Ok. I’m no longer at SXSW, but here’s one more pic to explicate another scene. It has the free barbecue (yes, it is so hard to abide by by new rule not eat mass-produced meat when there was so much free BBQ… it’s a plate of potato salad and beans) in the foreground from the VIP section of the Austinist/Gothamist show, to the right is the free beer (Lone Star only… I guess I prefer Shiner), and then in front of the white tent are a few photographers who are taking shots of We Barbarians. The crowd sticks to the shade until the headlining bands, so it looks like no one is there. In the background is a new condo project that hadn’t broken ground when I was standing on the same balcony last year. The Austin music ghetto has dozens of venues stuck between bail bonds and sheet metal shops. But it is quite the bourgeois bohemia. Soon enough, a local Whole Foods will move in.
I also got to check out Liam Finn (yes, son of ‘Crowded House’) and the Shout Out Louds at the show. I was set to work the door of the VIP at the event, which would have really been a nice moment of participant-observation: the ethnographer becomes gatekeeper! But the fine Austinist folks wanted to spare me what they would’ve thought to be ‘work.’ Alas.
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