From Boston to Austin: SXSW 2009: No Wristband? No Problem.

There's more good live music here in Austin than in most other places I've been, but if there's a slow time of year, it would have to be fall and winter. If there's an unofficial kick-off to the new season, it would definitely be the South By Southwest Music, Film and Interactive festivals. This year's festival was definitely bigger than ever. Just in terms of press coverage, the festival generated about twice as many hits on Google News compared with last year.

The event is really geared more toward industry professionals than fans. The various wristbands that get you into different permutations of discussions, films, shows and parties, are not cheap -- the less expensive ones will run you about four times as much as a three day pass to the Austin City Limits Music Festival. The nice thing, though, is that there are tons of things you can do for free. We spent the two weekends that bookend the festival sampling some of the free events, and had lots of fun on the house.

The Interactive festival kicks off before the film and music festivals start. The first weekend of SXSW is really all about Interactive. We checked out the free ScreenBurn Arcade event happening down at the Austin Convention Center. The Convention Center serves as a hub during SXSW. That first weekend it was already full of skinny dudes in skinny jeans, geeks with laptops, and lots and lots of Legos!

ScreenBurn is described as "the video game element" of SXSW Interactive, and ScreenBurn Arcade as "public space to explore the newest innovations in video games, and plan hands-on in casual and advanced tournaments." Most of the crowd was gathered around the blaring Guitar Hero contest. If you wanted a breather, there were small, retro-styled "living rooms" set up in the corners where you could indulge in some of the best in classic video game consoles. The crowd? Nerds galore! Seeing the Mattel Electronic Football handheld game brought back memories of hours wasted trying to move my dash across the screen without running into other dashes.

The person dressed as Halo's Master Chief was a big-time nerd draw

Decorations at one of the retro-gaming lounges. The Mattel Electronic Football is in the front on the right.

For us and many others, SXSW is really more about the Music festival. Over 1,800 bands played sets at the music festival this year. While most shows will cost you something to get in, wristband or otherwise, there's a free showcase at Auditorium Shores park for for three days long. Last year we got to see Spoon, Del tha Funkee Homosapien and Grupo Fantastma. This year, we went down on Thursday and saw M. Ward play a great show. Despite the big crowd, we were able to get pretty close to the front. M is a talented guitarist, so it was nice to be able to watch him during some of the set's more challenging songs. His music is a real mix of sounds -- country, rock, folk, blues, pop. His set featured material from his latest acclaimed album, Hold Time, back to his earlier stuff from the early part of the decade. Highlights for me were some of the tunes he played from 2006's Post-War (the only album of his that I own), including a cover of Daniel Johnston's "To Go Home," an bluesy, finger-picking instrumental "Duet for Guitars #3," and the haunting, tempo-changing "Sad, Sad Song." While he isn't the greatest showman and doesn't interact with the crowd all that much, the music was consistently lovely. Oh, and it was free!

Some shots of M. Ward

Video of M. Ward playing "Medley: Rag/Duet for Guitars #3"

On Saturday, we again went the free route and checked out two cool music-related-but-not-music events going on at the Convention Center. The first is an annual staple at SXSW: Flatstock. Flatstock is a very cool poster show, featuring exhibits from some 50-100 artists who create posters for some of today's best acts. We walked around trying to find a cool poster for a show that we'd been to, finally purchasing the very last copy of a poster adverstising a Wilco concert we went to at the Calvin Theater in Northampton, Massachusetts a couple of years ago.

Upstairs from Flatstock, the Austin Record Convention and Texas Guitar Show was taking place. Seeing as we just bought a bunch of used records at Waterloo a few weeks ago, we mostly focused on the guitar show. There were rows and rows of beautiful vintage guitars. Makes me wish I could play.

Some of the art we saw at Flatstock

To round out the weekend, we went to the third annual Mess With Texas Party at Waterloo Park. Mess With Texas isn't really part of SXSW, but it takes place each year during the festival. Both this year and last, the lineup was arguably as good or better than any event at SXSW. We mostly went to catch The Thermals, but also saw sets by Thao Nguyen with the Get Down Stay Down and Vivan Girls. The former was a good surprise. The latter needs to practice playing and singing! The Thermals played a short, punchy set, highlighted (for me) by an energetic version of "Returning to the Fold." I hear the new album is good, too (7.8/10 from the notoriously picky staff at Pitchfork Media).