Wicked Wit of the South by Southwest
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Most of the people who make the schlepp to Texas each year are there to check out new bands, meet their peers, and drink, and not necessarily in that order. The erratically attended panels are meant to educate neophytes (“Generating the Right Publicity”) and to prompt dutiful discussion of hot issues, which this year included media consolidation and the future of electronica. Occasionally they’re entertaining, but often the speakers are either too earnest or too savvy to be truly informative. In reality, the convention center where the panels take place operates a bit like a roller rink–most of the action happens on the perimeter, where agents and talent buyers, band managers and A and R scouts, and publicists and journalists play hide and seek for a couple hours between breakfast and their first beer.
At an exceedingly dry panel called “The Future of Publishing,” as Timms taped, Armisen stood up in the audience and deadpanned, “I feel like we’ve been waiting here a long time and you have the microphones set up…do you think you could sing a song for us?” At the panel on media consolidation he asked if it was a good idea to market a band on Web sites that purveyed child pornography. And following a shouting match between Langford and writer Dave Marsh on the topic of allowing music to be used in commercials, Armisen said, “Yes, I didn’t get that entire exchange on camera. Could you do it again from the top, this time with more emotion?”
Chicagoans made a strong showing at the conference. Although I missed Liquid Soul, who reportedly brought down the house, I did catch a late-night performance by the Handsome Family, whose wry humor and dark, insinuating melodies sent a coffeehouse full of weary badge wearers into melancholy rapture. A series of “unofficial” daytime parties hosted by Schubas, Bloodshot Records, and Sugar Free Records at a local gallery provided a refreshing backyard antidote to the ongoing schmoozathon. Langford, Chris Mills, and (in one of the weekend’s nicer surprises) the Black Family reminded a few hundred people why they were in this business to begin with.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): Fred Armisen photo by Frank Swider.
