South by Southwest, the long-running music, film and interactive conference in Austin, TX, is a clear industry leader with its yearly offering of music, film and general debauchery. The festival kicks off its film and interactive portion today (March 11) with the music marathon getting started on March 15. If you're not going, it's often hard to sit at home and wonder what it's like in the centre of the hipster elite. If you've got a strong enough imagination and a go-getter attitude, however, much of the festival experience can be recreated at home. No matter where you live, we've developed a handy guide to make it feel like SXSW wherever you are.
How to Recreate the SXSW Experience From Home:
10. Pay three times the normal price for a hotel room that's miles away from where you need to be
Unless they're seasoned travellers and business people (in which case they would probably work in a more profitable industry), most SXSW attendees are lackadaisical when it comes to booking a place to stay during the fest. As a result, their last-minute hotel bookings mean they're paying through the nose for a shitty room on the wrong side of town. It's not all bad, as the SXSW organizers have graciously started a shuttle service to venues. Still, if you're trying to recreate the experience at home, you should stay as far away as possible from wherever you need to be, then take a cab or rent a 16 passenger van to shuttle yourself around.
9. Wear paper wristbands and lanyards
From the official SXSW wristband to the various wristbands for drinking at certain venues and lanyards to get into a specific showcase, there is no shortage of useless paper crap hanging off your body at all times in Austin. To recreate the experience at home, go to the dollar store and find some wristbands to fill your forearm. If you do it properly, at least one of the wristbands will be too tight while the lanyards will hang awkwardly into meals or sinks.
8. Carry a tote bag full of useless promotional items
Aside from the beer cans, energy drinks and bulky identification memorabilia, the other crap cluttering your person at SXSW are the piles and piles of useless giveaways. From experimental granola bars to lighters and flashlights that don't actually work, it's not uncommon to find yourself with a promotional tote bag full of garbage. To live this aspect out, you just need to head to a dollar or thrift store with a tote bag. For less than $5, you can likely fill the bag with the same calibre of material that would have been tossed your way in Austin. Carry it with you as if there's something in there you actually like, but make sure you lose the bag before the end of the week. 7. Drink alcohol from 11 a.m. to 4 a.m. every day
SXSW is nothing if not a drunken haze. A dumping ground for industry types from across the world, alcohol is the lubricant for their endless networking. As such, a mock SXSW wouldn't be complete without your own binge drinking marathon. Call it "business drunk" if you have to, but tall cans of cheap beer are mandatory for the waking hours of your mini music marathon. It's probably going to be harder to drink for free, but you should set up a cooler in a park and just pretend you're at a clothing-company-sponsored showcase while you indulge.
6. When you're sick of beer, switch to energy drinks
The other thing industry types love is a good corporate shill, and if it's not a compact car trying to get hip with the kids, it's some new energy drink looking to boost its brand identity. Despite the fact that most of the bands they're indirectly sponsoring consume cigarettes over calories, energy drink manufacturers set up free drink stands across the city. When the free PBR is making your mouth dry and your brain sleepy, it seems like a good idea to switch to the toxic sugar water -- that is until the heartburn and migraine kicks in. Either way, for the authentic experience you will need at least one giant energy drink a day. Bonus points for obscure name brands.
5. Pretend that celebrities are hanging out in your town
Giant acts like Metallica and Kanye West have been known to show up with "surprise" performances at SXSW, while quirky celebs like Bill Murray have also been spotted hanging around during the festival. When you read reports of these activities, it's easy to imagine buddying up with your favourite stars in line for some BBQ. The reality is that the festival attracts so many people that the odds of sharing a cab with Bill Murray are pretty slim, and the "surprise" performances are always leaked and fill up before the average festivalgoers can get in. With that in mind, there's nothing preventing you from imagining that the biggest celebrities in the world are living it up in your town and you just haven't seen them yet. Have your friends text you that they just saw an impromptu Strokes show at the library, or they bought Orange Julius next to Ryan Gosling. With a well-endowed imagination, it will be just as exciting as the real deal.
4. Hang around with overzealous but horrible bands
All of the great bands at SXSW are likely there because they were asked to perform. On top of that, however, there is a swarm of unoriginal, talentless hacks with big ideas hoping to catch their big break by handing out business cards with free album downloads or other promotional items when they should be using their resources to practise and write better songs. Chances are, you probably went to high school with someone who is now playing in a band like this. This is the perfect time to catch up with that person. Go to the bar with them and ask them all about their band. How many friends to they have on MySpace? How well is their SonicBids account maintained? These conversations will recreate the pain of dealing with that same breed of moron in Austin.
3. Loiter outside a nightclub regardless of what's happening inside
Despite the full, busy schedule of acts that SXSW attendees plan to see, there are always those much-buzzed showcases that are crammed full of people and result in a massive lineup outside. As a result, a lot of time is spent hanging out in front of the venue while the bar empties out a little. There's no reason why this experience can't be recreated at home. Just go loiter outside the coolest bar in town without ever going inside. If your imagination is powerful enough, you can pretend your favourite band is playing inside and you weren't early enough to get in before the bar reached capacity. The best part is that you won't ever be going inside, so this exercise is completely free.
2. Have as many conversations about new media as possible
Another thing getting in the way of enjoying some top-notch music are the countless panels, at least half of which feel entirely unnecessary. Granted, SXSW is billed as a conference and not a music festival, but for every well-thought argument or progressive new idea, there are just as many industry blowhards recycling the same ideas in mostly empty conference halls. To recreate this feeling, talk to your parents about social networking or set up a meeting with an arts editor at your community newspaper to discuss the music industry in the digital era. Guaranteed, these conversations will be fruitless and at least five years behind what's actually happening in the world and you'll leave just as frustrated as if you had gone to one of the shittier SXSW panels.
1. Pick a band at random to be your favourite band for a week, then never speak of them again
Obviously, countless great bands have been discovered at SXSW and enjoyed a long and fruitful career as a result. But there are also those bands who enjoy a week of hype and fizzle out into obscurity in years to come. Whichever current version of the Freelance Whales and the Henry Clay People is currently on the industry folks' minds is treated like royalty for that one week in March, often landing the band a record deal and the eventual release of an album that only becomes panned by that same industry once the hype has died. To recreate that feeling at home, go through SXSW's long band list, pick a group at random who you've never heard of before and saturate your week's playlist with their material. Let it be the only thing you listen to until you genuinely love their music despite whatever you thought at first. Then, at the end of the week, delete all of their music from your computer and never speak of the band again.
How to Recreate the SXSW Experience From Home:
10. Pay three times the normal price for a hotel room that's miles away from where you need to be
Unless they're seasoned travellers and business people (in which case they would probably work in a more profitable industry), most SXSW attendees are lackadaisical when it comes to booking a place to stay during the fest. As a result, their last-minute hotel bookings mean they're paying through the nose for a shitty room on the wrong side of town. It's not all bad, as the SXSW organizers have graciously started a shuttle service to venues. Still, if you're trying to recreate the experience at home, you should stay as far away as possible from wherever you need to be, then take a cab or rent a 16 passenger van to shuttle yourself around.
9. Wear paper wristbands and lanyards
From the official SXSW wristband to the various wristbands for drinking at certain venues and lanyards to get into a specific showcase, there is no shortage of useless paper crap hanging off your body at all times in Austin. To recreate the experience at home, go to the dollar store and find some wristbands to fill your forearm. If you do it properly, at least one of the wristbands will be too tight while the lanyards will hang awkwardly into meals or sinks.
8. Carry a tote bag full of useless promotional items
Aside from the beer cans, energy drinks and bulky identification memorabilia, the other crap cluttering your person at SXSW are the piles and piles of useless giveaways. From experimental granola bars to lighters and flashlights that don't actually work, it's not uncommon to find yourself with a promotional tote bag full of garbage. To live this aspect out, you just need to head to a dollar or thrift store with a tote bag. For less than $5, you can likely fill the bag with the same calibre of material that would have been tossed your way in Austin. Carry it with you as if there's something in there you actually like, but make sure you lose the bag before the end of the week. 7. Drink alcohol from 11 a.m. to 4 a.m. every day
SXSW is nothing if not a drunken haze. A dumping ground for industry types from across the world, alcohol is the lubricant for their endless networking. As such, a mock SXSW wouldn't be complete without your own binge drinking marathon. Call it "business drunk" if you have to, but tall cans of cheap beer are mandatory for the waking hours of your mini music marathon. It's probably going to be harder to drink for free, but you should set up a cooler in a park and just pretend you're at a clothing-company-sponsored showcase while you indulge.
6. When you're sick of beer, switch to energy drinks
The other thing industry types love is a good corporate shill, and if it's not a compact car trying to get hip with the kids, it's some new energy drink looking to boost its brand identity. Despite the fact that most of the bands they're indirectly sponsoring consume cigarettes over calories, energy drink manufacturers set up free drink stands across the city. When the free PBR is making your mouth dry and your brain sleepy, it seems like a good idea to switch to the toxic sugar water -- that is until the heartburn and migraine kicks in. Either way, for the authentic experience you will need at least one giant energy drink a day. Bonus points for obscure name brands.
5. Pretend that celebrities are hanging out in your town
Giant acts like Metallica and Kanye West have been known to show up with "surprise" performances at SXSW, while quirky celebs like Bill Murray have also been spotted hanging around during the festival. When you read reports of these activities, it's easy to imagine buddying up with your favourite stars in line for some BBQ. The reality is that the festival attracts so many people that the odds of sharing a cab with Bill Murray are pretty slim, and the "surprise" performances are always leaked and fill up before the average festivalgoers can get in. With that in mind, there's nothing preventing you from imagining that the biggest celebrities in the world are living it up in your town and you just haven't seen them yet. Have your friends text you that they just saw an impromptu Strokes show at the library, or they bought Orange Julius next to Ryan Gosling. With a well-endowed imagination, it will be just as exciting as the real deal.
4. Hang around with overzealous but horrible bands
All of the great bands at SXSW are likely there because they were asked to perform. On top of that, however, there is a swarm of unoriginal, talentless hacks with big ideas hoping to catch their big break by handing out business cards with free album downloads or other promotional items when they should be using their resources to practise and write better songs. Chances are, you probably went to high school with someone who is now playing in a band like this. This is the perfect time to catch up with that person. Go to the bar with them and ask them all about their band. How many friends to they have on MySpace? How well is their SonicBids account maintained? These conversations will recreate the pain of dealing with that same breed of moron in Austin.
3. Loiter outside a nightclub regardless of what's happening inside
Despite the full, busy schedule of acts that SXSW attendees plan to see, there are always those much-buzzed showcases that are crammed full of people and result in a massive lineup outside. As a result, a lot of time is spent hanging out in front of the venue while the bar empties out a little. There's no reason why this experience can't be recreated at home. Just go loiter outside the coolest bar in town without ever going inside. If your imagination is powerful enough, you can pretend your favourite band is playing inside and you weren't early enough to get in before the bar reached capacity. The best part is that you won't ever be going inside, so this exercise is completely free.
2. Have as many conversations about new media as possible
Another thing getting in the way of enjoying some top-notch music are the countless panels, at least half of which feel entirely unnecessary. Granted, SXSW is billed as a conference and not a music festival, but for every well-thought argument or progressive new idea, there are just as many industry blowhards recycling the same ideas in mostly empty conference halls. To recreate this feeling, talk to your parents about social networking or set up a meeting with an arts editor at your community newspaper to discuss the music industry in the digital era. Guaranteed, these conversations will be fruitless and at least five years behind what's actually happening in the world and you'll leave just as frustrated as if you had gone to one of the shittier SXSW panels.
1. Pick a band at random to be your favourite band for a week, then never speak of them again
Obviously, countless great bands have been discovered at SXSW and enjoyed a long and fruitful career as a result. But there are also those bands who enjoy a week of hype and fizzle out into obscurity in years to come. Whichever current version of the Freelance Whales and the Henry Clay People is currently on the industry folks' minds is treated like royalty for that one week in March, often landing the band a record deal and the eventual release of an album that only becomes panned by that same industry once the hype has died. To recreate that feeling at home, go through SXSW's long band list, pick a group at random who you've never heard of before and saturate your week's playlist with their material. Let it be the only thing you listen to until you genuinely love their music despite whatever you thought at first. Then, at the end of the week, delete all of their music from your computer and never speak of the band again.
