Austin City Limits

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More than 20 acts can be heard live, including the groovy electronica of Fujiya & Miyagi, at NPR, featuring KCRW in Santa Monica, Calif.; KUT in Austin, WFUV in New York, KEXP in Seattle and WXPN in Philadelphia

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Check out the Technology Showcases thru CNet's Video broadcasts right here

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Jim DeRogatis, the Pop Critic for the Chicago Sun Times, talks about opening day of the festival:

"The first night of musical showcases started slowly, at least for me, but I’m not complaining: It wasn’t all that long ago that the non-stop sounds didn’t even kick off in earnest until Thursday night.

My first big revelation of SXSW XXI: Wolf & Cub, a quartet from Adelaide, Australia, consisting of two drummers, a guitarist and a bassist, making a mix of old-school trippy psychedelia and modern, rhythmically jagged dance-rock a la TV on the Radio. Signed to England’s prestigious 4AD Records, their debut album "Vessel" was just released in the U.S. on March 6, but I hadn’t heard it before I stumbled upon the group’s fiery set at Austin’s coolest punk club, Emo’s."

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Stereogum is on the scene and provides some great suggestions on how to spend your Thursday:

"As for your daylight hours, go enjoy free food and hipster elixir (aka PBR) during the Onion party at the Emo's complex while Andrew Bird, Tokyo Police Club, Matt & Kim, Amy Milan, Land Of Talk, Patton Oswalt, Aziz, Paul Scheer, and Rob Huebel endeavor to entertain. But if you're in need of some sneakers to facilitate your Austin walking, head to the Team Clermont/Under The Radar party at the Flamingo Cantina for free Saucony giveaways while you listen to The Pipettes; Super Furry Gruff Rhys; Architecture In Helsinki; and Loney, Dear. And once you get those shoes, break 'em in with a little walk to E. 4th St. for the AAM/Brooklyn Vegan party at Red's Scoot Inn, with sets from Stereogum faves The Twilight Sad, New Violators, Cloud Cult, Rob Crow, and Mew.

Next, get dinner (preferably BBQ, but that's up to you), and then cruise through this list of some of the night's highlights.

Packt Like Sardines (Crowded house alert)

Amy Winehouse (12AM) @ Eternal

Bloc Party (12AM) @ Stubb's

Albert Hammond, Jr. (1AM) @ Blender Bar At The Ritz

Best New Music 1965 (Old-school icon alert)

Pete Townshend & Attic Jam (6PM) @ La Zona Rosa

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Stereogum has a nice pictorial from the festival and gives the following wrap-up write-up:

"...we've talked up a couple of our picks already (Meat Puppets, New Violators, Lo-Fi-FNK, The Besnard Lakes, Deerhunter, and Menomena come to mind), but top honors go to Saturday's Drag City treat of Bill Callahan at Central Presbyterian Church (with very special guest Joanna Newsom on piano)

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From what I've read, the LA Times seem to have the best writeup on the fest - check out the full article and see their slide show.

South by Southwest: to reach the listener

Distinctive music is heard at this year's festival, although the sponsors of many stages had other products to push.

Austin, Texas -- YOU couldn't turn your head during last week's South by Southwest Music Conference without seeing the logo of some company trying to cash in on the event's hip cachet. Tellingly, though, very few of the sponsors had anything to do with making or selling albums.

"Rome is burning," the Who's Pete Townshend declared in his keynote speech kicking off SXSW. Of the record companies that used to drive SXSW, he added, "If you're a new band, don't even [mess] with them."

Read more at the LA Times

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The NYTimes puts SXSW in perspective:

"There were also hundreds of bands that had scraped together gas money, packed up vans and driven hundreds of miles to play for 40 minutes to clubs half full of people already considering the next set. And there was music for virtually every taste: doomy heavy metal (Zoroaster, Boris), supple Brazilian pop (Tita Lima), brutally innovative electronica (Amon Tobin) or charmingly nerdy indie-rock (Menomena).

While many of the bands were new — or relatively new, with a handful of albums on small labels — much of the music deliberately looked back. The Black Angels, from Austin, revived not only a Velvet Underground song title (“The Black Angel’s Death Song”) but also the measured pace, ritualistic intensity and seething guitar of the Velvet Underground’s drones, coupled with ominous incantations with echoes of Jim Morrison. The Besnard Lakes, from Montreal, drew on a more benevolent 1960s sound: the expansive, almost orchestral buildups of Brian Wilson and the Beatles’ “Hey Jude,” so that songs with titles like “Devastation” and “Disaster” swelled into reassuring anthems.

Tokyo Police Club, a Canadian band whose oldest member is 21, reached back to the terse, kinetic structures of post-punk bands from the late 1970s like Wire and the Cure, while the Wombats, from Liverpool, merged punk-speed, guitar-charged pop, usually about love gone awry, with the oohs and ahs of Beach Boys harmony."

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Variety takes a look a the 21st annual SXSW, and sends out praises to the UK's Amy Whitehouse and the Good, the Bad and the Queen, and The Alarm Clocks (a garage band out of Cleveland), Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, Sub Pop act Maps & Atlases and Austin's Brothers and Sisters. Asleep at the Wheel leader Ray Benson took the top Music Award. Pete Townshend acted as the keynote speaker.

Photo: Jason Ibell of the Drive By Truckers & Booker T.

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