I need out, coach....
We tried to do too many things in too short a time period with too few people. The killer was probably the trade show booth.
Not that it was a bad idea, in fact we did so well "My Snake Is Bigger Than Your Snake" t-shirts were probably seen second in number only to SXSW t-shirts. I saw them in virtually every venue I went to, I saw them in restaurants and bars, and time after time I was stopped in the street by people asking where they could get one. That sure gave me a warm fuzzy.
Unfortunately, that warm fuzzy wasn't enough to stave off the wickedly variable Texas weather, and combined with being constantly on the move from air conditioning to the outside, to hot steamy clubs, with intermittent rain showers to crashing thunderstorms and temperatures that varied from the low 50s to the upper 80s, I was bound to at the least come down with a cold. On the second day of the interactive trade show (Monday) my voice was starting to get a little froggy, and by yesterday it was struggle just to force sounds out to do my last interview with the guys in the Zico Chain. My average sleep was about 4 hours each night, and by today I was existing on bottled water, a few cigarettes, and a handful of Dayquil/Nyquil liquicaps. My $17 Hilton omelette went half uneaten, as did the chili-cheeseburger from The Iron Cactus the night before. At breakfast today I asked for a pitcher of ice water and just gulped as much as I could after I couldn't force the omelette down, just to try to at least rehydrate. I have lost 9 lbs. since SXSW started. No joke 9 lbs... Literally a pound a day. And I live here.
I have come home now. Tonight my platinum badge goes unused, I will miss the Buzzcocks, the Stooges, the Meat Puppets, Peter Case, and Les Claypool and his Electric Apricot. While I am sad that I won't be going to their shows tonight and that the last night of my badge will be wasted, I know that I'll have the opportunity to see most of them again in the near future along with a number of the smaller bands I missed out on earlier. I did get an opportunity to see about 100 bands and performers during the 9 days of the SXSW Interactive and Music festivals. I also got an opportunity to meet a few neat people like Thomas Dolby and got to interview some of them as well, like Hugh Cornwell, Paul Collins and the Beat, and the Zico Chain. I even got to film a few live performances as well.
I did leave the festival in the good hands of Clint Gilders and our new staff photographer Gary Miller, and I'm sure Jay West will be posting a few of his shots from tonight in this year's photo contest as well, so we should have considerable coverage without me being there.
All in all, I would say we more than accomplished the goals we set out for ourselves during this year's SXSW.
I'm going to take a few days off, then I'll start planning for SXSW 2008 while this year's event is still fresh in my mind.