Volume 3
Volume 4 (SXSW 10th anniversary)
LINKS
Joe Carol Pierce, excerpt from "Bad Girls Upset by the Truth".mp3
Probably almost everyone in the music industry throughout the entire world knows of SXSW, if you do not, check out their website. It is the 2nd or 3rd largest music conference in the world. It happens every year in the middle of march during spring break in Austin, Texas. It has been going on since 1986, when there was about 200 bands coming and has grown into music biz media fest with over 1,000 bands. It is probably the best ticket you can buy anywhere to see what is really going on in terms of new music and often features well known established acts like Tony Bennett or Iggy Pop.
For several years I was sending a small army of college students (from the Southwest Texas University, San Marcos, Texas School of Recording Sciences) around the festival with DAT recorders, recording board tapes of the performances, and coming up with boxes of tapes. Along with Annie Melvin and Louis Jay Meyers we listened to the tapes and chose 12-15 songs that came out the following year as a promotional only CD presented to all of the registrants at SXSW. We all did this on a volunteer basis and these are all very cool recordings. We even lucked out with one or two people hitting it big after they were on our CD. Lisa Loeb with "Listen Lisa" for example. We released four volumes in 4 years and then gave it up....it ws a lot of trouble to do this...
Thanks to the directors of SXSW current and past: Roland Swenson, Louis Black, Nick Barbaro and Louis Jay Meyers for giving it a shot though. The artists on these cd's loved getting them in their hands and that was a good moment of satisfaction for all of us who made them.