Statement of Purpose / SXSW Regrets

"The journey of a thousand pages must start with a single blog". Or so a fortune cookie once told me.

There's a lot of crazy exciting stuff happening in the music business these days. I've started this blog as an attempt to keep track of interesting developments, express my opinions, share some worthwhile resources, and chronicle my own attempt at managing an independent artist.

I hate to start things off with a downer, but I must say, I'm bummed that I didn't make it to SXSW this year. I've regretted it every year I haven't attended, but this year's absence stung just a little worse. Maybe it was the stream of Twitter, Facebook, and Foursquare updates from all my music-biz friends constantly reminding me of the concerts, parties, and revelry I was missing. Each Tweet of my buddy's track-by-track coverage of the Metric/Muse show at Stubbs pricked me with little stabs of remorse. My sister's texts and pics from the 6th Street bar scene didn't help, either. And upon his return to the office Monday, my boss's stories of seeing 48 shows in one day made me green with envy.

Yet I wonder whether the experience could possibly live up to my perception. If I were there, would it be as awesome as the image I'd built based on the breathless Twitterings of my friends & colleagues? Or would I just end up overwhelmed and under-slept, wandering dazed among a sea of inebriated music "professionals"? Would I have paid much attention to the thousands of bands, most of which I'd never heard of? Would I remember any of them a week later? Would I have even gotten into the Muse show?

I guess the only way to answer those questions is to man up, grow a pair of balls, squirrel away $600 (or somehow convince my boss to foot the bill), and head on down to Austin next spring. In the meantime, at least I can see Muse and a ton of other SXSW standouts at Coachella next month.