The Glowing Trough of Music: Five Days of South by Southwest

Timothy Norris

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Timothy Norris

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• Devin the Dude
• Austin (Texas)
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In the distance, I hear the faint melody of a favorite song from last year, “Kid on My Shoulders” by the White Rabbits. I follow the sound, possessed, until I find the band in the last round of the verse, the crowd bobbing their heads, the band sweating with glee, all of us consumed by rock & roll.

Next door, Thurston Moore and band are playing on an outdoor stage. After watching them from inside the courtyard, I wander out. It’s 1:15, and you can still hear the music. Inside the chainlink fence (the kind with plastic, red crisscrosses to prevent cheapskates from getting a free show), you can barely move. Outside, however, just as many people are standing in the street listening. Fifty feet above, on a roof overlooking the stage, dozens of people line the rail. Stage right, a bevy of fans has figured out a view of the show from another property. Across the street, people sit on a wall that offers a good sight line of Moore and his great band, and they listen. And along that red chainlink fence that separates in and out, people peer through peepholes like Norman Rockwell boys outside a baseball stadium eyeing Mickey Mantle at bat. We are drawn to the action, the skill, the sound, the excitement like pigs to a trough: the beat, the rhythm, the pounding, pounding, pounding. Whine all you want about the state of the business. Who cares when you’ve got so many people rapt, feeding at the Glowing Trough of Music? We lap it up, starving, insatiable. (RR)