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Children at Disneyland have less fun than I did at South by Southwest, Austin\u2019s annual citywide celebration of music, film, and the latest in technology and innovation held from March 8 to 17.<\/p>\n
For most people that attend the 27-year-old festival, the highlight is the music, with mainly free shows taking over nearly every venue in the city.<\/p>\n
The acts range from established stars to up-and-coming musicians that aren\u2019t afraid to get their hands dirty, playing five or six shows in a single week. L.A. based roots-rock band Dawes may have taken home the record, with an astounding 14 shows at this year\u2019s SXSW.<\/p>\n
The variety of big name bands that played was amazing, with nearly every style and genre represented in some form. The Stooges played a set at The Mohawk, the Flaming Lips put on multiple shows to promote their new album \u201cThe Terror,\u201d and the Smashing Pumpkins rang in lead singer Billy Corrigan\u2019s birthday with a free show at Red Bull\u2019s Sound Select.<\/p>\n
Prince played a free show in front of over a thousand screaming fans at the La Zona Rosa, and rapper Ghostface Killer even made an appearance. Justin Timberlake was the big name everyone was buzzing about who wrapped up the week with a secret show hosted by MySpace at the 800-person Coppertank Events Center.<\/p>\n
While the lucky few were able to make it into these shows after hours spent in line or forking over a sizeable amount of money for a full festival pass, most were content to gather outside these venues and relish in the freedom of dancing in the streets with strangers.<\/p>\n
SXSW is like dropping a Bonnaroo-sized music festival right in the middle of the French Quarter during Mardi Gras. There was an odd feeling that came from spending several hours in a single venue watching multiple bands play a killer line up, and then suddenly stepping foot outside into a mass of humanity as thousands filled the streets.<\/p>\n
This sea of people moved like a herd, with impromptu pockets of dance circles springing up around the many street DJs, bands and occasional group of guys using nothing but buckets for drums.<\/p>\n
While the main drag along Sixth Street in the heart of downtown Austin is where most of the action happened, the highlight may have been the quant \u201chouse-bars\u201d that line Ceasar Chavez Avenue along the outskirts of town. There, former Victorian-style homes were converted into bars with backyard stages set up for smaller, lesser-known bands that really put their heart and soul into every show.<\/p>\n While it\u2019s hard to chose a favorite, the highlight of all the bands had to be You Me & Apollo, a soulful young rock group based out of Colorado. Look up their live performance of the song \u201cRob the Cheat\u201d and you\u2019ll see why this random band I\u2019d never heard about easily goes down as the best show I\u2019ve seen in the last three years.<\/p>\n Another highlight was The Outfit, a four-piece indie rock band also from Colorado, and The Weeks, a rough around the edges rock band based out of Mississippi fronted by two longhaired twins who really know how to jam and get the crowd going. You can see what I mean as The Weeks come to San Diego\u2019s The Griffin, located at 1310 Morena Blvd., April 6 at 8:30 p.m.<\/p>\n The festival can be overwhelming at times; no shocker considering it encompasses a celebration of the best the music industry has to offer, plus movie previews and actor panels from the national film industry, seminars and product demos from some of the world\u2019s biggest technology brands, and even some comedy thrown in for good measure.<\/p>\n Numerous companies were promoting their latest products and hosting parties, where they gave away free samples, free drinks and free food. While a person can\u2019t live solely off of free bags of Doritos and granola bars, I certainly tried my best to do just that.<\/p>\n Austin is a foodie\u2019s paradise year round, with some of the world\u2019s best and most innovative restaurants, along with so many food trucks that your only regret will be that you didn\u2019t get to try them all.<\/p>\n Overall, the festival may have begun in 1987 as an annual conference to help put a spotlight on the best emerging talent in the region, but over the last three decades it has grown into the greatest music festival in the world.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A journey to the music lover\u2019s paradise that is South By Southwest By Logan Broyles | SDUN Reporter Where to begin with South By Southwest?<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":245966,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11555","_seopress_titles_title":"Southbound & down","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11549,11547,11551,11555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-245965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-entertainment","category-features","category-news","category-uptown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245965\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Southbound](\"https:\/\/sduptownnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/web-TheOutfit_4-300x192.jpg\" "\\"web")