ten lessons from sxsw
01 The supposed primitives who believe that a camera snatches their soul? Onto something. Photographers suck at SXSW. Suck suck suck, whether it’s some dude snapping with his iPhone, someone using a camcorder to bootleg a show or a credentialed shutterbug with a massive DSLR, they are not your show-going friend. I watched too many shows through LCD screens and got pushed aside by too many aggro-tographers who couldn’t give two shits about the music, they just wanted the shot. It’s seriously getting out of control, and worse by the day. I was right up close at the Pains of Being Pure at Heart show, but could barely see thanks to: photographers up in my shit and their flashes, which were often pointed straight at my eyeballs for that oh-so-clever indirect light. Enough!
02 Twitter is not going away, and is actually (sometimes) useful. Twitter’s image at SXSW (not counting Interactive, which is irrelevant to all breathing humans) changed this dramatically: Day one, heard numerous “you gonna Twitter that?” jokes. Day three, conversations were peppered with the word “tweet” with zero discomfort. Downside of Twitter: I know of one prominent musician/Twitterer who was being stalked during SXSW with a string of “I can see you” posts. A little privacy can go a long way.
03 Spending branding $$$ at SXSW is useless. There is so much noise — both literal and figurative — that any kinda campaign is going to be ignored. “Oh are you going to the Fuze presents Guitar Hero Metallica show hosted by Rachel Ray’s favorite Miller Light recipes? Right on!” If you put on a cool show (like us, of course) and aren’t a dick about it that’s one thing. But the snipes/product placement/etc was silly. It felt like every branding/advertising/pr firm was trying to justify its existence with idiotic cross-brandings and promotions. The sad part though? At this point, most of the day parties — and certainly the “secret,” big-name shows — wouldn’t exist without them. Isn’t anyone the slightest bit concerned about how hard music has had to sell-out as a lifestyle accessory just to get it into the public sphere these days? What happens when the advertising world collapses? Does that take down everyone but Todd P?
PS: Keep handing out those free protein bars, though. There were two days where my only food consisted of two of those. The SXSW Diet, coming soon to a bookshelf near you.
04 Badges are irrelevant. You can see pretty much everyone you want without having a badge or wristband. (Good luck being under 21, though.) Having a car certainly helps, but it can be done pretty easily. Don’t let that $500 expense stop you.
05 Sixth St. at night is a zombie movie. For serious. Drunks staggering around like the newly undead, dudes with blood running down their faces thanks to asshole fights (if only to the death), girls squealing and screaming. It’s a complete nightmare. It’s exactly what I fear hell will be. Exactly.
06 Be skeptical of those “bands to watch” postmortems. It’s all self-fulfilling prophecy. Everyone goes down planning to see stuff they already know or have some idea about. When someone’s roundup names a certain band as a big winner at SXSW that just means that they like them. That’s all. If you believed the hype you’d be knee-deep in a heap of trendy shit that even the folks repping for it will hate two months later.
07 Bands need an instructional band camp. Badly. First off, SAY WHO YOU ARE. It’s impossible to tell when a venue is off-schedule, and twice I sat through entire sets without the band once saying who they were. (I had to ask the sound guy both times.) Also, don’t be afraid to plug your other shows! (You need to play at least two, with preferably a day show following your official showcase.) Best case for a band is you do your thing, the audience loves you, they tell other folks and then the next show is filled with all the Big Time Record Executives who will hand you a suitcase full of every IOU you will ever need.
08 Bring merch! I know it might seem silly because SXSW is for the edge of the edge, but people might wanna buy some stuff! Why not let them? Several times I was hoping to pick up CDs/T-shirts/whatever just to show love for a show I liked only to find that they had nothing. C’mon now!
09 Hey SXSW’rs, stop being dicks. Apparently the only way to prove you’re somebody at SXSW is to talk through a show. Or to stand up front and check your email the entire time. No one cares how important you think you are. Pay attention, put your stuff away, move back to the bar or, better yet, don’t come at all.
10 Hearing isn’t a right, but a privilege. I felt like my mom looking around at the audiences and bands at almost every show and seeing that barely anyone was wearing ear plugs. I mean, hey, it’s a new thing for me, too, but you have to wear them unless aural S&M is some new thing that I have yet to hear (ugh) about. Protect your hearers, kids!!!!
We brought no merch! I just figured people (and bands) are moving around too much, there are no merch tables, etc. Only one person actually approached me wanting to buy something. And he was pretty unsurprised when I had nothing to offer.
That said, I do know bands who brought stuff and sold a bunch of it.
Oops!
Further to point 7, I would recommend bands take a tip from Narduar and prepare a little cheat sheet to pass out at their shows listing all their performances. Also, there should be signs posted in various spots around the room with band names and set times to avoid exactly what happened to you Yancey.
“Hearing isn’t a right, but a privilege. ”
Amen to that. I spent 30 years going to concerts “unprotected,” until one time, after a particularly abusive aural experience, I found that the ringing in my ears didn’t stop. I’ve been using earplugs religiously for the past ten years, and they really work. The tinnitus never got any worse, and in fact has subsided a bit to more than tolerable levels, and I’ve found that good foam earplugs actually make the music sound better. They cut out a great deal of the ambient distortion inherent in loud live music. I recently tested my ability to discern high frequencies and found that I can’t hear anything above 14Mhz. While there’s very little musical information above that level, it doesn’t leave much room for error. Any further deterioration and I’d definitely be losing serious highs. Had I not been using the plugs, no doubt I’d have been out of luck a long time ago. Wear the plugs, people. And start doing it before you really think you need to.
This is a great blog post I read recently about people taking photos at shows:
“Bear with the Andy Rooney-ness of this, but you’re more than aware of these Jimmy Olsen eager-beavers at concerts, who have now become the majority, taking pictures or video of every somewhat interesting moment at a show, staring at the glow of their viewscreens more than the actual event.
We all used to complain about giant monitors at shows because it’d feel like watching television instead of the music, which was fair enough. Years ago, John Lydon’s P.i.L. reacted against it early on, putting on an infamous show with a fully covered, fabricated wall on the front of the stage, decked out with only a single and small television screen in the center that showed a live, full-set of the band playing on the other side.
And now we’re all doing it to ourselves.
Slate Magazine writes:
“There is something vaguely embarrassing – even narcissistic – about our new era of mass photography. Take a look at this picture of Barack and Michelle Obama at one of the inaugural balls. Everyone in the audience has a hand up with a cell phone pointed at the stage, but nobody is actually looking at what’s going on. The scene is puzzling: if the guy next to you is taking a picture – one that you can be reasonably sure will end up on a photo-sharing site somewhere – why do you need one, too?
Win Butler, the lead singer of the band Arcade Fire, once told Terry Gross that he and his band-mates have stopped going out into the crowd to perform because nobody pays attention to them – everyone’s got their cell phones and cameras in front of their faces.”
Photographing the event, in other words, has become more important than the event itself.
And there’s no solution.
There isn’t an audience at shows anymore, but a mutated paparazzi.
We’ve become our own fabricated walls built out of camera-phones and neurotic emotional distance, and – already having to deal with it for years – we can’t see it getting better anytime soon.”
Lemme add a No. 11: Eclectic instrumentation will add on 10 buzz points. Add a euphonium or tuba? Take an additional 5 points (and the forever devotion from anyone who’s ever played in a marching band)
lol@Rob
I think that’s half the reason Arcade Fire got so popular.
sorry this is off-topic, but is the new pains of being pure at heart single, “young adult friction” going to show up on emusic? and if so, when?
10/10, man.
@pneumatictubes: Yeah it’ll be on eMusic – sorting it out with the distributor right now.
And breathe…
Great post Yancey, I feel like you’ve got a load off your chest.
I couldn’t agree with you more on points 7 and 10. If a band doesn’t want to introduce themselves why are they up on stage? Why not stay in the practice room/basement. Really, if the cats got their tongue the easiest way to say who they are is to get their logo or band name NICE and BIG on the bass drum. Easy.
As for ear plugs. I had some specially made by an ear doctor who poured a heap of wax down my ear and they reduced the sound 25db across the board and they fit snug. They set me back $AU180 at the time, but considering I had them for about 15 years it was money well spent. I still have tinnitus but it could be really worse if it wasn’t for them and I need to get some more made. The foam ones are ok, but I find take all the ‘top’ out of the sound.
@pneumatictubes: FYI you can download TPOBPAH – “Young Adult Friction” for free at “Big River” (probably U.S. only). Click my name for the link.
Just a few thoughts/comments about lesson #1
Speaking as someone who loves photography just about as much as she loves music…. I have mixed emotions concerning your judgement of photographers. Unfortunately, the digital age has brought to surface a mass of those who take photographs unlike the few of us who were taking film photographs back in the day. There is a flood of “picture takers” and this has left those who photograph for passion the minority.
As a photographer, I too get annoyed with those who are inconsiderate to others around them enjoying the music. After all, that is why we are all there. The photographer’s goal is to capture that moment for others to enjoy who may not have been there…. but all to many times, their motivation is selfish. You are correct in saying that all they care about it “getting the shot”. These are the picture takers. Not the photographers. True photographers (and in MY opinion those who photograph MUSIC) will take in the show and watch for those vital moments that make the concert special and most and foremost, should be considerate of those around… and that includes the band themselves!
I’m sorry that you’ve had to deal with the obnoxious flash at a show (which, again in my opinion, should only be used at a show if absolutely necessary as a result of very poor light) or had to deal with the photographer who feels his badge or pass gives him/her more rights than you… That does give us true passionate photographers a bad name. I enjoy watching a photographer who can capture a show without you even realizing that they are there….
And to add to the comment made above about more people watching an event through a camera then actually WATCHING… well, unfortunately, I’ve been doing that pretty much my whole life. I view pretty much everything I care about through the eye of the lens…. :/ BUT, I love capturing life and my reasons for doing so are for no other reason than to make a moment last forever….
I guess the digital age has made picture taking so much easier than it has been for people in the past!
hi faith –
i am actually not anti-photographer at all. i have been pretty active at that in the past. but yeah, it’s exactly as you described: a mix of amateurs who aren’t thinking beyond their own shutter and then the asshole pros. i love concert photography and am by no means arguing we do away with it. i guess the bottom line would be: pictures of a show are about #723823 on my list of most important things to be done at a concert. but yet the behavior of those doing the photography would make it seem like THEY are all that matters. clearly the folks who actually like the music and are there for that reason should take priority.
thanks! when will it be available?
My problem with photographers is they get treated with more respect than artists and musicians in regards to content rights issues. FWIW I would put someone like Ansel Adams firmly in the ‘artist’ category..but most photographers are not doing that kind of work. I guess the artists and musicians are more to blame but it still burns me up a bit.
I agree with yancey on the photographer issue — though I tend to be about a billion times more annoyed by the incessant use of camera phones and digital cameras by the non-pros than by anything professional photographers do. There’s no need — no need! — to click away for the entirety of a show. None.
As far as the pros go, I like the idea of professional photographers snapping off a few shots at the start of a show and then retreating for the rest. I have far more patience for what they do than I do for amateurs desperate to document every single second of a set.