NOTE: this blog is no longer active as of 12/07. New one: http://blog.kirchhof.com
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
Mon, 12 Mar 2007
SXSW In A Nutshell
That's Louis Black, Editor/Principle of the Austin Chronicle and
co-founder of SXSW. (Nick Barbaro is also a festival partner and
publisher at the Chronicle, and Roland Swenson is the managing partner
of the festival.)
He's policing the line at Waterloo Records, apparently bored,
observing the Austin, Texas music fans who gave him his fortune, all
of them queued to pay $160.00 for a wristband that does
not guarantee that they will be admitted to any venue or be
able to listen to any SXSW showcase. Because, remember kids, it's not
a
"consumer event."
Nevertheless, they'll sell somewhere on the far side of three
quarters of a million dollars worth of these wristbands (that
guarantee nothing) prior to the music portion of the festival.
I was here long, long before the Church
Of Swensontology. I helped to create the infrastructure and the
culture that they utilize for their profits. I hope that I'll be here
long after they're gone. The only people who make money at SXSW are
(a) SXSW by far, and (b) well, everyone except for the creators of the
arts that they espouse. Oh, yeah, and audio engineers. Lucky for me
that I am also an audio engineer. I create music, too, but musicians
pay for the "privilege" of performing at SXSW. Independent
audio engineers get to name their price at this time of the year in
Austin, Tx.
SXSW lacks... honor, I guess; it lacks a sense of obligation, an
institutional conscience. It is no longer about the music, or the
films, or the "interactive," if indeed it ever was. It is about
itself. It is about using the Austin consumer and the Austin musician
and Austin culture, a culture that made SXSW's existence possible in
the first place, in service of its own advance. It's among the worst
kind of blood money -- in its least attractive aspect, I see cult-like
steely-eyed profiteering posing as a patron of the arts. In my less
charitable moments, as it freewheels through my town every year and
vacuums up money, I can put SXSW right up there in RIAA territory.
The saddest thing about it all is that, at the worker-bee level,
the organization is made up of true patrons of the arts. Fine,
fine people who love music. Who
love film. Who know their geekery. And who work hard,
extraordinarily long hours year-round so that they can work even
harder this week every year - and experience only a fleeting hour or
two of their beloved Arts during the festival. And at festival time,
hundreds more are used as volunteer staff and get paid only a badge
and a piece of pizza or two.
And make no mistake, those fine people absolutely deliver. There is
an enormous wealth of talent and quality panels available to
participants in Austin this week. Some important films have made their
debut at SXSW, and it is pretty much the premiere venue for web
designers to get together and share ideas. SXSW is an
extraordinary and well-run event. I simply wish that it would give
something back to the artists who have made its existence possible.
SXSW takes enormous sums of money from the industries that profit
from the arts and provides them with ten days of an orgiastic
narcissictic power-schmooze fest, as SXSW assumes the role of the
arbiter of this year's 'Next Big Thing.' Simultaneously, they require
the artists that make it all possible to spend enormous amounts of
money—money that they often don't have—to
participate. And, of course, they staff the festival itself with
unpaid volunteers.
They profit from the creators; they profit from the middlemen; they
profit from the patrons, and they profit from the consumers. And now
that the City of Austin is a "partner," they profit directly in the
form of tax credits from the citizens of Austin. Quite the profitable
enterprise there.
Think about this on Sunday, as you look upon the disillusioned band
begging gas money to get back to Minnesota or the film maker
hitchhiking back to Oregon with a backpack full of their unwatched
DVDs. They won't be attending the SXSW barbecue and softball
tourney with all of the badged hipper-than-thou Important People, and
no one from SXSW will be there to "support" their art after Saturday
night when the final bank deposit rolls away from the convention
center in that armored truck.
Of course, the standard-issue answer to these observations is that
SXSW brings $38 million into the Austin economy every year. Perhaps it
does. But it brings zero dollars into the overall artists
economy - it takes something up in the high six figures from
the musicians and film makers as application fees. Again, as is always
the case with SXSW, no guarantees.
I'm sure that all of this makes the Austin Convention and Visitors
Bureau happy—they finally found a way to profit off of all those
dirty hippie musicians that were always hanging around their
city—but
they didn't have a damned thing to do with making Austin a
musical and arts mecca. I remember well the early days, when they
wanted to make it a misdemeanor to carry a guitar case anywhere in
town except "to and from a licensed music venue." Now we're the "Live
Music Capital of the World." The artists of Austin, Texas owe ACVB and
SXSW nothing.
Apparently it's not enough for artists to be the creative profit
engine for all of these "industry" hangers-on for 355 days a year;
SXSW has added ten days where the creators have to pay to be
around the middlemen. And while they're at it, they sell a ticket that
is not a ticket to the fans who fund the whole industry in the first
place. Finally, just for good measure, they make it obscenely
expensive and difficult as the fans jump through hoops to try to
acquire one.
I can't help but think that there's some very bad faith in evidence
here. What started out as a symbiotic festival in service of Austin's
musical culture and diversity has turned into a gathering of wealthy
parasites—of, by and for its own profit. It has an institutional
contempt for its origins that I find extremely distasteful. Twenty one
years down the road, it's now "not an 'Austin music' event" and it's
"not a consumer event." Well, fine. Then take it someplace other than
Austin where there are no Austin musicians and no Austin consumers and
see how well it flies.
Oh, wait... SXSW tried that, didn't they? I believe that the exact
quote from the Billboard interview is "If we had gone ahead, it could have sunk the company."
Sadly, It's here and not going metastatize to anywhere else. I'd
just like to take a moment as a native Austinite and a life-long music
industry professional to voice the opinion that SXSW (the Non-Consumer
Non-Artist Industry Event) is a yearly irritation, and it is an
egregious and ungrateful misappropriation of the fruits of Austin's
unique culture, a culture that it had nothing to do with
creating. SXSW has taken the concept of "ripping off the culture" to
a previously unimaginable and profitable height of literalism.
Enjoy your blood money, gentlemen. Now please excuse me for a
while; I'm going to go listen to Chrissie Hynde sing "How much did you
get for your soul?" a few times.
[ Photo via Austinist.
]
Posted at 00:30 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink]
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