Bob Geldof at SXSW 2011: America and its music are 'exhausted'

AUSTIN, Texas -- Bob Geldof, the Irishman who brought the world Live Aid and the Boomtown Rats, was in a combative mood Thursday as he delivered the keynote address at the 25th annual South by Southwest Music Conference.

"I am loathe to make generalizations," he said, "but you seem exhausted." The remark brought a chuckle from a hall full of sleep-deprived conferencegoers, who have been going full tilt since Tuesday taking in bands, panels and no doubt copious quantities of barbecue and beer.

Geldof wasn't taking about hangovers so much as a lack of musical and cultural engagement with a world in crisis. The "you" he referred to is America, and it's letting him down. "Rock 'n' roll suggests change, abundant optimism, joy and hope," he said. "It is the classic American music ... but it may be over."

But, hey, a record 2000 bands are playing South by Southwest this week. All of them are pretty meaningless in Geldof's view, largely a collection of the "complacent" and "smug." (Try explaining that one to the band that spent its week's allowance on gas to drive 18 hours here in a cramped, stinky van with bad shock absorbers to play one 40-minute set for little or no compensation -- but I digress).

"Rock 'n' roll needs to be against something," he said. "It needs a context in which to function."

He invoked the greats who sparked revolution, the defiant raised, middle digit that was Little Richard, Elvis Presley, and later the Ramones and the Sex Pistols. He hears no such agitators today. "Where is the livid, vivid conversation with your constituency? I miss it."

He blamed the narcotizing effect of television, the "Glee Club-ization of music" and, of course, the Internet, which he described as "a wall of noise" filled with fake Facebook friends and impotent bloggers. This at a time of historic change, "when power ebbed from West to East," revolution rages in Egypt, Tunisia and Bahrain, and financiers are "bankrupting the world" without paying the consequences.

Geldof says he's not looking for explicit protest songs, but songs with the power of suggestion -- the Bob Dylan of "Like a Rolling Stone" rather than "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll." These songs can transform a society by articulating its unspoken desires and anxieties. "Music is the most powerful cultural tool invented in a dozen lifetimes," he said, a voice of individualism that can articulate a common good.

It was inspiring stuff, easily one of the most articulate and impassioned keynotes in the conference's history. But at the end I wanted to hand Geldof an iPod full of the music from today that he isn't hearing (though I have a suspicion he'd prefer CDs, if not vinyl). In demanding that music engage with society, and help us imagine our better selves, I would point him to the recent music of Janelle Monae and its impassioned depiction of "otherness," of the Roots and their description of how they got over, of Mavis Staples and her reassurance that "you are not alone."

That is just a small sliver of the "noise with intent" that Geldof demands. Perhaps the deeper issue is not that no one is making that type of music, but that much of it is being lost amid what SXSW executive Roland Swenson called "the trivial and the ephemeral" culture that is clogging media. The great life-affirming and potentially life-changing revolutionary music that Geldof seeks is being made. But without discerning voices to champion it, who will hear it? Certainly Geldof could use a little help in finding it.

greg@gregkot.com