March 31st, 1999
Four days and 700+ bands bring out the best and worst in a music industry that's lost its direction.
Chances are pretty good that if you're a devoted music fan, you've spent a lot of time complaining about the industry's shortcomings: the marketing machines, the lack of diversity on corporate radio, the shortage of artist development, the dreary quality of successful pop music, the very idea that there's a "music industry" at all. In her keynote address at this year's South By Southwest music conference—an Austin-based convention attended by labels, media, deep-pocketed fans, and more than 700 musical acts—critically acclaimed singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams laid out much of the damning evidence, railing against a system in which music is secondary to commerce and corporate mergers derail developing careers.
Williams' nervous speech alternated between platitudinous advice to musicians ("Keep your feet on the ground") and pointed commentary about her rocky dealings with the Nashville establishment and an assortment of clueless and/or failing labels, but all that was quickly quieted every time she set her notes aside and simply played one of her amazing, beautifully crafted songs.
Coming at the commencement of the three-day, four-night conference, Williams' speech characterized everything that went on at SXSW. There was a lot to talk about—from the threat to the industry status quo brought by MP3 technology, which allows fans to download CD-quality recordings off the Internet, to the possible deregulation of radio airwaves, allowing for low-power stations to get on the air and break the stranglehold of homogenous commercial radio—but the reason to show up in the first place was music.
Between March 17 and March 21, you couldn't walk into a room or past a building in Austin without being treated to (or assaulted by) live music. If you had one of the convention's pricey badges (or, if you were willing to stand in line for ages at many shows, a $95 wristband), you had a sort of all-access pass to walk from Rob Swift's flashy turntable manipulations—the spirit of Joe Satriani is alive and well in clubland—across the street to where Chicago's The Handsome Family played its dark, winsome, rural folk-pop.
Some shows provided similarly whiplash-inducing genre fusion within a single set. Orange County's Dial-7 careened relentlessly, and with remarkably showy energy, from hardcore to rap to reggae to metal to funk, though it might have done well not to include all five genres in every song. Freestylers delivered a similarly spastic sensory overload, rapping over electronics as a fleet of break dancers did their thing. Too bad the lyrics rarely ran deeper than, "Go! Go! Go! Go!," and the dance moves recalled the suddenly resurgent New Kids On The Block.
The predominantly white, roots- and rock-oriented status quo was broken up nicely, though rarely, by a few rap-oriented acts. Rubberoom, a Chicago rap duo with a turntablist, and the more straight-ahead rap group The Micranots (The Wu-Tang Clan's Inspectah Deck was a no-show) struggled playing to somewhat indifferent industry crowds, but both delivered powerful moments and a welcome respite from the literally hundreds of guitar-driven acts.
Although alt-rock as a genre is in critical and commercial free-fall—what's left is a battered shell built out of wheezing Matchbox 20s and the occasional Third Eye Blind, which is quickly being reduced to the Spin Doctors of the late '90s—it was nice to see that there are still superlative frontman-with-guitar bands: From the brooding Pedro The Lion to Boston's bombastic The Sheila Divine (watch for its excellent full-length debut, New Parade, in June), the good ones were memorable despite familiar ingredients. Austin's Silver Scooter added tension and energy to its wonderfully jangly pop-rock; the enjoyably ineffectual, reliable Hang Ups didn't, but the Twin Cities band's appearances added to the anticipation of Second Story, which comes out this summer. Milwaukee's Trolley sounded polished and ready for the big time, while Appleseed Cast sounded like emo-rock should: larger-than-life, intense, and riddled with big, big hooks.
As always, dozens of treats resided in the margins. Chicago's Diane Izzo, who is occasionally (and not always aptly) compared to PJ Harvey, played a set that sounded both haunting and haunted. The same could be said for The Czars, an ambitious Denver group that justified its place on Cocteau Twins' European vanity label with elegant, intense songs that don't take the easy way out. Country-pop singer Radney Foster, whose marvelous new album (See What You Want To See) will finally be released in May after a nine-month delay, sounded great for 25 minutes until his set was rained out. Zen Guerrilla's Sabbath-inspired psychedelic pyrotechnics were similarly ill-served by the outdoors, though it was the wide-open acoustics rather than the weather that did them in. Straightforward pop music has scarcely sounded as shrill as it did in the hands of Japan's Ex-Girl, while The Friggs (not to be confused with The Figgs) had a great time serving up aggressive, likable, all-woman pop-punk. Peenbeets' infectious punk proved that there's a thin line between geeky and dorky, though the group's set was still a lot of fun.
Some of the quieter concerts were no less compelling, though it took a minute to adjust to amplifiers that didn't hiss and feed back. With an acoustic guitarist in tow, Beth Orton played dreamy, pretty, resonant new material at an overstuffed bar; thanks to her big voice and relative star power, she pulled it off without being drowned out by crowd noise. Guy Forsyth played raw, compelling, live-wire solo blues-rock, while Hazel's Pete Krebs unveiled some fine new material with just an acoustic guitar as backup. A daytime acoustic stage gave lunch-time crowds the chance to see The Wonder Stuff's Miles Hunt reinvent himself as an acoustic troubadour, not to mention an opportunity to watch X member and animal-rights activist Exene Cervenkova while eating a Texas-sized all-beef hot dog.
South By Southwest traditionally celebrates new music and novelties, whether it's the well-worn notion of the next big thing, the return of the down-and-out one-hit wonder (Right Said Fred), the second chance for the next big thing that wasn't (Radish, a mediocre, once-hyped, teen-fronted grunge band), or even the poorly received "Porn To Rock" line-up of adult-film stars Madison and Johnny Toxic. But the most hotly anticipated and attended shows featured veterans and critically acclaimed, already "discovered" acts: Mercury Rev, Sparklehorse, Cibo Matto, Orton, and the magnificent Built To Spill all drew block-long lines, and although Willie Nelson's set with Leon Russell got rained out, those seeing Tom Waits' adoringly received concert had to get their tickets through a lottery system.
Considering all the selectively appropriated buzz, it makes sense that one of the festival's greatest, most purely energetic and exciting moments was a concert by the Fastbacks, a band that's seen hype, been the subject of a label push, witnessed its hometown (Seattle, of course) at the center of a media frenzy, and watched its oft-imitated pop-punk sound go in and out of style. But for 20 years, and through countless drummers, the group has never broken through commercially; even now, it's between record labels. But its Saturday-night concert—despite a relatively desolate location, a middling crowd, and placement on the schedule opposite the P-Funk spinoff Original P, Cibo Matto, Los Lobos' Cesar Rosas, and the duly hyped Queens Of The Stone Age—was nothing short of sensational. The Fastbacks' key members have been doing this since 1979, but you wouldn't know it to watch them bouncing off one another, grinning, goofing off with the crowd, and banging out some of the most unselfconsciously giddy music of the entire conference.
Will the Fastbacks get signed to a big label because of that show, with its catchy songs, magnetic performances, breakneck pacing, and overall smile-inducingness? Probably not; that band was the next big thing in 1993, when it had only been playing great music for 14 years.
South By Southwest is, sure enough, part of a broken system: Musicians are commodities. Success is based on marketing priorities and airplay on bad radio stations. (When a Goo Goo Dolls ballad sounds like manna from heaven, you know there's a problem.) The ultimate goal is an elusive contract that may or may not be in an act's best interest. And the bands everyone wants to see are the ones that have already been discovered. But when the process can still lead you back to the Fastbacks, to The Czars, to Silver Scooter, to The Friggs, and to The Sheila Divine, it makes finding those uncut diamonds that much more exciting.
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