We're coming down to the wire for SXSW Music 2013. Ready for an intense week of music and fun. SX is really three conferences in one (Music, Film, & Interactive). In SX-speak Interactive refers to digital online emerging technologies. You can buy in to one conference, all three, or any combination of two. They overlap such that the Interactive part starts first, Music is last, and Film overlaps both. Laurie and I are "just" doing the Music part.
I've been spending the last three months listening to as many different groups as possible. All the groups are listed at:
schedule.sxsw.com. This year I've made good use of
Spotify to quickly find music from each group, and have been pretty impressed with the depth of Spotify's holdings. They pretty much have had music from everyone (US or non-US) other than a relative few of the most obscure acts (too new, entirely unreleased, etc.). I've also relied on others to suggest bands I may have missed in my sweeps, notably:
OperationEveryBand, and NPR (
TheAustin100).
The conference releases the bands who will be there in waves, week after week. This starts in December and continues right up to the conference. A couple weeks before the conference starts they release the "Showcase" details: venues and times for all these bands. Of course, Showcase details also come out gradually over a couple weeks. Once the Showcase details are released, Laurie and I decide head-to-head rankings of the (previously identified) "best bands" in each time slot. We also factor in travel distance to move from venue to venue. From this we have a plan and backup possibilities. Lots of backup possibilities is critical because invariably things change!
Oh, one more thing. That's just to figure out our evenings! During the day, SXSW is a full conference, with speakers, keynotes, panels, trade show, etc. And, from mid-morning to evening there are non-stop parties with many of the same Showcase bands and free food & drinks! With the addition of a couple radio stations hosting 6am Showcases with some of the best bands, for broadcasting on early morning drive radio, SX's activities run from 6am to 2am!
SXSW13 is only our second event, and we're tying to learn from past experiences. Last year we found that the best way to have fun was to have a clear plan, but be ready to scrap those when you stumble on something new. One afternoon we dropped our early evening plans (Norah Jones, etc.) when we found out that we could be in the front of the line to see the premier of a music-oriented movie "Big Easy Express" starring "Mumford & Sons", "Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros", and "Old Crow Medicine Show" who got up on stage to
perform at the end of the movie! Seeing this from the 3rd row was spectacular. "Big Easy Express" went on to win this year's Grammy for such things, and Mumford & Sons won Album of the Year for Babel. We had many other highlights and detours along the way for a spectacular experience.
This is a test to figure out how blogger might work to keep track of Pictures, Videos, sound clips, and rambling posts for music events such as SXSW.
