SXSW: My Annual Romance

South by Southwest is an awesome festival. It's been around since what, 1987?, and although it's been accused in recent years of going 'lite' on the kind of people it attracts (Playboy parties, really?), I'm still a fan. I love that it has panache enough to showcase Neil Young back-to-back with Justice and The Lemonheads, and it doesn't hurt that it all goes down in Austin: definitely on the shortlist of places to be if you like to consume art and culture with a palatable shot of Americana.

I admit that I don't make the effort to follow the rise of new bands, and I'm unlikely to stoically wait hours in line in order to watch 16 bad shorts before a really brilliant director takes the stage. As a result, I appreciate all the enthusiasm and effort that goes into staging SXSW. At the end of the conference, even I, with limited band loyalty and low tolerance for mediocrity, will learn of some new voice worth getting to know, some new film that will leave me slightly breathless.

To that end it's a good thing that I barely recognize the acts lined up this year -- it means these bands and movies haven't had their moment yet, that they're still in the gestation period when success depends more on what matters - raw talent and craftsmanship - than what doesn't: packaging and hype. Isn't art, after all, in its most vivid and pulsating form when it hasn't quite crossed into the mainstream?