Day one - Tuesday
There is a frisson of anticipation about heading out to South By South West. And why wouldn’t there be? For a start, it is a proper festival of music, with hundreds of bands and artists – the new, the old and the intermediate – playing in dozens of bars and clubs from 2pm till 2am every day for a week. This, clearly, is a good thing. And, since SXSW has built its reputation on hosting the next big things before they happen (The Fleet Foxes last year, Amy Winehouse, Lily Allen and, er, The Darkness), there is always the promise of discovery.
Secondly, it’s home is Austin, state capital of Texas and an anomaly of an American city: it’s small, has character, and in the downtown at least, along 5th and 6th streets where the majority of the SXSW action takes place, you will look in vain for a Starbucks, a McDonalds, or any of the other brands that have sucked the soul out of urban life the world over. Austin actively fights such things, with the ‘Keep Austin Weird’ battle cry emblazoned on T-shirts and paraphernalia all over town, lest the city fathers be tempted to succumb to big business temptation. And more power to the place and its people for doing so.
Seemingly everyone here is a music fan. A cab ride from the airport will inevitably involve the driver asking you if it’s OK for him (and it’s always a him) to play some music in the car. Tonight we get jazz, courtesy of a local public broadcast station, which is funded by Austin’s citizenry paying whatever they feel is appropriate to hear the music of their choice being broadcast. How different the BBC would be in such circumstances.
Oh, and it’s hot. The thermometer tips eighty degrees at 8pm and it’s well into the 100s during the day.
So, great music, great place, great weather … what’s not to like? Ah, that’ll be the getting here – delayed flight to Houston; the spirit-sapping two-hour crawl through the slowest customs control ‘service’ on the planet (“What’s the nature of your business in the US, sir?” To die of inertia in your queue, unrecognisable from my passport picture since I’ve grown a beard and lost a stone since arriving here); and, yea Gods, the fact that it’s St Patrick’s Day and, this being the blarney-loving US of A, everyone, but everyone, is wearing green and drinking themselves senseless. Hence, the streets that are thronged with music fans for the rest of the week are tonight teeming with what seems to be a spring break crowd – thousands of students all on the point of collapse.
This necessitates nothing more than a quick meal and a temperature reading of SXSW to come. To whit, one of the early buzz bands of the event are School Of Seven Bells; E Street Band guitarist ‘Little’ Steve Van Zant’s garage rock showcase may prove to be a thing of wonder; and both Metallica and Kanye West are among the big beasts of the music jungle allegedly planning to play here (and such rumours will go on throughout the week). Q is in town for its second annual SXSW party which will take place at The Parish on E 6th Street on Saturday, March 21, from 2pm, and feature performances from The Delta Spirit, Fanfarlo, Jay Jay Pistolet, Pete And The Pirates, You Me At Six and that very nice Graham Coxon. Gratifyingly, a couple of thousand folk have already applied to come, so if you’re in the area, best to get there early.
Right … Tomorrow promises the public unveiling of The Decemberists' rather wonderful The Hazards Of Love album and, since consumption of watered-down Guinness has reached critical mass, it’s time to retire for now.
Paul Rees, editor in chief, Q
9:36 AM | 18/03/2009
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