication Alarm is? And how everyone should read it?) BUT, you can also skip the wristband: many day shows are free, many clubs will just ask a cover charge of $5 or $10 if you get there early, and Austin, I swear to you, has a strange ability to produce free beer. Just wander around, someone will hand you a Shiner.
I’m in favor. If I’m ever attacked by a giant squid, and I need to go to my happy place, I will astral project myself to Tuesday afternoon, March 17th, at Flipnotics, with a cup of coffee and a SXSW schedule spread out on the table. My feeling is, if you’re not coming this year, and you’ve never been, plan it for next. For anyone who is coming this year, more detail on the lineup & the local wonders coming up…
Local band who have been slowly but steadily growing in stature, and who I will by God go and see this SXSW:
09-song-about-a-star
*these things should probably never be combined.