1:29AUSTIN, TEXAS - Metallica and Kanye West ate up a lot of the spotlight by crashing the party, but the biggest surprise at the South by Southwest Music Conference this year was simply the fact that it remains so ... well, big.
Rock 'n' roll music has a great knack for either reflecting the times or transcending them. The latter was clearly in effect at SXSW 2009. In theory, it should have been the year the 23rd annual music-biz megabash saw its first downturn, what with the economy and the recording industry's own long-simmering meltdown.
Official registration for the 23rd annual music-biz megabash -- which costs around $700 for a laminated badge to get into all the clubs and daytime panels -- was indeed down about 10 percent, a SXSW organizer said.
However, SXSW long ago stopped being an official affair. There's another pirate-style festival on top of the sanctioned one. Call it SXSW4HO (South by Southwest for Hangers-On), with tens of thousands of Joe Blow music fans and a sea of free, privately held day parties where some of the bigger buzz bands play nonstop over four days.
That side of SXSW was more bulging and hyperactive than ever.
"What a week," marveled Thomas WP, frontman of the London dance-rock trio We Have Band, playing his band's last of 10 shows in Austin after midnight Saturday night.
A clear sign that South by Southwest has become as much a marketing vehicle for outsiders as a get-together for insiders, one of the hottest parties of the fest was Saturday's rooftop patio bash by TV foodie Rachael Ray, headlined by the Hold Steady and New York Dolls.
It's hard to argue with the commercialization of SXSW when those are the bands signing up for it, and they're served with gourmet, beer-marinated mini-burgers on the side.
