Soldout By Southwest

If Meredith Grey were writing an article on SXSW, she’d undoubtedly begin it with something like “the thing about SXSW is that everyone hates it but everyone wants to go.” Never before this year, dear reader, had I found that sentiment to hold as true. It could possibly be that, prior to this SXSW, the Internet clamor about the yearly week-long cluterfuck convergence of bands in Austin, TX had just been too much, or about bands I was relatively unconcerned with. Sure, last year had Tori Amos debuting new material in one of those now-commonplace “secret” SXSW sets, where “secret” means “everyone knows and lines up outside of Stubbs BBQ for hours to see an artist who is going to go on a national tour in like a week”, but even that hasn’t been enough. I don’t know-despite like 10 years now of writing about music in various capacities, I’ve never felt compelled to make the trek-and this coming from someone who has done his fair sure of Winter Music Conferences and hates Miami with the fiery burning of a thousand suns. Flames, flames, on the side of my face…but I digress.

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