AUSTIN, Texas — The festival of dreams began with a nightmare.
The morning of March 13, 1987, the first day of South by Southwest, Roland Swenson was jarred awake from a frightful vision. The SXSW co-founder had dreamed that he showed up at the Host Marriott Hotel on East 11th Street to an angry throng, who felt they’d been conned into coming to Austin for a lame event.
“There he is!” one of them pointed, and a chase ensued, with Swenson running for his life.
Organizers didn’t know what to expect that first year and were delighted when 700 people registered to see about 170 acts, almost all from Texas, Louisiana and Oklahoma. That maiden year, a badge was as little as $35, but there were only 15 panels and workshops. A pass to attend shows at 15 participating venues was $10.
In this 25th year of SXSW, there are just over 2,000 acts performing at more than 90 official stages, and registration for the music portion (film and interactive components were added in 1994 and 1995, respectively) is expected to top 14,000.
Badges this year cost $595 to $750, or a top price of $1,250 for “platinum” registration to the film, interactive and music festivals.
SXSW has grown from the national music scene’s best-kept secret into the world’s largest — and wildest — music conference
“It’s become an international phenomenon,” said Nashville’s Jody Williams, vice president at the BMI performing rights organization, a SXSW sponsor since year one. More than 600 acts and their managers are coming to Austin from other countries this week. “But it’s also retained some of the laid-back Austin feel. People are not uptight here.”
At a March 5 panel discussion at the Austin History Center to kick off the exhibit “5X5Y: 25 Years of SXSW Music,” co-founder Louis Black credited Austin with being a big part of the festival’s growing appeal. SXSW has tried in vain to replicate the winning formula in three other cities: St. Louis; Portland, Ore.; and Toronto. The first two are defunct after short runs, and the Canadian spinoff is much smaller than SXSW.
“It’s totally because of Austin,” said Black, editor of the Austin Chronicle, which provided seed money for SXSW. “There’s no other place that has so many clubs so close together.”
Besides the exhibit, the 25th year of SXSW is marked by “SXSW Scrapbook: People and Things That Went Before” (Essex Press) and the Alan Berg-directed documentary “Outside Industry: the Story of SXSW,” which will set to premiere March 16 in Austin.
Nostalgia reigned at the History Center panel, where Swenson talked about how SXSW was originally devised as a spinoff of Manhattan’s almighty New Music Seminar. Although Swenson served as host, he said when NMS organizers visited Austin, “it became obvious that we were not going to play any part” in the new venture.
Twist of fate
When NMS stalled on its Austin plans, Swenson seized the opportunity and persuaded Black and Austin Chronicle publisher Nick Barbaro to get behind the Austin-based conference.
Black had to laugh at the irony of editing an alternative newspaper with an anti-growth agenda while creating a festival that has caused so many fans, bands and music industry professionals to move here after a great time at SXSW.
The economic impact SXSW had on Austin in 1990 was $1.5 million. Twenty years later, the three overlapping festivals pumped $113 million into the local economy, according to a study commissioned by SXSW, which is a private company and does not release financial details.
Like SXSW, Jennifer Sinski was born in Austin in 1987. The waitress became an unlikely symbol of how SXSW has grown when she saw the need for the RSVPster service she and her business partner Miles Dahmann devised this year.
For a fee of $30, Sinski does all the work to get clients on the guest lists for the daytime parties that turn Austin into a throbbing mass of hipster humanity around the clock. The thought of such a venture in the early years of SXSW was unheard of.
Party city
Now, the side party database at www.austin360.com lists details and lineups for about 600 day parties during the 10 days of the three SXSW segments.
The young, tech-savvy, hungry-for-fun SXSW demographic is precious to brands hoping to make a splash, as Twitter did when it launched at
“It’s very time-consuming,” she said. Besides sending RSVPs to the many parties open to those who aren’t SXSW badge-holders, Sinski is bombarded with e-mails from clients wondering if she was able to get them in this party or that party.
Bands new and old play as many shows as possible at SXSW each year because they never know who’s going to be in the audience and what effect it might have on their careers.
“We’ve always seen it as a promotional tool,” he said. “Bands were looking for attention, and they’re looking to move up to the next level. That hasn’t changed. That’s why we’ve survived while the (music) industry has collapsed.”
ONLINE
Staff writer Jim Harrington is in Austin covering the South by Southwest music festival. Catch his updates on Bay Area and national bands and SXSW music trends and gossip at ContraCostaTimes.com or InsideBayArea.com. You can also follow him on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jimthecritic. Look for his first SXSW print dispatch in Saturday TimeOut.