Digging the Heat? Support our mission to keep Austin ~actually~ weird with the best of Austin-centric news and reflections. Get 20% off forever A mash of SXSW 2024: Cyber trucks! the government! oh my! ChatLG - Laura Gonima, Arts+Labor. “SXSW presents a unique opportunity for the Army to meet technology innovators and leaders, explore new ideas and insights, and create dynamic industry partnerships as we modernize for the future.” Lt. Col. Lindsey Elder, New York Times, 3/13/24 . Mmmm...yeah. Not the storyline you’re hoping to see when the national press focuses on the fest. More than 80 bands — a small percentage of the acts — drove everything else to the bottom of the search results for days. Google search, Day 4 (March 13). SXSW, this savvy organization that’s almost always stayed one step ahead, kept shooting itself in the foot. It sicced lawyers on protestors who memed their logo . The tone deaf, defensive move led to additional headlines and explanations. Brooklyn Vegan , 3/12 Another fact — the optics have changed. SXSW is no longer run by scrappy outsiders from Austin’s alternative culture, but rather by one of the most powerful multimedia conglomerates in the world. Penske Media, which owns half the fest, also owns Rolling Stone, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, Billboard, even Art in America. It owns the Golden Globes, Dick Clark Productions, and the Academy of Country Music Awards. An empire built through acquisition. Synergy . Penske Media Corporation With all the buying and selling going on, increasingly musicians see themselves as the hole in the donut. That fueled the protest over pay last year, and the unresolved issues made it easy to rekindle resentment this year. Artists who used to fear being blacklisted are now letting it rip. KXAN “The way the Penske Group has just hoovered up all of these mainstream American music industry entities, combined with the fact that there actually is no mainstream music industry anymore, just screams ‘uninformed.’  Any American would tell you ‘What music industry? What mass media? We haven’t had that for 15 years!’ Gate-kept mass media is gone, so as a result ‘mainstream’ cannot exist, not nearly the way it used to and eventually I think, not at all. And what’s left gets smaller and less influential every single day.”  Jackie Venson , Musician An artist pay model that still clings to an “I’m going to be discovered” framework from an era pre-dating the internet , social media, and even the cell phone (as Joe Nick Patoski observed), is the model of their parent’s world , a world that no longer exists. In the here and now, you better come to the fest with built-in buzz. Originally published in The Austin Chronicle; from Outside Industry: The Story of SXSW (2011). I could see a future where the only official shows are those underwritten by sponsors. Venson, for example, played Rolling Stone’s Future of Music Showcase at ACL. Which meant a bigger paycheck than the newly-upped standard $350.  Also, this is where the lines were — large venues with name acts. A different ecosystem opens the door for something new. I wondered, as I watched protest bands perform in front of city hall, if we’re not headed for some sort of Sundance/Slamdance world.   Austin American Statesman , Jay Janner, March 13, 2024. Maybe that’s a win-win, because here’s the tough reality. The majority of the boycotting acts weren’t going to be missed, weren’t going to move the needle. They haven’t broken wide, people aren’t lining up to see them, and coverage over the controversy might be the biggest headline they ever receive. If I’m SX, I’m wondering why I want to deal with the headaches. This year the official downtown footprint was dead, basically a fence around a largely empty zoo.  When people aren’t turning out, everyone’s pissed. Bands that scraped together cash to come are playing an empty room. Clubs aren’t selling drinks. No one makes money.  "It may well be that SX doesn't particularly need music, and music doesn't particularly need SX anymore given the consolidation of booking and venues, the democratization of recording and online delivery of music to audiences, and the contraction of music journalism as an ecosystem. The incentives for artists to showcase have changed." Jason Mellard, Director of the Center for Texas Music History at Texas State University. THE DANGER WITH A SHOTGUN WEDDING The 2024 buzz topic is AI. SXSW programmed more than 60 panels and events on the subject.  But here again, a shot in the foot. Given the gulf between technologists and creatives, whose idea was it to run a make-the-world-a-better-place puff piece before screenings? The reaction…predictable. Scroll down in Variety’s coverage and watch the clip from The Fall Guy premiere. Variety, March 13, 2024. The tech folks drop in from a parallel planet filled with frothy talk and trendy vests, tolerated because they bring their cheddar, and more important because technology and entertainment are interwoven and together offer a glimpse of tomorrow. That’s why the Army’s here, and has been, since 2018. But this is a very different year and these are very different crowds, and the culture collision overshadowed other successes. Film in particular felt like a home run. The venues were packed, the stars turned out, the studios staged spectacles. (Top) Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong arrive at The Paramount. (Bottom, L-R) Ryan Gosling, Lilly Singh, Jake Gyllenhaal, Anne Hathaway and Nicholas Galitzine. The original tribe built something that’s hard to replicate. Something that literally reshaped Austin. But the world has shifted and the entire country’s on edge, left and right asking the same question — Where the hell are we all gonna be a year from now?  That’s driving the angst, and SXSW 2024 found itself caught in the drag. Alan Berg, Publisher The Ritz, then to now. (L-R) Punk band The Dicks in 1982, Andrew Logan interviewing Ashton Sanders at SXSW 2013, Joe Rogan in 2023. GO SEE, GO DO ELECTRIC FEELS DANCE PARTY Friday, Empire Garage. Get your American Apparel pleather leggings back out! The return of Indie Sleaze has been teased for years now, but this touring event is actually bringing it back. Electric Feels is an experience driven dance party that plays everything from indie rock to electronic dance music all night with amazing DJs and stage production. RODEO AUSTIN Thursday-Saturday, Decker Lake. It’s the final weekend to catch the rodeo. There are nightly concerts, a fair and other goings on. ROCK THE PARK Friday, Mueller Lake Park. KUTX kicks off its spring free concert series with Lesly Reynaga plus Los Desechos. While we’re talking about KUTX, check out their evening radio show Spare the Rock, Spoil the Child , which runs from 6-7pm on Sundays. “We’re radio nerds, and we want to raise another generation of radio nerds. That means a set that starts with Elvis Costello, switches to Brooklyn history-oriented family rock band the Deedle Deedle Dees, and then pivots to Guided By Voices, or one that starts with British folk punker Frank Turner, then family hip-hop artist Secret Agent 23 Skidoo, and finishes up with Earth Wind & Fire.” Bill Childs, Host, Spare the Rock LEGENDS GONE, LEGENDS REMEMBERED KVUE-TV When I was cutting my teeth as a cub reporter at KVUE-TV in the late 80s, Carole Kneeland changed the course of my life. She’d just come aboard as our News Director, after serving as WFAA-TV’s Austin Bureau Chief, and she told me she thought I should cover politics. I’ll spare the blow by blow but Carole put me in a position to achieve everything that came after. She was fearless, she was fair, and she taught me how to report. Carole passed from cancer in 1998, but her voice has stayed in my head. “If this is why I get fired, I’ll live with it.” “There’s never a wrong time to do the right thing.” “Look for new risks to take.” Carole Kneeland believed deeply in the service of journalism, the value of helping a community understand what’s happening and how it affects them. She broke new ground, and this week she was memorialized in the newsroom she built. Carole Kneeland protege Joan Barrett speaking at the dedication ceremony. Photo by John Gusky, KVUE-TV. Go see something, tell us about it, we’ll share more stories next week. Let’s build something together. 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