March 23, 2011

If you’re over the age of 30, you’re probably still bitching about all the people, noise, and congestion of South by Southwest. If you’re under 30, you’re probably still telling your friends, “Dude, that was fucking awesome!” Like anything else in life, SXSW is mainly about what you bring to the party. You can dive headfirst into the insanity, or you can stand in the back of the room with your arms folded acting cool. If you chose the latter, you probably found that SXSW went on just fine without you, even if you were wearing a breathtaking array of hair feathers. If you were actually one of the locals flailing around in the grungy tide of humanity that flooded Downtown Austin last week, good for you. You fought the good fight and learned a valuable lesson: You’re not God. You can’t be everywhere at once – even though the people you follow on Twitter seem to be. Truth be told, they were probably lounging in the bar at the Four Seasons eating jalapeño chips and drinking Batinis, tapping out tweets about chilling at Güero’s with Kanye or about how Billy Gibbons sat in with Danny DeVito and Cee Lo at the Invincible Czars showcase at Skinny’s Ballroom. Anything can happen at SXSW … but amazingly it always seems to happen to other, less-deserving people. If you were especially lucky, you ended up in some dingy hole you didn’t even know existed sandwiched between a sweaty, writhing mosh pit and a huge bass cabinet that squashed your innards 120 times a minute. There is a special sort of euphoria that results from literally letting the music sweep you away … or pound you into humble submission like a night of hard fucking. Ideally, you brought an extra change of underwear, a toothbrush, and some heavy-duty earplugs. Yes, the music has to be loud – really loud. Why? Because no matter what show you’re at, there will invariably be someone who wants to yammer on about their sore feet, their wicked hangover, or how they just want to go home, take a bath, and crawl in bed. What better way to encourage them to take care of themselves than by mowing them over with an aural tsunami? Nothing clears a room of unbelievers like a Marshall stack cranked up to 11. Fortunately during SXSW, there are thousands of people wandering the streets willing to fill that space … and now they’re gone. Enjoy. Breath a big, relaxing, peaceful sigh of relief. Things should be quiet for at least a month or so … until the Texas Relays … then the Republic of Texas Biker Rally and Pride weekend … then Fourth of July and the Austin City Limits Music Festival and so on. Face it, Austin is a playground for the rest of the state and arguably the world, so we better get right with it and learn to play nicely with others or we’re just going to get sand kicked in our faces. Down on Willie Nelson Boulevard in the latest addition to our playground, the W Hotel and Austin City Limits‘ new Moody Theater. Rest assured, both will lure even more out-of-towners to the City of the Weird to feast on our artistic cornucopia. Where else can you see Eighties New Wavers Devo paired with Austin’s cutest and coolest electronica band, the Octopus Project? Well, maybe a bunch of other cities because they’re currently on tour, but this is the last show with the Octopus Project before the group teams up with Explosions in the Sky for another round of globe-trotting.