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LIVING & TRAVEL "LETTER FROM AUSTIN" by steven mirkin Published March 28, 1996 A TYPICAL SxSW DAY (based on scribbled notes) 10am-Breakfast at Las Manitas. A minor schmooze, mostly publicists and writers. The food cheap and very good. Heuvos Ranchero, Chorizo and eggs, all served with fresh tortillas and salsa. The conversation usually turns to what bands everyone saw. 11:30 am-Walk into the first panel, late. Not that it matters. The panels this year ranged from the informative ("When I Write the Book" about the mechanics of music-book writing) to the contentious ("The Grateful Dead: Were They Really Any Good?", which became a rock and roll McLaughlin Group) and the inane ("Charles Whitman: What Happened and When," a second by second reconstruction of the movements and possible thoughts of the man who thirty years ago released a flurry of bullets from a sniper's nest in the Texas A&M; tower. It was reasonably attended for a Saturday morning, but why were all those people taking notes, for God's sake?) 1pm-Lunch, usually at the Iron Works BBQ. Find your friends and decide what parties you'll go to this afternoon. 2:30pm- Go to parties. These are usually held at a restaurant or club. There's more food, usually Tex-Mex, and beer, all free (your entertainment dollar at work!). In exchange for all this food and drink, you get a chance to listen to their Next Big Thing. Last year, Sony Music closed the open bar while the bands were on stage. This made many writers mad. It did not happen again this year. 4:30pm-More parties. 6:30pm-The major schmooze begins.

With the demise of New York's New Music Seminar, Austin's South by Southwest has become perhaps the preeminent music festival in the country. Steven Mirkin reports from the city whose official stationary bears the line, "The live music capital of the world." The organizers and publicists of South by Southwest (SxSW) talk about what they call a "SxSW moment." Here's mine: It's Friday night, and we're walking down Sixth Street. We couldn't get into the show we really wanted to see at Emo's, so it's on to Wylie's Annex to check on some unsigned band no one is really that excited about. But out of the corner of our ears, from one of the ugly new bars that have turned what was once an agreeable strip of clubs into a mesquite-grilled Bourbon Street, we hear a godawful band playing a terrible cover of the Cranberries' "Zombie." "Last night I heard them doing a Replacements tune," someone says, with a disapproving shake of the head. "I'll bet you the owner has them playing for free, telling them that there will be all these industry folks here and they can get a deal. Good luck." The point of this story is not that club owners can be greedy and venal (you needed me to tell you that?) but to show that the commercial tentacles of the music biz have even wrapped themselves around one of the country's premiere "indie" music festivals. For years, Austin in mid-March has been a place to see unsigned bands -- usually more than half the acts were unknown -- but over the past three years it's changed into a place for labels to showcase recently signed acts and create some kind of buzz. I'd venture to say that only 10 to 15 percent of the bands this year were unsigned. This might not sound like much, but it matters. Virtually every new band I saw this year had about 10 A&R; people in attendance, checking the band, and each other, out. So far, this is how things are supposed to work, right? Yes. But in today's feast-or-famine atmosphere, no one wants to become A&R; person that let the next Nirvana get away, which leads to a pack mentality. If one label is interested, everyone else piles on, and a bidding war erupts. So a modest band, which could, in a less intense environment, mature into something worthwhile, gets saddled with a hefty contract and even heftier expectations. The end result is a form of infanticide. There's no real long-term artist development going on now: It's all Hootie or Bust, which means there will be few bands who build careers that will last until the millennium. Does anyone believe that Alanis or Bush will be anything more than musical footnotes ten years from now? We are now in the era not of One Hit Wonders, but One Album Wonders. But it's hard to remain too mad while you're in Austin. Anger just doesn't seem to thrive when you have a belly full of Sam's or Salt Lick BBQ, or a Threadgill's chicken fried steak, or a breakfast of Migas and Ruta Maya Nicaraguan coffee (so you can wake up politically correct, I guess) from Gueros or, somewhat later in the day, a few Shiner Bock beers. The city and the local media are supportive of the homegrown music scene, and Austin is a city that practically bleeds music. Scratch a cabdriver, find a musician. The Austin "American-Statesman" prints a stand-alone section covering the festival, filled with reviews and previews and a morning line that placed odds on what shows would be hard to get into. (In addition to the 2,500 festival badges, more than 11,000 wristbands, allowing entrance into the clubs but not the convention center events, were sold.) And on the Sunday of the festival, the CBS affiliate pre-empted "Bonnie" for a "SxSW: Up LOUD and Personal" special. It was, as might be expected, puerile, with local anchors done up in denim so you know they're cool and hep to the scene daddio, but can you imagine any other city even making the effort?