Gregg Gillis of Girl Talk, at left, performs at Congress Theater. The band was discussed at a 2010 SXSW panel called “Why hasn’t the music industry sued Girl Talk?” (Photo for the Tribune by Shauna Bittle)

AUSTIN, Texas --- Booze and porn – the future of music?   

Sharon Jones performs at SXSW. (Jay Janner, AP) View more 2010 SXSW pictures.

AUSTIN, Texas -- South by Southwest isn't just about introducing the new (unsigned bands looking for that first big break) or showcasing the established (top acts with new projects to sell). Sometimes it's about perseverence.

Case in point is soul singer Sharon Jones. At 53, she's been working the soul circuit with little recognition for decades. But her excellent band, the Dap Kings, was used by Amy Winehouse to record the U.K. singer's breakthrough album, and now Jones is finally getting some long overdue props. In a canary yellow dress and high heels, Jones was a whirlwind force in her showcase set, singing with fervor while shimmying as if electricity were shooting through her frame. I didn't see a better live performance all week.

The Besnard Lakes perform at SXSW. (Photo for the Tribune by Jack Plunkett)

They didn't have to wait as long as Jones, but Montreal's Besnard Lakes also are starting to catch a well-deserved buzz. I first saw the band two years ago at South by Southwest, when they were confined to a corner stage in a noisy bar. All the elements of their sound were in place then -- soaring, falsetto vocals; ebb-and-surge arrangements; crashing guitars; towering choruses. Now with the release  of the group's third album, "The Besnard Lakes are the Roaring Night," the band is a secret no more. The audience for their South by Southwest showcase at Stubbs was 10 times the size of the one that saw them in 2008, and husband-and-wife team Jace Lasek and Olga Goreas did not disappoint. They're poised for a breakthrough year.

AUSTIN, Texas -- The 24th South by Southwest ended in the early morning Sunday at a jam-packed Antone's, the legendary blues club on 5th Street, with a poignant, powerful reminder of how music can redeem even the most tragic events.

The late-night, conference-closing slot was originally set for Big Star, the Memphis band that made three albums in the '70s, then faded into obscurity, only to endure as a guiding light for countless guitar-based pop and rock bands in subsequent decades. The performance turned into a wake and a tribute when one of the band's cofounders, singer-guitarist Alex Chilton, died Wednesday at 59 of a heart attack in his New Orleans home.

The remaining members of Big Star -- founding drummer Jody Stephens and bassist Andy Hummel, and  Ken Stringfellow and Jon Auer, who joined in the band's '90s comeback incarnation -- carried on in Chilton's name with a host of guest stars. The show became an 18-song tribute to Chilton's Big Star legacy, a procession of music that veered from harrowing meditations to ebullient rockers. Stephens, Auer and Stringfellow were the three constants, holding down the stage as the likes of M. Ward, Evan Dando, R.E.M.'s Mike Mills, and Chris Stamey took turns on lead vocals.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Courtney Love used South by Southwest to relaunch Hole as a band and herself as a rock star Friday. Both had been away for most of the last decade. 

 As she walked on the stage at Stubbs, it was difficult to determine if the near-capacity audience was there to cheer her comeback or witness its premature demise.

 As one fan put it soon after Love began playing, "I feel like this is a sociological experiment. Everyone loves a good trainwreck."

Nneka performs at SXSW. View more SXSW 2010 photos. (Photo for the Tribune by Jack Plunkett)

AUSTIN, Texas --With 1,500 bands and hundreds of venues to choose from over four music-packed days and nights, the 24th annual South by Southwest Music and Media Conference can be an overwhelming and sometimes frustrating experience. You can't see everything, and there's always that nagging feeling that at this very moment you're missing something great because you're doing something else -- like filing this blog entry.

But as Friday dawns, I've already caught up with dozens of bands that I've never seen perform, and discovered  a bunch of new favorites. Here are my musical highlights at the halfway point of SXSW 2010:

AUSTIN, Texas -- Federal officials addressed concerns about such hot-button issues as the Live Nation-Ticketmaster merger and net neutrality Thursday at the South by Southwest Music and Media Conference, but ended up raising far more questions than they answered.

 The merger of Live Nation, the nation's most powerful concert promoter, and Ticketmaster, the all-powerful ticketing agency, was approved a few weeks ago by the Justice Department's anti-trust divsion, headed by Christine Varney.

 Varney showed up Thursday to explain why she allowed the two companies to join forces and create a monolith of unprecedented proportion, one that could potentially dominate every aspect of the music industry, from concert ticketing to artist management. By merely showing up, she demonstrated a lot more respect for the music community than did the top guns at Ticketmaster and Live Nation, Irving Azoff and Michael Rapino, who were conspicuous by their absence (South by Southwest representatives said both executives were invited to speak but declined).

Smokey Robinson speaks at a music workshop for high school at the White House on February 9. (Saul Loeb, Getty Images)

AUSTIN, Texas -- Smokey Robinson had a few words of advice for the aspiring musical stars in the audience: "I would encourage you not to take yourself so seriously."

Robinson was as articulate in his South by Southwest keynote address Thursday as he is in song.

He cautioned against a false sense of entitlement that he sees corrupting the entertainment industry. A lot of performers, he said, think "the world knows me now, they cannot possibly do without me. ... Don't kid yourself."

Robinson's career, he said, was a testament to working hard and staying humble, and listening and learning from the best, whether it was studying what made a hit song work or taking advice from a master songwriter only a few years his senior, a man named Berry Gordy, in the days before he ran Motown Records.

The centerpiece of the 24th annual conference began with a eulogy of sorts from creative director Brent Grulke, who dedicated the festival to the late Alex Chilton. The singer, 59, died Wednesday. He was scheduled to hop on a plane Friday from his New Orleans home to participate in a panel Saturday dedicated to his band, Big Star, and to play a festival showcase later that night.

Broken Bells perform at SXSW. (Photo for the Tribune by Jack Plunkett)

AUSTIN, Texas -- Most of the 1,500 bands signed up for the South by Southwest Music and Media Conference this week are hoping to play often and well enough to get their first big break. But each year a handful of veteran artists uses the annual showcase as an opportunity to roll out new projects.

Such was the case with Broken Bells, a collaboration between Shins singer James Mercer and producer Danger Mouse, a k a Brian Burton. Their third public performance as a band occurred Wednesday at Stubb's in front of a capacity audience of 2,000, with hundreds more lining the block outside hoping to get in.

Mercer's Shins have been one of the big indie-music success stories of the last decade. And no producer has had a better six-year run than Danger Mouse, who has overseen albums by Gorillaz, Beck and Gnarls Barkley.

With that pedigree, much was expected of Broken Bells and the duo has delivered a fine self-titled album, which debuted last week at No. 7 on the Billboard chart.

Mercer and Burton pretty much did everything themselves on the album, eschewing sampling in favor of a more organic approach. But in expanding to a seven-piece band for live performance, Broken Bells essentially tried to reproduce its studio album note for note.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Interviewed Cheap Trick on Wednesday afternoon as part of South by Southwest with my Sound Opinions partner Jim DeRogatis. Rick Nielsen was, as usual, in excellent self-deprecating form. Among the highlights, he pulled out his cellphone, where he had stored a sound bite from Yoko Ono describing how working with Cheap Trick in the studio "inspired John," referring to her late husband, John Lennon. Nielsen smiled proudly, then followed that up with a sound bite from his daughter proclaiming, "You're annoying."

"Just when you start feeling good about yourself," he cracked.

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek is interviewed by Wired's Eliot Van Buskirk (not shown) at SXSW. (AP photo)

AUSTIN, TEXAS --- Some trend-spotters point to Daniel Ek, a 26-year-old Swedish technology enterpreneur, as the music industry's next Steve Jobs or Shawn Fanning.
 
Little wonder the Austin Convention Center was packed for Ek's keynote address Tuesday on the final day of the South by Southwest Interactive conference, a national technology gathering that serves as a prelude to the South by Southwest Music and Media Conference, which begins Wednesday.

Ek talks like a savant. "Music should be like water," he said. "We are heading toward a model where consumers gain instant access to music on any device they choose."