Steve Brodner’s Sketchbook (2)
Captions for the sketches.
“The artists that are performing tonight have written compositions or have been influenced by compositions written in Spanish, traditional Mexican music, and what’s called border music, if you will, a marriage of Tex-Mex. And so tonight they are celebrating that acoustically, singing the songs they’ve learned.”— Susan Charney, co-producer of a Tex-Mex event at Las Manitas restaurant, with musicians Joe Ely, Flaco Jimenez, Doug Sahm, Augie Meyers, Rick Trevino, Rosie Flores, and Campanas de America as Flores sings a sentimental song and the members of the audience weep.
“I don’t get no satisfaction, and I try, and I try …”— Guitar Wolf, rock band from Tokyo, at the club Liberty Lunch.
“Bob”: “They sound like a bad imitation of the Ramones.”— Dwayne: “They’re not what I expected, but hey, if that’s what works in Japan, it’s nice to hear a little taste of them in Austin. Regardless, I’m glad we’re here because we heard worse from an American band last night.”— Dwayne Wilson and “Bob Popular,” audience members, outside Liberty Lunch after hearing Guitar Wolf.
“If we’re gonna pretend that this is a problem of rock stars, we’re not going to get very far. This is not a problem of rock stars. We know that we have a society that in many ways engenders this. I bet you there is not a single person at South by Southwest who doesn’t have, somewhere in their social group, family, or friends, somebody who has an addiction problem, either drugs or alcohol.” — Dave Marsh, music writer, at a panel discussion on drugs and the music industry.
“We need to have a bigger place like the Palmer Auditorium or Erwin Center to have these tejano bands. This place is too small. There’s a lot of tejanos here in Austin. And they come from all over the place, from San Antonio, Houston, Dallas, you know. Country’s down, tejano’s up. In San Antonio there are more Hispanics than white people. Tejanos know English and Spanish. Ninety-eight percent of tejanos have two languages.” — Tony Barrera, audience member, at a tejano concert in the City Coliseum.
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