Noise: Posts Tagged ‘ sxsw ’

You hear at lot of complaining from musicians at South by Southwest. They complain about declining CD sales, meager download royalties, dwindling live venues and younger audiences who don’t appreciate “good music” (i.e. their music). But all these complaints seem petty compared to the troubles of the band Terakaft. In the Saharan desert of...
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A few minutes after his new film, Much Ado About Nothing, had finished screening at the South by Southwest Film Conference, Joss Whedon climbed atop a riser in front of the screen. Surrounded by almost all of the film’s large cast, the director explained that he had shot this modern-dress version of William Shakespeare’s...
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The South by Southwest Conference got underway yesterday with SXSW Film, one leg of the tripod extravaganza that also features Interactive and Music components. Twenty-two different movie were shown on 13 different screens, and the surest sellout was Sound City, the new documentary by the Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl. Sound City Studio, located in...
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Jon Dee Graham For the four days of the South by Southwest Music Conference, it seems that every barroom patio, restaurant deck, and vacant lot within walking distance of downtown Austin has been commandeered as a live-music stage. Some of these were the sites for the conference’s official showcases, but many more are for...
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Ruben Ramos Interstate 35, which runs from Dallas to San Antonio, slices through the middle of Austin north to south. It’s also the traditional dividing line between West Austin, where most of the white population lives, and East Austin, which is largely black and brown. The South by Southwest Music Conference has rarely ventured...
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The microchip has changed rock’n'roll forever. It has added a whole new palette of sounds and a whole new level of precision that can be perfectly repeated forever. But there is danger in these new possibilities—danger that the otherworldly sonics might crowd out handmade noises, danger that perfectibility may obscure the imperfections that are...
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Tara Jane O’Neil | Image by Josh Sisk An effect of the sheer hugeness of South By Southwest is that it becomes an individual experience. General admission festivals such as Coachella or Virgin Fest-which offer a few stages, some really big names, and maybe some giant projection screens-feel like they have a collective narrative....
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For me, this year’s South by Southwest festival (my first) came with a high risk of terminal illness. Over the course of the two or three days prior to getting on that 5:30 a.m. plane to Austin, every time I looked at the schedule of bands online, I thought I was going to have...
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| Image by Artist’s Rendition In anticipation of Music Editor Michael Byrne’s being kidnapped, drunk, and/or horribly lost during at least part of SXSW, we also had City Paper contributor Mike McGonigal combing the streets of Austin for the week to hunt out the best and worst of the nation’s largest music debauch. His...
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| Image by joshsisk.com In principle, the South by Southwest festival is as much a trade show as New York’s massive CMJ Music Marathon, which sort of made us throw up in our mouths a little last fall. The difference is that SXSW is cloaked in the best/biggest party any lover of music, Tex-Mex...
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Based on the official South by Southwest lineup, released yesterday by festival organizers, it seems that Baltimore does in fact exist, repping nine bands, DJs, and others at the five-day Austin, Texas, festival. That’s not including off-campus performers, which could, like, double the number. Which would still be probably less than Portland, Ore.’s contribution...
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The Austinist just released a list of about 500 artists performing at the 2008 South by Southwest music festival, based on hearsay, rumor, and some actual fact. Granted it’s incomplete–the final lineup will include more than 1,500 acts–but, right now, we’ve got Wye Oak and the sorta local Half Japanese in Texas for the...
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