Scott Andrew - lo-fi acoustic pop superhero!

There’s a lull between the Interactive/Film parts of SXSW and the Music part where all the volunteers catch their breath and begin tearing down the tradeshow floor to make way for the music and label kiosks. I made my way down to the registration booth around 2:00 pm to pick up my Music promo bag (full to the brim with SXSW music shwag: CDs, flyers, magazines, promo materials) before retiring to the “Platinum Lounge” upstairs, which was thankfully air conditioned. This was where the people who had the extra cash for a platinum badge were allowed to hang out away from the masses crowding the convention center floor. The lounge doesn’t amount to much: it’s a lot like another conference room, but with a vaulted ceiling and windows and a cash bar.

The festival hasn’t even started yet, and already the volume of attendees dwarfs that of the Interactive and Film festivals. Musicians of every stripe: hard-looking punkers; sullen nu-metal rockers in black; tie-dyed jam band longhairs; lanky alt-country rockers and more. The crowd is a sea of glinting metal piercings, tatoos and strange hair. I love it.

But that’s outside the lounge. Inside, there’s a handful of people, mostly men, chattering on cell phones and using the free Internet access. This isn’t the speaker’s lounge, so I doubt Hilary Rosen or Courtney Love will walk in anytime soon, but I wonder how many of the people here were scouts, lawyers, managers, people sent by their respective businesses to check out the new talent.

So, on to my agenda: I don’t have one. I have a handful of mini-CDs which I’ll passing out as freebies, but only to people I talk to. I really have no interest in pimping my stuff to strangers who’ll just end up using them as a coaster anyway. Here’s my agenda: wander aimlessly in and out of bars and overdose on live music.

And the panels. I’m particularly intrigued in the handful of panels dealing with technology and the Internet: digital music, copyright issues, MP3s, Napster. Having just come from the Interactive festival, where the prevailing opinion of attendees lies somewhere in the information wants to be free/anti-corporate music vein, I’m interested to hear what musicians in the trenches think about file sharing, the RIAA and the fact that there’s nothing can’t be copied anymore.

It’s nice not having an agenda. Mostly because I don’t have to play nice with the crowd all the time, constantly walking on eggshells because I just might piss off the one A&R guy who has my ticket to the big time. There’re a lot of hopeful musicians here hoping to get a break, and for once, I’m not one of them. That doesn’t mean I’m not trying at all, though. I plan on dropping a few CDs in the demo session bins (at most, they’ll draw it and my song will be discussed in front of an audience; at the very least, someone will end up with a free CD) and if I happen to run into a representative from Rounder Records I’ll definitely be a happy guy. But it’s not the goal. The goal is to hang.

Right now I’m going through the list of panels, picking the ones I plan to attend. I’ll post them here later tonight. Then I plan to go out and hear some music, because all up and down Sixth there are drummers hauling their hardware into wood-paneled bars, scruffy guitarists are staking out their street corners and tech crews are dragging multicolored lighting trusses through back kitchen doors past short-order cooks who speak no English but know the drill enough to direct them to the junction boxes behind the stage.

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