One of my main goals for SXSW (along with seeing tomorrow’s Ghostface/Rakim show) was to finally get to see Old Time Relijun live. I’ve been a fan of their records for years — each one is a bit scarier and a bit more unwound than the one before. By 3:00 yesterday, I was beginning to [...]

Day one of SXSW was marked primarily by frustration and exhaustion for me: a ten-hour flight down from NYC (as witnessed by my misanthropic preamble), long lines for showcases and a whole lot of performances that weren’t very good. It was not the best start, but there’s only one way to go from here.

I first saw Imperial Teen in 1995 opening for Hole at the Fillmore in San Francisco. They were called “Star 69″ then which I didn’t dig too much. The star 69 concept of being able to track who called you was at that point a new cultural phenomenon I wasn’t particularly into. But they had [...]

Wow. Austin Day One was exhausting, exhilarating, hectic, and insanely fun. This is my first time attending SXSW, and I’d secretly been assuming that there was no way the conference could be as fantastic as everyone always said it was. Well, I was wrong — so far, it’s surpassed my expectations. It’s a music [...]

The flights to Austin in the days leading up to SXSW might have more instruments than suitcases in their cargo holds. Unless a band is already in the midst of a tour structured around a Texas stop in mid March — and many are — it’s generally more cost- and time-effective to just fly to [...]

Last year some of the “funnest” shows at SXSW were not part of the festival showcases or marketing parties but a little extension of the indie international underground curated by NYC’s Todd P. My darlings Les Aus from Barcelona were among last years bands. If you can make it across the freeway, try to [...]

For those who don’t know, SXSW is a big, annual music industry event — probably the biggest — held in Austin. It’s four days of an insane amount of shows, glad-handing, drinks and all sorts of middling debauchery. It is, as you might imagine, very fun and very exhausting. The music portion of the festival [...]