SXSW: Part 1 aka The Flight

I traveled to SXSW in Austin, Texas this weekend for one of the biggest music festivals in the world. I was there to provide coverage for Cdigix, a company that distributes music digitally to college campuses across the country. I’ll post a couple reviews here throughout the week.

Thoughts while flying to Austin:

I have decided that if I ever own an airline it will definitely be rock n’ roll themed (they have Hooters Air already) and it shall be called Air Guitar.

The Family Stone is the in-flight movie, which is decidedly not rock n’roll. A hipster rocker with an asymmetric haircut is watching, and seems to be enjoying it, which gives me doubts about the entire future of the music industry. I guess rock n’ roll stars are just like you, and me except I personally don’t like cheesy holiday-related chick flick dramas. I don’t know about you

We hit some turbulence, which is kind of rock n’ roll. I think about Buddy Holly and the day the music died. If we happen to crash, Pitchfork and other snotty music critics would definitely describe the accident as “a bit derivative of Don McLean (with a dash of the Juan Maclean).” I got kind of contemplative, because I imagined that if the flight went down, my name probably wouldn’t even get mentioned in the national news article. The entire thing would be about all these rock stars and how sad it was that the music was over. Maybe Interpol would write a song about us? I hope they don’t make a video though. It could be tasteless.

Fortunately, the plane lands safely and we’ve arrived at SXSW in Austin. There’s a band playing in the airport, and nobody has been stopped by security for trying to smuggle illegal drug paraphernalia (yet). Everybody has an instrument in his or her hands except for me. My pen is my sword, which is what some guitarists refer to their guitar as. I guess I am kind of rock n’ roll.