Pete Townshend Kicks Off SXSW

Mark Mallman's van pulled into Austin around 4 p.m. yesterday. SXSW's keynote speaker, The Who's Pete Townshend, went on at 6:30, and I needed to pick up my music badge before I could get in. We were cutting it close. Traffic was a mess, so we tried exiting the freeway to take city streets as a shortcut to my hotel. Apparently driving through downtown Austin during the music portion of this festival is not really a timesaver. Nonetheless, I soon checked in to my hotel and we all went to the convention center to pick up my music badge and the band members' artist badges. We parted ways and I went to meet Chuck Olsen across the street at the Hilton for the Townshend address.

Townshend was brought in to open the festival in large part because of his new Method project, which is a virtual musical portraitist he launches next month, but most of interviewer Bill Flanagan's questions revolved around what the audience really wanted to hear about: the guitarist's time with The Who.

He talked about how The Who originally came about as a meld of country, blues, and pop music in a post-Beatles, post-war world. "The function of The Who's music was to demand something to fill the gap," he said. "[To answer] What's missing here? What don't I know?" It was a political initiative more than anything which still hasn't come to fruition.

Townshend has a unique position on the state of record sales and internet downloading. "I've got a foot in the established camp and a foot in the new camp," he said. He feels more firmly rooted in the old camp, however, because The Who is a "baby boomer band." Those fans will still buy the records.

But what really hit home for me was when he talked about music being about the moment, and how the internet delays that moment. "I want it live!" he exclaimed. "I want to be there when he performs it . . . the gathering is meditation. You lose yourself when you're listening to good music. Musicians call it the zone . . . " And, he said, hopefully the audience finds that zone too. I know that's what I'm looking for when I see live music—finding that place where you connect with the artist and his creation, and truly internalizing it. Hopefully I can find that place at least a few times while I'm here.

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Check out the story WCCO-TV aired last night on Minnesota bands heading to SXSW. Martin Devaney and myself are interviewed in it.