I'll be posting periodically to this blog throughout the week (or at least as much as I can, given that I'm hoping to spend more time taking in music than in my hotel room, hunched over my hefty, barely portable laptop.)
Anyway, I just arrived in Austin, and it's sunny and 75 degrees here. It's amazing how this mammoth festival engulfs the city: Even on my connecting flight from St. Louis, there were an inordinate number of skinny-jeaned rockers and bookish, horn-rimmed-glasses music critic types. It was the same story all throughout the Austin airport. At the hotel shuttle pickup outside the airport, a man approached a group of twenty-ish guys with emo haircuts. "Are you here for South By Southwest?" he asked, eliciting the obvious, affirmative answer. It seems that everyone is.
Two (very) tangentail notes:
* Enticed by an effective window display, I picked up a copy of Barack Obama's Dreams From My Father at the airport bookstore. Two connecting flights and a hundred pages later, I'm enjoying it. It's interesting reading Obama weight in on race so bluntly, especially since his campaign has mostly shied from addressing the topic directly.
* Mitchell International airport doesn't offer much in the way of breakfast options. I wonder if Burger King releases how disgusting their egg croissants are. The only discernable flavor is canola oil.