But on the other hand, auto-1 for SXSW so I don't know how to rate this.

My friends' band played there a couple of years ago in a motel parking lot.. it's kinda cool how the city shuts down for it. This was attempted in Portland with NXNW (later changed to Music Fest Northwest) and it was pretty fun. I never bought a wristband because I was playing one of the shows, but spent the rest of the time just tooling around and getting drunk. I would've probably never discovered The Intelligence if it wasn't for randomly popping into a venue because it was next door to a crepe place and I was hungry, and they're still one of my favorite bands.

Anyway, it worked, and for years a 3 day wristband was like 25 bucks for everything, which slowly went up as the festival grew. I think last year's was (the most expensive), and they fucking ruined everything by only booking a dozen "it" bands (seriously, is Spoon and Animal Collective still relevant or did we just skip a decade and it's 2004)? in large public venues.. I dunno. Fuck that scene now, but there's others. But looking at the price, the absolute cheapest wristband at SXSW (just for the bands that you could "discover" before anyone else) is 5, and the most expensive is 45? What the fuck?

SXSW was probably great but at this point it's mainly a tech-startup convention with bands as a sideshow.

Or so I've heard from people who are involved less han willingly (i.e. locals) and crabby leftists, I've never been myself and the real-life friends I've known who have gone are people who are going there to BREAK INTO THE MUSIC BIZ so they're pretty biased in favor of it (although their general attitude toward music just supports my gut feeling about the whole thing).

I went down to Austin with some friends back in 2000, not necessarily for SXSW but we thought it'd be cool to check out some shows. Yeah, it doesn't work that way. But at least back then I saw some amazing bands on the street who had tapes that they'd just give away to passersby. Some of those bands have gotten pretty big now. And what was cool about the show that I played was that the festival was pretty much over, because music venues close earlier than bars (that are also music venues), so everyone with a wristband flooded the place we were playing at just to get their money's worth. Yeah, they were drunk and probably don't remember the name, but it was still cool, as we were often playing shows where the only people in the audience were the next band and the bartender.

I guess so.. what's weird is Pavement did the same thing with a mostly incompetent drummer which sort of separated them from the rest of the college rock ilk. And then they got a really good drummer and that was that. I've never heard of this band before but besides the obvious Pavement they really remind me of some other female-fronted band from the mid-late 90s.. Not the Amps, not Liz Phair, not Julie Cafritz.. I dunno.

The drummer makes or breaks a band, and finding a drummer who is competent AND has taste is really hard.

Look at how fast the Butthole Surfers turned to crap when they went from this:

http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/_/24280659/Butthole+Surfers+ IMG_0006.jpg

to this:

http://d1ya1fm0bicxg1.cloudfront.net/2015/01/75957512-image-op timized_54a56feb8105f.jpg


Because for all of the attention people pay to Gibby and Paul Leary, it was the drummer sin the 80s lineup that really made them.

Yeah. The first Pavement I got was a cassingle for Cut Your Hair and didn't really listen to them again until I was like 16 and going through that Pavement phase, so the last album I heard was actually their first. I can't remember now if I really liked it on first listening. It was sloppy, noisy and the drumming was pretty bad. And fuck if I knew that that was part of the charm. I was from the land of The Wipers (with arguably the best drummer in punk rock) and others and went back to Wowee Zowie and Brighten the Corners. But Slanted and Enchanted grew on me after someone informed me that it was a direct parody of The Fall's Live at the Witch Trials. I don't think it is, but it gave me a different perspective.

What's weird is Malkmus went the same way as the Butthole Surfers post-Pavement. It's.. like.. not bad, but all of a sudden it's so incredibly tight.

I hate it when bands have competent musicians in them.

A pretty good lipmus test is Bleach vs. In Utereo. Both great albums, but ya know.