It's all over.

South By Southwest 2009 wrapped on Sunday, and we're back in New York, picking through the hours of tape we shot, reminiscing about the good times (check out our favorite SXSW moments) and trying very hard not to fall asleep on our keyboards. This is proving more difficult than I had imagined.

Because after the week-long party that is SXSW, there's the inevitable hangover. And, well, right now, that hangover is fierce — and I don't even drink!

I slept 10 hours last week. On Saturday night, I didn't sleep at all, as we wrapped production at 4:30 a.m., then headed right to the airport for our 7 a.m. flight. The scene at Austin-Bergstrom International was like something out of "Dawn of the Dead," with bands, publicists and hipsters wandering around the terminal like zombies, shoveling breakfast tacos into their mouths. There were bodies sprawled on the floor, heads buried in hooded sweatshirts, sunglasses covering bloodshot eyes. It was like one gigantic commercial for Promises. And it's only gotten worse since then!
Read more...

Not to get all Murtaugh on you, but this will be my fifth South by Southwest. I might be getting too old for this sh--.

That's not to say SXSW isn't still a blast — it is — it's just that, well, I don't know how much longer I'll be able to keep doing this. Because SXSW is brutal — you hit the ground running, and you don't stop until it's all over, more than 100 hours later. You burn the candle at both ends, hopping from show to show, party to party, with little (if any) time for sleep. You drink too much, smoke too many cigarettes, make terrible decisions. By the time Sunday rolls around, your body hates you (and chances are, so does your significant other), provided, of course, you are not already dead.

SXSW is a blood-boiling, blister-inducing marathon — hundreds of bands playing thousands of shows all over Austin, plus a few non-sanctioned events held in fire-code-busting spaces on the outskirts of town (these are usually the best parties, BTW, real "howl at the Texas moon on the windswept prairies" types of shindigs). Every year, as February turns into March, I ask myself, "Do I have another SXSW in me? Is it even possible?" Read more...

By Rya Backer

South by Southwest is a landmark event around these parts. Every year, we head down for some BBQ and sunshine and to check out some of the year's most buzzed-about emerging bands. This year, we decided to start the festivities a little early by talking to some of our favorite SXSW acts from years past.

We're (OK, I am) pretty obsessed with Marnie Stern here. She's fun and funny, her songs are really catchy, and she's so incredibly incredible at playing guitar! Marnie has shredded all over two albums — 2007's In Advance of the Broken Arm and last year's This Is It and I Am It and You Are It and So Is That and He Is It and She Is It and It Is It and That Is That — and we saw that as more than enough training for hosting our SXSW primer. So we met up with her before a show (at her alma mater, NYU — how full circle), as well as some other groups on the evening's lineup.

She talked to two bands about the mid-March festival down in Austin: first, A Place to Bury Strangers, a band composed of a drummer, a bassist, a guitarist and a gigantic wall of noise and feedback. Then, she chatted with one-half of Ra Ra Riot, a six-member group that features strings and catchy melodies. They offered up what they're excited about (mostly free stuff), who they're excited to see and what not to pack. Read more...

Our Saturday recap is up and bursting with raves about Jim James, Robyn and Kate Nash, but you can also check out more detailed accounts at the You R Here blog. What happened yesterday? Well...

· Comeback-making pop singer
Robyn wowed Perez Hilton's party with glitchy electro-beats and profane lyrics

· Young British songstress Kate Nash overcame marble floors and obnoxious concertgoers

· Jim James and M. Ward got reverent at an intimate concert held in a church

· The Night Marchers rocked in the daylight at Waterloo Park

· Grand Ole Party drummed up some new fans at the Mess With Texas fest

· Black Tide rolled into Red Seven with waves of hair and metal riffs

· Foxy Shazam bled onstage at Emo's and delivered a fabulously unsexy pole dance

We've been subjecting a variety of artists to our 5X5 @ SWSX interrogation down here in Austin this week, and one of the most interesting answers so far comes from Pharrell Williams. Not only did he say he thought he heard some accordion in Vampire Weekend's music, but he came up with his own label for the style that the band itself calls "Upper West Side Soweto." Take a look.

Read more...

Every year South by Southwest is like a big Lone Star and pulled-pork trough filled with bands to discover and write about. But it’s also the place where those of us who don’t live on a coast can go to find out what the hipsters are wearing and what we should start looking for at our local Salvation Army. Last year it was the throwback moon boot. The year before brought the onslaught of the painted-on boy jeans.

This year’s must-have accessory, for boys and girls? The headband. Whether it’s bejeweled, a bright orange, gold braid or just plain old sweat, the headband is what all the cool kids are rocking this year.

Check back with the Newsroom blog throughout SXSW for more highlights, and be sure to visit our sister blog You R Here for concert reviews, photos and more.

We’ve said it before, people, but it bears repeating. Along with your sound, the second most important thing any band has to do, maybe even more important than your sound in the beginning, is choose a name that’s either: a) instantly cool and/or intriguing (Nirvana, Radiohead) or so lame it’s back to being great again (Weezer, Panic at the Disco).

Clearly, many of the bands who played showcases Friday night at South by Southwest didn’t get this memo. Among them: Vancougar, Coconut Coolouts, the Show Is a Rainbow, Mittens on Strings, We Versus the Shark, Everlovely Lightningheart, Psychedelic Horses---, the Homosexuals, the Crash That Took Me, and Goat the Head.

Honorary mentions go to other bands playing the festival, including What Laura Says, Thinks and Feels, 43 Songs about 43 Presidencies, Songs for Moms, Til We’re Blue or Destroy, Ringo Deathstarr, Gorch Fock, Woodpigeon, Uh Huh Her, Death Sentence: Panda!, Collections of Colonies of Bees, I Was a Cub Scout, Does It Offend You, Yeah? and one of my favorites, DJ Pube$.

Then, there’s the names that guarantee that the band will probably never make it beyond SXSW, but we appreciate their creativity and we applaud their awesome, if scary, imaginations: A Thousand Knives of Fire, Dixie Witch, Tennessee Boltsmokers and Bible of the Devil.

Check back with the Newsroom blog throughout SXSW for more highlights, and be sure to visit our sister blog You R Here for concert reviews, photos and more.

There is a long-running joke in the industry about so-called "hip-hop time," which basically means that if you have an interview scheduled with a rapper, it will never, ever start on time.

So, not surprisingly, when MTV super-producer Andrew Millard and I arrived at the Austin Convention Center for our 12:45 chat with the legendary Ice Cube, who's headlining a showcase tonight, we knew we'd have some time to kill. After all, Cube is one of the guys who practically invented "hip-hop time" (and gangsta rap too). But little did we know that we'd be killing that time in a sparse "dressing room," which was little more than a giant bathroom with some potted plants thrown in for good measure.

So we waited. We rearranged the potted plants. We adjusted the camera. And then we readjusted it. Finally, at roughly 1:30 p.m., Cube himself strode into the room, laughed at a joke we made about the place looking like a florist's bathroom, threw on the microphone and got down to business.

We spoke about his politically charged new album, Raw Footage, about George W. Bush and the war in Iraq, and even about his experiences at South by Southwest (he checked out the Clipse and Kid Sister, and marveled "at some band that set up in a parking lot and started playing next to our car"). We also put him through our 5X5 @ SXSW questions:

We only got about 10 minutes before his publicist told us he had to go, but the wait was totally worth it. And as he left the room, he forgot to unhook his mic, and his motion sent the whole thing tumbling to the linoleum floor. Cube stopped, laughed for a second, and exited the room by saying, "Damn, that's the only mic I ever dropped. "

We told you the dude was a legend.

Check in with the Newsroom blog throughout SXSW for more highlights, and be sure to visit our sister blog You R Here for concert reviews, photos and more.

Our Friday recap is up and bursting with raves about Paramore, N.E.R.D. and Working for a Nuclear Free City, but you can also check out more detailed accounts at the You R Here blog. What happened yesterday? Well...

· The Clipse delivered a hit-packed performance that showed why they've won the love of the indie-rock kids

· N.E.R.D. whipped up a punk-funk frenzy that proved that Pharrell's as comfortable onstage as he is in the studio

· Paramore squashed rumors of a breakup and put on a high-energy show for a crowd of mostly local teenage scene kids

· Manchester's Working for a Nuclear Free City made a musical shake by putting hometown heroes Happy Mondays, the Stone Roses and Kasabian in a virtual blender

So it's Friday night in Austin, you're three days into a total indulgence of bands, booze and music. You've seen Yeasayer or some other hipster band four times already, you've memorized Santogold's set, you've had too much beer at the Blender magazine building, and some weird guy is trying to coax you to his friend's band's 2 a.m. performance with free burgers. It's the end of the night and you're just looking for something ... different.

Well, tonight was different. A free show by two great bands, No Age and F***** Up, on a pedestrian walkway bridge about two miles away from where the rest of SXSW is happening, at 3 a.m. (THREE A. M.!), under the cover of darkness. These are the things that happen when determined hipsters coagulate into a critical mass of creative thinking. Most of the kids made the trek by foot, rather than cab, thugging it out for short-but-sweet sets by the two bands, amongst a cavalcade of dedicated music-lovers not quite ready to call it a night. Sightlines were poor but the music was great. Mostly, we just love that something this ... illicit ... can still happen at such a major music festival in a big city. Above, a picture of the crowd (um, like we said, the sightlines were POOR).