The parasites and sounds of SXSW
Loving to hate, or hating to love the Monster of Mid-March
“Never care how you look when you’re making money,” is what my old boss, Daybreak antique clothing owner David Ornstein, told me after he alienated fellow antique dealers with his aggressive estate sale tactics. As his pregnant wife Maureen waddled up the stairs, holding up the line, David would run around, yanking Amish quilts off twin beds in one motion, then throwing them over his shoulder, so he could grab anything else of great value. He was maybe a jerk, but he was our jerk.
If the heads of SXSW cared about public perception, they didn’t seem to show it in the very un-Austinlike way they ruthlessly fought “piggybackers,” the outlaw fringe, in the beginning. They’d seen what happened when the once-almighty New Music Seminar started losing control, and went badge up in 1995, and Roland Swenson, Louis Black, Nick Barbaro and original partner Louis Meyers were not going to let that happen to their baby. Even if it meant them becoming villains of Entitletown, U.S.A.
They already had half of the Austin musician populace hating them for the yearly rejection notices, but South by Southwest made more enemies with negotiation/retaliation tactics they seemed to get from Godfather movies. They’d bury your party in the desert under all that red tape, and whack your band from the official lineup if you played an unsanctioned evening gig. Many in Austin couldn’t understand why they were so aggressively territorial with their “Parasite Crew” of nerdy enforcers.
Eighty per cent of the success of SXSW is because it’s held in Austin. The venues were already here, as was the weather, and the friendly folks and breakfast tacos and Shiner Bock and the “music matters” mantra. We built this city, so shouldn’t all of Austin be part of ‘this thing of ours’?
The struggle for control of the third week of March has been ongoing since the first time someone wrote “You Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Badges” on top of a list of shows free and open to the public. The fear was that the unsanctioned sideshow would water down the main event, plus draw registrants from the boring daylong panels and tedious trade show in the Convention Center.
Covering every year of SXSW until 2015, the number one concern from readers has always been, “How can we participate without buying a badge or wristband?” Like Twitter, FOMO was launched at Southby, so much of my job was letting folks know what music was free and open to the public. This ticked off my friends at SXSW, but my loyalty was to the readers, whom, ultimately paid my salary and health insurance. “My job is as important to me as yours is to you,” I’d tell the Southby brass, and they’d look at me funny, like I was a just a music critic, while they were stewards of the world’s biggest, most influential annual pop culture event.
The Statesman, showed up by those dirty hippies at the Austin Chronicle every March, loved anything negative about SXSW, so I served it up, calling back every band or fan or party planner who had a story about being strong-armed by Southby. The word “Nazis” was thrown around a bit.
Mainly, I just made jokes, like “They call it a wristband because the only band you’re guaranteed to see is the one on your wrist.” And … “SXSW could send reporters dolls for quotes. Pull the string and ‘the spokesman’ says that registration is slightly up, but it's too early to know the number of wristbands sold. Pull it again and it says the conference barely broke even last year. Ask for accounting figures and the doll wets itself.”
Organizers took those quips in the spirit intended, and sometimes shot back, like the time I suggested that instead of an expensive badge, it was possible to have the full SXSW experience by buying a wristband and hanging out in the lobby bar at the Four Seasons. When I went to pick up my badge the next day, I received an envelope containing a wristband and a hand drawn map to the Four Seasons.
It was all fun except when I wrote something that could potentially cost Southby money. In 1998, online record store CDNow flew in Sonic Youth and paid them $25,000 to play their private party, originally scheduled for the 300-capacity downtown club, Twist. SXSW went ballistic! They got with SY’s management and convinced CDNow to put the party in one of their rooms- the 1,500-capacity La Zona Rosa- at no rental cost- from 7-9 p.m. Badges and wristbands and ticket buyers, in that order, would be let in at 8, when Youth hit the stage. But nobody left the party, and the long line of folks waiting to pay cover never moved. Charlie Jones, the future C3 honcho then working the lines at La Zona Rosa, was pretty ticked off at the situation. “We gave up two hours,” Jones said. “We made the deal because we thought we’d be able to make it up at the door.” That was the quote that had my former roommate Brent Grulke screaming at me in the Convention Center the next morning in front of everybody. “You really fucked us over, man!” The take-it-or-leave-it deal with venues was that SXSW handles expenses and gets the door, while the clubs get the bar, but here was an instance of a certain venue keeping money from ticket sales. The next year, four or five other venues would demand a similar deal. I broke the code. I could make fun of SXSW all I wanted, but costing them money was no bueno.
Deep down, I sided with SX on the piggybacker issue, though I sure did drink a lot of free beer at day parties and East Austin warehouses. I had also been a witness to the demise of NMS, which became a drag to attend because the Marriott Marquis host hotel was so swarming with hip hop fans, many who rode the elevators all day looking for famous rappers, that registrants couldn’t get to their rooms. Then one afternoon at the height of East Coast/West Coast beef, some gangsta wannabe pulled out a gun and caused a stampede. Austin came to the rescue with a cheaper, more pleasant confab, which eventually began seeing similar problems of civilian infestation. Once the word got out that SXSW was the star-studded party of the year, Austin became a Spring Break destination.
Brent Grulke, who oversaw the music festival until his 2012 passing, got in a bit of p.r. trouble circa 2006, when he reminded Chron readers that SXSW is an event created for the music business, not the general public. When the crowds make it harder for the industry to conduct its business, they’ll stop coming to Austin. And that’ll be the end of Southby, and the end of all those free parties. It was something folks needed to hear, and Brent was ready for the smoke.
It’s sometimes astonishing how little casual music fans know about SXSW. FOMO has a sibling named WAM: What about me? It’s the most self-centered time of the year. I remember getting my teeth cleaned about a week after SX, and when the hygienist asked me what I’d been up to, I told her about some of the acts I’d seen at SXSW. “Smokey Robinson was in town?!,” she exclaimed. “He’s my favorite singer! How did I not know about that concert?” I told her how SXSW works, with artists playing basically for free because they want to be seen by promoters, record labels, booking agents, media and so on to boost their career. “That’s not fair!,” she whined. “I should have the same chance to see Smokey Robinson as everyone else.” He didn’t come to Austin to sing for her, I said. Then she tortured me for half an hour.
At SXSW, the yin and the yang are the in and the out. The outside people want to get in and the inside people want another drink ticket.
The Parasite Crew was especially busy in the early 2000s, when SX was established as a youth market phenomenon. Out of the woodwork came “guerrilla marketers,” whose m.o. is latching onto an existing event and selling sub-events to sponsors, blurring the line to suggest an official affiliation. The Crew killed “The Concert Series at SXSW,” for instance, and also went hard at independent promoters who offered performance slots “at SXSW” for as much as $1,200. Sadly, the dream of stardom was made to be exploited.
The Crew didn’t stop at those obvious culprits. As we learned with Sonic Youth in ‘98, SXSW hates when a corporate party flies in an act that doesn’t also play an official showcase. Such “private” parties as when American Express gave Jay-Z a couple mil to play ACL Live, and when Samsung flew in Prince in 2013, usually end up teaming with SXSW in some capacity, with the compromise usually being that a limited number of badge-wearers get in. It’s just easier to go along. Would be a shame if your permits weren’t all in order.
Having expensive parties shut down by authorities seemingly in SX’s pocket became a storyline in 2007, when the city pulled the plug on “pirate” blowouts at Blue Genie Theater, the Factory People boutique, and the Gibson Guitar showroom just as they were getting started. Those party planners were unaware of recent changes in the permit process, and didn’t have their paperwork in order.
Nothing pisses elegant freeloaders off more than being at an exclusive party with an open bar and name talent that gets shut down. That’s an enemy for life. But the outrage really intensified when SXSW director Swenson admitted to Ch. 8 reporter Andy Langer that he had given the fire marshal a list of unsanctioned SXSW fringe parties, including the three shut down. It didn’t matter that the list had been published in the Statesman.
Roland’s reasoning was that if the fire marshal was going to enforce its safety codes and permits at official SXSW venues, they should do the same at other events in town. After all, if a deadly fire breaks out at a pirate party, the headline’s still going to read “Seven die at SXSW.”
As with Grulke’s “this is not for you” interview the previous year, Swenson said his admission to Langer was a huge p.r. blunder, but I’m not so sure about that. I saw it as a little chin music. Fuck with us and find out.
As all-encompassing and monolithic as SXSW has gotten, it’s continued to operate as if its very survival is at stake. That’s what happens when your previous job was delivering the Austin Chronicle.
READ MORE ON SXSW
SXSW in the ‘90’s: ‘They really like us’
SXSW 2015: Gettin’ Mighty Crowded
(Cover photo of Miles Zuniga, Bill Davis, Mojo Nixon and Rickey Gelb by Linda Earley)
Wow. You really knocked one out of the park with this chapter, Michael. Too bad the park has been rented out all week to SXSW, with entry exclusively for badge-holders, owners of drilling rigs in the Gulf, and registered lobbyists, in that order.
The Mob tactics you referred to in this essay brought back fond memories of the founders of NYC's New Music Seminar, Joel Webber and Mark Josephson [both no longer with us]. Lois and I were members of Austin's Music Advisory Committee in the mid-1980s, along with Roland Swenson, Ed Ward, Louis Meyers, Nick Barbaro, etc., which sort of paved the way for the creation of SXSW (and left the group before SXSW and moved to Los Angeles). In LA, Lois worked for Mark & Joel for a music seminar there at the historic Roosevelt Hotel. [A few corrections here since my original reply, with input from Lois] When Lois and I went to NYC to pitch my first novel (the predecessor to Rock Critic Murders] to publishers, Mark took us out to dinner in Little Italy, pointing out where various Mafia capos had been assassinated and regaling us with various other tales of the East Coast crimelords. They were nice fellas, New Yorkers to the core, and, as such, loved their Mob mythology.