South by Southwest

The best movie I saw during the week-long SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Tex., was not I Love You, Man (though it was awesome!) or the Iron Maiden documentary Flight 666 (excellent!) or Sam Raimi's unfinished cut of Drag Me To Hell (killer!). ...

By Whitney Pastorek ZM: It’s definitely validation. We’ve been touring for two years, and we’ve played Austin six or seven times now, and we always play a place called Beerland. But Emo’s just rules everything, so it’s like, Oh, wow, we finally get to play at a nice big venue.

By Whitney Pastorek BD: Yeah. And I think a lot of people are annoyed by it. But a lot of people love it, and I love it. I might be annoyed by it if I was still playing the Anti-SXSW. EW: You guys are in a position now where you could pull a Pete Townshend and shepherd people along...

By Whitney Pastorek One last, fond howdy, PopWatchers: I'm sitting in the Houston airport getting ready to board my flight home from a music festival that, like the month in which it lives, came in like a lion and went out like a lamb. A lamb that stood in line for a really long time and didn't get to see any bands. A re...

By Shirley Halperin I always find some inner conflict at South By Southwest. With literally hundreds of bands to choose from, do you skip shows by some of your favorite artists to catch a glimpse of the latest buzz? I, like many others, try to find a balance between old and new, and this year's lineup certainly bo...

By Michael Endelman • The Stooges loved all the critical trashing their albums received when they were released. "Bad reviews are better," said Ron Asheton. "It's like, come see the circus freaks!" Iggy added his own bit of peculiar wisdom: "What passes for intelligent generally isn't."

By Shirley Halperin What's up with the lines, people?! Everywhere I went on this second day of my tenth South by Southwest, I saw frustrated badge holders doing their best to demonstrate that patience is, indeed, a virtue. Is the number of registrants just so astronomically large this year? Is there a shortag...

By Whitney Pastorek Next up, allegedly, was Amy Winehouse, who is just freakin' everywhere these days. Not sure why we need to review her again, but hey, it's my job... but on the way over to her venue, I learned two things: 1) Amy Winehouse got bumped to 1 a.m. 2) Rage Against the Machine may have just played a show at Emo...

By Michael Endelman Have you ever hear Slash solo over Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land"? Have you heard Perry Farrell and Tom Morello (Rage Against the Machine/Audioslave) do a Jane's Addiction  cover? Neither had I until I slipped into the after-Midnight gig by Morello (pictured), a.k.a. the Nightwa...

By Whitney Pastorek It's 11:15 a.m., and I’m sitting at Austin’s Tequila Mockingbird Studios, where Nic Harcourt, the voice of KCRW’s splendid alternative music radio show Morning Becomes Eclectic is holding court during SXSW (the show usually tapes out in Cali). This morning’s...

By Simon Vozick-Levinson As you may have noticed, all the cool kids are in Austin, TX this week for the annual SXSW music festival. But not the Shins! Those indie mainstays have opted instead to continue their cross-country tour, which brought them last night to a sold-out Theater at NYC's Madison Square Garden. It'...