SXSW 2011 wrap-up
AUSTIN, Texas -- "This is our last show," singer-songwriter Sharon Van Etten said with a mixture of exultation and exhaustion during her final set at the South by Southwest Music Conference. "We made it -- we made it to Saturday!"
Van Etten was among 2000 bands and artists who performed at the 25th annual conference, which concluded Sunday. Many of those artists were like Van Etten, performing as many as seven or eight times during the week, sometimes several sets a day, all hoping to crash through the round-the-clock din that had saturated hundreds of venues clustered around 6th Street since last Tuesday. Austin becomes music's international capital once every year, and the conference has seen attendance skyrocket since it debuted in 1987. Back then it was a little grassroots gathering focused on Texas music, an earthier alternative to the then-dominant New Music Seminar in New York. In its first year, South by Southwest attracted 172 bands and 700 registrants. This year the number of bands hovered around 2,000 and registration exceeded 13,000.
The big music companies rolled out their heavy hitters to flog new albums or tours. Kanye West, the Strokes, Foo Fighters and TV on the Radio all performed in major showcases and big brands like Vice magazine and Perez Hilton hustled to outhustle each other by presenting the most must-see bands in invite-only parties. There there were were the inevitable "buzz" bands, up-and-comers who have generated mounds of media attention in recent months: the Los Angeles hip-hop collective Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All, British soul balladeer James Blake, Chicago power-pop quartet the Smith Westerns. But as usual the heart of the festival was the artists striving for any sort of recognition at all, trying to transform a labor of love into a living.