Craig Stewart
SXSW Music Festival founder
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his year SXSW has over 1400 acts playing. Has South By Southwest always been this big? An “act” is insincere by definition. We have 1500+ bands and solo artists playing. It’s mostly real shit but there’s some corny crap; that’s life. We try to avoid “acts,” unless their fans got crazy money. Just what is South By Southwest? It’s my 9th year planning and booking and I have no idea. It’s like an atomic smart bomb of artistry. An artistically overrated city like Austin getting mobbed by crazy shit from all over the world in 5 days. I love it. It’s like a smack in the face. But I hate that I don’t get to witness most of it, cause I have to work and run around and put out fires all night, every night. What exactly do you do? I run this shit! Ha, no, I book a lot of the music festival with my great friends and colleagues like Cathy, Todd, Darin, and others – we couldn’t do this huge shit storm without each other. Why did you decide to bring in so much Texas Hip Hop to the conference? Because we love it, and it’s embedded in this region and America and the world. And mostly because “someone” reached out four years back, to pump it up like never before. We have over 100 rap artists for 2007, and UGK is playing SXSW this year. That makes me almost faint, seeing that shit in our schedule. 20
OZONE
By Matt Sonzala How do you feel when people stereotype the conference as a rock event? There’s lots of different styles represented at SXSW each year. Parts of the industry will always focus on rock, and some labels only put promo money into rock bands, even when they have a diverse roster. But fuck ‘em, man, in 2007 you can’t label any city, event or era one genre. We’re at war, and whatever rock is in 2007 is not going to get me through the day. I wanna hear some Terry Riley, Betty Davis, Fleetwood Mac, Devin the Dude, Wire, KB, Dead C, Z-Ro, Reigning Sound, Bun B. Yeah, looking at our schedule, we have a bunch of rock. But c’mon, fuck with us. You’re also a musician. Can you tell me a bit about your band Rubble, your solo jams, the Yella Album and Emperor Jones Records? Rubble is in litigation, so no comment. The Yella Album will be like the bearded opiate version of Boosie’s Bad Azz when it drops. My label Emperor Jones is going on 12 years now and my SXSW duties forced it to being a side thing, which is fine, fuck the game. My focus is on vinyl lately. There’s too many CDs out there. I put out an Ill Tactics 12” last year that featured Lil Keke, very limited. And I’m looking to put out more rap. Just things that I like and feel are unique. Who are you most looking forward to seeing this year? Jandek. But a lot of live music is very disappointing. At the end of the day I just wanna bang my Screw. //