SXSW Nuts || February 7, 2008

The first huge, official list of SXSW '08 bands went live today. Current running tally: 1,594. Sheezus. Local representation is as follows (though roughly 1/3 of these were previously announced).

Dallas: Bavu Blakes, Big Red Rooster, Ryan Cabrera, The Crash That Took Me, Faux Fox, The Feds, The Hourly Radio, Joe Jonas, Kenny & The Kasuals, Lumba, Mission to the Sea, Mitra, The Mullens, The New Frontiers, Play-N-Skillz, Pleasant Grove, PPT, Reyez, Glen Reynolds, Tree Wave, Tum Tum
Denton: Bowling for Soup, Brave Combo, Doug Burr, Centro-matic, The Drams, Fishboy, Daniel Folmer, Ghosthustler, Robert Gomez, Mom, Record Hop, Stanton Meadowdale
FTW: Best Fwends, Black Tie Dynasty, Calhoun, Marked Men, Ray Reed, The Theater Fire
Former local acts: Deadman, Strange Boys.

As usual, the Dallas-specific roster includes yokels I've never heard of, and I just have to wonder what favors are being done to get the ridiculous bands on the SXSW roll call. For example, Big Red Rooster? Which Verizon commercial farted this band out? Then there are the underground rappers who undeservedly get in solely because of SXSW's recent push for hip-hop, and Dallas can count cliche-every-minute Lumba among those ranks (though local hip-hop champs Bavu Blakes and PPT more than make up for this). But pleasant surprises pop up, like The Mullens, whose psych-pop has been dormant for nearly a decade before their surprise SXSW announcement. Denton's looking pretty good, of course, though I'm sad to see that Midlake is passing the fest up. Hopefully this means that they're staying home to get the next album done. Any other thoughts?