The week before last was South by South West(SXSW) – one of the biggest music festivals in the US[1] and far more rough than what I expected. So, how big is it? Well, SXSW actually consists of three festivals; film, interactive and music which together last a week. The music festival takes up four days of this and in that time the estimate is that 2000 bands played. I’ve heard that around 50,000 people attend the shows, but it seems that only around 12,000 attend the actual conference[2]. Apparently the festival generated $110 million in 2008 – so it’s big.

I won’t go into too much of the gory details, suffice to say that the main action is in downtown where two main streets are closed off, 6th Street and Red River, and some 80 stages ranging from bars to restaurants to open garages become venues for a never-ending parade of bands to play in. The typical schedule slots bands one after another for a 40-50 minute set with a 30-minute break in between to change over. The bands range from big names to three guys with acoustic guitars and a handful of coins.

Three guys with guitars

The shows start up around noon and keep going past midnight and during all this time 6th and Red River is turned into a sea of drinking, shouting, sun-burning, late-nite vomiting, heaving mass of non-conformity.
At the top end of this year’s spectrum was Metallica and Kanye West, filling out the mid-range was bands like Gomez[3], The Decemberists and Erykah Badu and the Cannaboids[4]. And at the bottom end you had a swarming pool of thousands of nobody bands vying to be heard. The effect is a relentless cacophony of guitars and drums from all sides as you walk down the street in which you can sample 30 bands within five street blocks. You can literally hop from one show to the next, spending 5 minutes at one, then walking next door to spend 1 minute there before heading on.

SXSW Streets

Not having a badge I only spent a few hours checking out 6th and Red River and ended up watching around 7 or 8 bands play free live shows, though it total I must’ve listened to snippets of at least 30 shows from the street[5]. I did, however, touch Gomez’s tour bus[6] and we could clearly hear Metallica from our front porch. But my overwhelming sense of SXSW is less about the bands and more about the people who attend; skanky, dirty punks; aloof indie types; crazy Japanese harajuku vampires; sweaty straight-edge metal heads; soft-shoe two-tone types; converse-and-jeans; bloated college Beerlanders and the odd Rastafarian. I loved it.

Suburban Ruffness

Overall the quality of the music was, uhm, ok. Now let me immediately say that since I only attended free shows – not any of the industry showcases – I really was dredging the bottom of the barrel in many cases. And to be honest, the majority of what I saw was pretty crap – fine musicians, solid rock, but nothing really outstanding. Except – except. There were two bands that I saw who rocked – really fucking great. And they illustrate what I loved so much about SXSW. The first was a band named Dirty Sweet who actually have a record out and played a fantastic, energetic, awesome set of dirty Southern Rock at 4pm on Saturday afternoon at the Beauty Bar – hair, tambourines, guitar licks, harmonica – absolutely great. I’ve subsequently acquired their album and will highly recommend them to anyone who wants to go see a rocking, jamming show.

Dirty Sweet rock the Beauty Bar

The other band was arguably even greater – I have no idea what their name was. They played at the Creekside Lounge at around 5pm on Saturday afternoon in a slot that was advertised to be for Vulture Whale. But Vulture Whale they weren’t. This band was made up of three guys, a chubby Hispanic dude, a tall white guy with a handlebar moustache and a slim dude beating the shit out of his drum kit. They played short 3-minute blasts of totally overdriven[7] instrumental hard rock – basically just a bunch of back-to-back riffs. And the two guys kept on walking around in the crowd and getting up on the bar and swaying around while the slim guy kept on just beating the absolute crap out of his drum kit. It was fantastic – loud and rough and completely anonymous. They all probably work really boring day jobs and I doubt whether they will ever be signed but for that one day, for those few hours, they were contenders – and it doesn’t matter that they were among 1999 other competitors or that I don’t know their name or even took pictures – they were there and made an enormous noise.