As a result, I’ve gone back and edited some of my earlier blogs about artist that had some notes about some improvements we’d like to see about bands, to just tell you what we liked.  So, how do you know which bands to see, and which to avoid?

Well, if you’re a music lover, then go see them all, because we won’t write up any really horrible bands.  If they aren’t worth seeing, we won’t waste our time or your time. 

If you’re very, very picky, and only want to see the best of the best, then we’ll give you a Savvant Music guarantee that any band on our recommendations page is amazing, awesome and worth the time and money to see — assuming that their genre and style is to your taste.  In other words, you may or may not like a given band’s style, but if we recommend them, you can count on seeing a great, professional show by amazing musicians.

In our reviews,  we’ve classified bands as potential, which means they’re still working on polishing their act and amazing which means they’re pretty much there but we either haven’t had time to put together a “Recommendations” page, or the artist(s) are more mainstream than we generally look for in our recommendations policies.  Sometimes we put them in both categories, because we think they’re pretty amazing, but they are still growing and changing.

I hope this better meets your needs and better aligns these blogs with our overall goals of supporting artists’ efforts and willingness to put it all out there!

The problem is, they’re hard to find! At SXSW even industry “outsiders” such as we are likely to get “tips” on artists to see — after all, most of the attendees are there to promote themselves or someone, but the tips we get tend to fall into one of two categories: “buzz” bands that everyone “hip” has heard about, or “pet”: bands being promoted by themselves, their management, their friends or their label. The problem with the latter is that it’s so hit and miss, mostly miss. And “buzz” bands are the industry darlings — not what we are looking for here at Savvant Music.

Another option is to listen to hours and hours of online samples provided by the good folks at SXSW and hope you find something interesting, preferably fascinating. Then, if you do, hope (often in vain) that they’re decent live!

This might make you wonder why we bother, but the truth i that this is the problem no matter where you look for music. The reason we go to SXSW is that there are so many bands there (around 1700 showcases) that the filtering and discovery process is marvelously compressed (and often exhausting).

And this is why we are here ad what you need us for — to help filter through all this music and to find those special artists, overlooked by the mainstream industry — artists you’ll be really revved to hear, that blow your mind.

Meanwhile, if you know some really amazing artists we should be sure to look at this coming week at SXSW, please let us know! You can comment here on our blogs, or you can send me email at: anny (at) savvantmusic.com!

See ya in Texas, y’all!

Anny