Sifting though music for gold at SXSW Baby

When you have close to 2000 bands playing at SXSW, each doing at least one thirty minute sets, it’s not an easy task to decide who to go and see. I do leave part of it to serendipity, but that’s only going to get you part of the way. And with my SXSW Baby hat, it’s always nice to have some recommendations in hand and a bit of a schedule scratched out on the Filofax.

With the rest of the team, I’m working through the process to put together sampler archive that is posted annual on The Baby!, and that minds finding eighty tracks, of varying musical styles, sounds, emotions, and stories, which showcase the breadth on offer in Austin each year. Getting to the long list is possible through Kevin, and his mission to listen to every band playing at SXSW and rating them out of ten (www.operationeveryband.com to join him on that quest, or check out the weekly highlights on The Baby!). I go and listen to anything Kevin rates higher than a seven or that he specifically points out, and from that we get our long list.

This weekend is one of the key moments in the Sampler’s life… We passed the ‘eighty tracks that we like’ count. From now on every great track has to ‘bump’ another track out of the mix. It might seem brutal, but it’s more like a survival of the musically fittest, and it means that when it is available for download, it’s eighty tracks that the whole team can stand behind and say “yes, these are some of the great bands at Southby this year.”

And you’ll be able to decide yourself when we release it at the start of March.