SXSWorld
Issue link: https://sxsw.uberflip.com/i/81862
Neil Young and Jonathan Demme at the 2006 Music Keynote. " If you go to Park City, Utah, the week before or the week after Sundance you would never know that this was a town that had a fi lm festival. You go to Austin any day of the year, and it is exactly the same as SXSW—it's just not as intense." came from her home state of Texas (and then had to apologize), was subtitled "Activism and Protest." Moderator Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune was joined by the Pakistani artist Salman Ahmad, X's John Doe, Woodstock icon Wavy Gravy, poet, revolutionary and MC5 cohort John Sinclair, the Future of Music Coalition's Jenny Toomey, author Neil Pollack and R.E.M.'s Mike Mills. While Lyle Lovett would speak well of the Commander-in-Chief in a separate SXSW Interview, Mills referred to him as "non-President Bush," defending Maines and noting that the political climate made people feel that "to protest has been unseemly, like stomping on the graves of the dead." "It was surreal," Kot says. "Being in the same room with Wavy Gravy and John Sinclair was pretty cool. I thought they would be polar oppo- sites, with Wavy as the west coast merry prankster and Sinclair the midwest hardcore militant. I seated them at opposite ends of the panel because I thought it was somehow symbolic: the bookends of the '60s anti-war movement. I didn't think they knew each other all that well, since they came from such diff erent scenes, but backstage they acted like old pals, cracking jokes and keeping everyone loose. Mike Mills and John Doe were just in awe of them." "Th ings felt heavy," Kot continues. "Folks were just pissed off . Wavy was in Manhattan on the day of the attacks, meeting with clients before the CMJ Music Marathon. "I was staying at a bed & breakfast on the Lower East Side, which was run by ladies from Ireland, so there were several Irish bands staying there that had been booked for CMJ," Kiser remembers. "Roland got together the staff in Austin for a group call to me. Th e 1,500 mile distance never felt so close." 2001 had been a bumpy one fi nancially, but "it seemed like heaven compared to the post-9/11 SXSW '02," says Swenson (attendance dropped for the second straight year, though it has risen ever since). "Th e major labels were in free-fall as illegal downloading seemed to be the primary means of obtaining music for everyone under 40. By March, most record industry people who still had a job saw their travel budgets slashed. A lot of people just didn't want to travel. Some, like Gaylynn and Angela [SXSW fi lm producer Lee, who had been at the Toronto International Film Festival] had been trapped out of town for a week or more." and Sinclair had been there before, obviously. Th eir hearts had to be breaking to see it happen once more. But they weren't crying about it. Th ey were laughing in its face, and making us laugh too." One year earlier, of course, SXSW 2002 could not help but be aff ected by the aftermath of 9/11. Former sales manager Gaylynn Kiser 10 SXSW ORLD / M ARCH M USIC 201 1 A saving grace was international participation. "A few lucky inter- nationals had made deals with acts like Th e Strokes and White Stripes the year before, when they weren't so famous," says Swenson. "So the word of mouth in the U.K. and Europe on SXSW was stronger than ever." Th at, of course, was always part of Swenson's blueprint. "When I worked for Joe 'King' Carrasco and the Crowns, their fi rst deal was with Stiff Records, and they had their early success overseas when they toured in Europe before signing with MCA," he says. "I was also aware that at one point, the biggest part of Doug Sahm's touring business was in Scandinavia. I saw SXSW as a tool for acts to fi nd alternative ways to GARY MILLER