March 17, 2008

SXSW Dispatch: The Show Must Stop

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


strangers.jpgI’m coming back from SXSW sleep-deprived and my ears still ringing. My final hours in Austin went a little something like this:

After catching hip-hop sets from Talib Kweli, Pete Rock, and Jean Grae, I stopped by this outdoor courtyard at dusk to hear local Austin band Combo Mahala play Hawaiian music from the 20s and 30s. A couple in their 50s from England (both wearing cowboy boots) told me they came all the way to SXSW so they could hear bluegrass, country, and Hawaiian music. “The real gems are bands that aren’t even part of SXSW,” the woman told me.

Time for a break from music. I caught a screening of Heavy Metal in Baghdad, a documentary film about the lives of members of Baghdad’s only metal band. The film’s endearing look at a group of friend’s goal to be a band in the middle of a bombed-out war zone also elevates some mind-numbing facts about the lives of Iraqi refugees since the war started. When the group finally enters a Damascus studio to record their first album, it doesn’t matter if you like metal or not; you’re just glad they made it there alive.

Next I caught a Brooklyn “total sonic annihilation” band called A Place To Bury Strangers. Their set closer was more than 10 minutes of sheer noise. I don’t remember the last time I’ve seen so many people cupping their hands over their ears or just walking away from a performing band. The sheer wall of ear-splitting chaos was surreal. Here in Austin, at 12:30 at night, a performance like this felt sublime.

I took a chance and decided to close my last night with a low-volume set from Denver’s Greg Harris Vibe Quintet. Hearing jazz music (fronted by a vibraphone) was a niece reprieve from the slew of noise elsewhere, although a visibly drunk woman dancing around tables and flirting with members of the band (while they were playing) kept things interesting.

“Thank goodness all the freaks are leaving,” A friend said as she pulled up to drop me off at the airport. “But I guess we’ve got a few of them that live here, too.” As I checked in, another friend bid me farewell with the following text message: “Come back, but let the rains clean up this city of mine for a month or so first. ‘Cause as usual this town looks like it has been sh!*t on for the past two weeks. Now back to normal…”

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate