Is it me, or will SXSW birth about zero buzz acts this year? Am I get­ting this sense because I’m read­ing the most bor­ing indus­try blogs around [read: all of them?] Most read as though they’re not only writ­ten in a haze of exhaus­tion [under­stand­able, all things con­sid­ered], but also out of a basic sense of oblig­a­tion [read: self-preser­va­tion] more than effer­ves­cent enjoy­ment, much less crit­i­cal thought.

The over­all mood is rem­i­nis­cent of David Cross’ Bhopal char­ac­ter from Mr. Show, a sal­low Asian child chained to a type­writer in a murky base­ment, writ­ing scripts in sweat­shop con­di­tions. SXSW seems to have brought that free­wheel­ing spir­it of cap­i­tal­ism and bad mar­ket­ing to repro­duce SPIN’s loathe­some “jour­nal­is­tic” mod­el of pic­tures and cap­tions. Are we hav­ing fun yet?

And can we cool it with all the pic­tures and men­tions of bar­be­cue? We get it: the food is good. There’s lots of traf­fic. It’s hec­tic and sweaty and crowd­ed. A con­ven­tion is a con­ven­tion is a con­ven­tion. Tell me more about the music!

[Last­ly, who does­n’t have a par­ty at this thing these days? Has every­one become a B2B [blog to blog] salesman?]