Covering Music, Film and Pop Culture
One of the great treats of SXSW is the sheer cheek-by-jowl-ness of it. One moment you can be standing in the ladies’ room during the SPIN at Stubb’s party, complimenting someone on her fab...
The annual South By Southwest festival is a lot like the Indian parable of three blind men describing an elephant: one man, feeling the tail, describes the elephant as, “Thin, like a rope.”...
When I saw that the English electronic band Depeche Mode (known for their hit song “People are People”) was going to be to doing their first-ever showcase at the South By Southwest Music Conference...
When I heard the Flaming Lips were playing a SXSW show at Auditorium Shores, I couldn’t help think about the last time that the Flaming Lips played a large show in Austin.
Back in 2010, I was working on a column about people with disabilities at the Austin City Limits Music Festival. I ran across Wayne Coyne, the lead singer of the Flaming Lips in the festival’s media area. He was waiting for an interview with MTV, I was trying to stay in the shade so I didn’t melt.
For those of you who only go to shows in Austin during SXSW, this is a glimpse of what the “Austin music scene” is like on a Monday in November.
Of all the artists playing the 2012 Austin City Limits Music Festival, Abby Torres, 16 and Carla Pantoja 16, may be the only performers who managed to squeeze in a marching band competition that October weekend.
Torres and Pantoja are members of the Lanier High School band who also study music via Anthropos Arts, an Austin-based non-profit providing music lessons to dedicated young performers from at risk backgrounds. The project’s supporters include musician Esperanza Spalding, who popped by the Anthropos booth at ACL to pose for pictures after her Friday afternoon show.
This summer in Latvia I saw my pal Kristeps play with his Latvian-American band Macitajs on Acid. Coming out in masks, then playing in face paint at the I Love You stage, I was...
While a lot of the panels at SXSW Eco were full of considered approaches about the future of the planet – and the need to make changes about how we live on...
This weekend in Liepaja, Latvia is the second Summer Sound festival. I was there last year. While I’ve only been to Liepaja twice–once for the Baltic Beach Party and once for Summer Sound– my...
In many ways this past weekend in Austin has felt like a stop on the time travel train. I’m convinced that sometime in the future, time travel is a functional thing, much the way...
