Bored with getting drunk with your friends and hanging out on the beach with beautiful people (or just pretending you are)? Here's some spring break vacationing advice: Go to Texas and see over 1,400 bands.
Beginning today, the 20th annual South by Southwest (SXSW) music industry convention hijacks the capital city of Austin for five days of shows, panels, schmoozing and disgustingly warm vodka cocktails.
Aside from a handful of other elitist, name-dropping shindigs, SXSW is one of the few chances the independent music community has to organize, hang out with each other, and compete to find the most obscure band on the bill.
At SXSW, independent radio stations' music directors get to see the radio promoters with whom they have been talking about records over the phone; show promoters get to see the booking agents they have haggled with through e-mail; and writers and bloggers come face to face with the indie superstars they either adore, disrespect or say bad things about. It may be awkward at times, but it's a good way to put names to faces; think of it as the music industry's spring cotillion.
Every cotillion needs music, and in sheer amount of bands, SXSW may be the world's premier event. For five straight days, Austin's thriving music scene is put on hold while more than 60 of its clubs, bars and basements showcase the biggest, smallest, weirdest, newest and best in global independent music in just a few concentrated blocks.
The event's bands fall into three broad categories: relative/literal unknowns, current sensations that you think don't have any other fans besides yourself, and mammoth musicians with huge drawing power. It is difficult to pick out who the best unknown band will be - because, you know, they aren't very well known - but keep an eye out for London flamethrower Plan B ("My rap style's distorted / like little Mo' getting raped / and keeping the baby instead of getting it aborted") at Maggie Mae's on Day Four and Seattle singer/songwriter Laura Veirs at Day One's KUT-FM show at Caribbean Lights.
In category two, expect the biggest individual draws to be Brighton, England retro-celebrators The Go! Team (Day One, 1:00 a.m. at Exodus), literate Los Angeles lyricist Busdriver (Day Two, 12:30 a.m., Zero Degrees) and the nearly all-Texan hip-hop show headlined by Houston's Chamillionaire (Day One, Back Room at 1:15 a.m. or whenever Chamillionaire says so), but expect droves to spend all night at Austin's biggest venues for the top label and booking agency showcases.
Perhaps the most anticipated of these is the Kork booking agency and Polyvinyl Records event on Day One at Emo's Main Room that showcases some of the two companies' biggest clients, including hometown destruction purveyors And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, playing their first show since last summer and the first of three SXSW performances.
Also on Day One, major label Warner Brothers shows off its diverse roster at La Zona Rosa. The show features barbed-tongued New York emcees Jean Grae and Talib Kweli, with neo-psychedelic The Secret Machines headlining.
On Day Three, Minneapolis hip-hop label Rhymesayers trots out its biggest names at Emo's with performances from emcees Brother Ali and P.O.S. and duos Soul Position (Blueprint and RJD2) and Atmosphere.
On Day Four, folky/Americana labels Secretly Canadian and Jagjaguwar show off their critically acclaimed rosters at Emo's Annex with performances from Chicago's Magnolia Electric Company, Austin's own Okkervil River and the brilliantly-named I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness.
Amidst the thousands of mildly - well, mostly or entirely - unknown musicians is a spate of acts that even your parents might have heard of. At the Matador Records showcase (Day One, Stubb's), for instance, The New Pornographers, Belle & Sebastian and Mogwai ride the momentum of their well-received recent releases, as does New Pornos' silver-throated songstress Neko Case (Day Three, 1:00 a.m., Antone's). Wu-Tang member Ghostface promotes his new album, "Fishscale," set for release on Mar. 28, at La Zona Rosa (Day Four, 1:00 a.m.), as does former Smiths frontman Morrissey (Day Two, 9:30 p.m., Austin City Music Hall), whose "Ringleader of the Tormentors" is due out in April.
Still, the biggest (and most bizarrely arranged) show will be on Day Two at the Town Lake Stage at Auditorium Shores where emusic.com pairs Boston emcee Mr. Lif and Oakland hip-hop duo Blackalicious with Austin's biggest indie rock band Spoon and '80s post-punk pioneers Echo & The Bunnymen in an intriguing show of some of SXSW's biggest names.
All this, not to mention the loads of unofficial parties, panels and discussions by legendary musicians like Neil Young and The Kinks' Ray Davies, as well as the collective chemical highs of thousands of hipsters and industry types, make SXSW a pretty satisfying spring vacation. At least you know that no seedy footage of you and someone random will wind up on collegehumor.com... or do you?
