SXSW

SXSW is here. If I didn't live here I'd have no idea that it was actually pronounced "South by Southwest". Don't call it anything else or you'll reveal your ignorance. It's really 3 different events over 10 days: live music (the original SXSW), interactive and film. If you're under the age of 30 you are here now, causing huge traffic jams, crowding every restaurant, wandering across streets in a daze (chemically induced or fatigue stupor or just youthful stupidity) and completely messing up the check-out counters at Whole Foods. And, just to make sure all bets are covered, the Rodeo is here with its lineup of country music.

It may be Southwest but the scope is international. SXSW started in 1987 with about 700 people attending. This year they have over 1900 bands performing live and 594 of them are from outside the US. Where? For example, Australia (28 acts), Ethiopia, Slovenia, Faroe Islands, Palestine, South Africa, Turkey, and so on. Click here to see the map.

The great thing about SXSW is that some really good music floats to the top here and then goes on to make it big on to the national scene. Norah Jones was at SXSW before she got that Grammy and Bon Iver was here last year. Big names, like Quincy Jones and Erykah Badu, come to visit. Late edit: Last night, Friday, they had a surpise appearance of Metallica, a band that gives me a headache just to think about.

The weather this week is incredibly perfect: high 70s in the day, cool low 50s at night, cloudless blue skies and no mosquitos (yet). This is bad. It makes everyone who is just visiting here for SXSW want to move here.
No.
Don't.
Please stay home.
We have enough people here.
Especially enough slackers.
Remember that movie from 1991? " ...Presents a day in the life in Austin, Texas, among its social outcasts and misfits, predominantly the twenty-something set ... "

Susan and I try to just stay home for the crazy SXSW week but this year she had a brief brain-fart and thought she wanted to go to the SXSW Interactive. Thankfully she regained her senses and I didn't have to navigate all the closed-off streets downtown to drop her off (Yes, Austin closes off streets for the events. Think lots of $$$ coming to Austin, thanks to all those trust-fund-baby slackers.)

There is a meme out there floating around in cyberspace where you put things together to make a record album. Susan found it on other people's blogs (here and here, for example) and was ready to get pulled into that big time-sucker but successfully fought it off. There's no reason to try to randomly generate a band name when these names are already taken by REAL bands:

Wild Beasts

These Are Powers

The Shaky Hands

Attack! Attack!
Abolone Dots

Eat Skull

Naked on the Vague

Meat Puppets

Tub Ring

Dirty Projectors

A Hawk and a Hacksaw

Stars Like Fleas

Turbo Fruits

So how does this all tie in with the picture above? That's the little stone from inside Peevey's head, rephotographed with Susan's NEW camera that she hasn't used yet but I obviously have. The words written on it are my misquoting from "The Littlest Birds" by The Be Good Tanyas. A way cool song.