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We’re still recovering from last week’s SXSW festivities. Too much beer, too much sun, too much beer in the sun. The one thing we didn’t get too much of was all the music happening in Austin. But with thousands of bands performing over four days at hundreds of clubs, there were only so many places we could be at one time.

Thankfully, some guy from The Morning News listened to more than 750 bands that played the music fest and wrote six-word reviews on all of them. We’re still regretting we didn’t make it to Vampire Weekend’s Friday-night showcase – we were at the Merge Records showcase or, more accurately, we were stalking Zooey Deschanel – but thanks to The Morning News recap, we’re so glad we skipped the Paul White Quintet’s concert: “My old jazz teacher’d love this.” -- Michael Gallucci

Saturday’s daylong Garden Party at the French Legation Museum was a perfect cap to South by Southwest’s four days of music – an eight-hour mix of indie-rock legends (Dinosaur Jr.’s J. Mascis, Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore) and buzzed-about hipsters (Okkervil River, Kimya Dawson). Granted, the first three hours were filled with bands I’d never heard of, all of which inexplicably had violin players and seemed to share members. ...

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Indie darlings and pro-noun obsessives M. Ward and Zooey Deschanel.

Merge Records is home to some of the planet’s hippest indie-rockers. Arcade Fire, Spoon, and Guided by Voices’ Robert Pollard all record for the label. So Friday night’s Merge Records showcase at the Parish was a six-hour marathon of a half-dozen of the company’s artists, and it was one of South by Southwest 2008’s most solid programs. ...

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The Black Keys couldn’t have picked a better place to play their Friday-afternoon South by Southwest concert than at La Zona Rosa. The Akron duo’s bluesy garage-rock filled the cavernous club, which sorta looks like a giant garage. The 45-minute show, part of Scene’s and Village Voice Media’s day party, mixed old material and songs from the Keys’ new Attack & Release, which comes out on April 1. ...

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The last time Bay Village singer-songwriter Kate Voegele played South by Southwest, she wasn’t old enough to drink. But this time, as she told her audience at Thursday night’s Thirsty Nickel showcase, the 21-year-old was taking in everything SXSW has to offer. We can only presume she was talking about the music and not all of the gutter-dwelling drinking that goes on here. Voegele is still a sweet, young-seeming girl, after all, the type who says “freakin’” and “you guys are awesome!” onstage. She talks like one of the characters on One Tree Hill, the tween drama in which she plays a singer-songwriter. In other words, she talks like her fans. ...

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At Stubb's last night, some dude who looked like he was about 70, during slow-moving stoner-rock band Dead Confederate’s showcase: “These fuckers are putting me to sleep!”

Well said, sir. Well said. -- Michael Gallucci

There was an odd dearth of bearded people on the streets of Austin Thursday afternoon. Turns out, they were all at one of SXSW’s best day parties, hosted by New West Records, home to such alt-country acts as Drive-By Truckers and the Old 97’s (as well as former Kinks frontman Ray Davies). There may be hipper day parties happening during the four-day music festival, but none embodies the spirit of SXSW’s Americana roots more than New West’s annual bash. (I also wasn’t invited to any of those. But that’s not the point). ...

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It’s fitting that R.E.M. played South by the Southwest 2008’s first big show, last night at the venerable Stubb’s. After all, the veteran group pretty much invented indie-rock in the early ‘80s, back when it was called “college rock.” Along with Husker Du, the Replacements, the Minutemen, Black Flag, and a handful of other bands, R.E.M. shaped an entire generation through their music. No matter that they haven’t released a decent record in more than a decade -- the band is an indie-rock institution, and the packed house was there to pay tribute to three guys who, more or less, helped define what SXSW is all about. ...

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Could I have gotten the Killer Death Flu at a worse time? I’m flying down to Austin today for five days of music, beer, and hob-nobbing -- assuming the hob-nobbing includes copious beer and music -- at the annual South by Southwest festival, from where I'll be blogging here over the next few days. I’m hoping the airplane ride from Cleveland to Texas will clear my stuffed head a little, so by the time I get down there, I’m ready to party like a former Mickey Mouse Club pop star. Or at least listen to nonstop music like it was my job, which it is, which is probably why God stuck me with the I'll-Be-Dead-Soon Flu. A dude can't have everything.

To commemorate the start of festivities, I give you five worse things than having the Please Lord Just Kill Me Now Flu at SXSW: ...

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Akron's The Black Keys are headed to Austin's South by Southwest.

Next week, pretty much everyone who makes a living off the music industry will be in Austin for the annual South by Southwest music festival. We’ll be there too, drinking, listening to music, drinking, and writing, hopefully, for your sake, not in that order.

To get you as geeked as we are, here’s a quick rundown on five of our favorite local bands making the trip. ...

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In the latest issue of Rolling Stone – it’s got Jack Johnson’s sandy mug on the cover – writer Peter Relic takes us inside the Painesville studios where Akron blues-rockers The Black Keys ground out their new record, Attack and Release, with producer Danger Mouse. The album, Relic reports, was born out of an idea Danger Mouse had to team the Black Keys with the late Ike Turner:

In early 2007, Danger Mouse began work on a comeback album by rock & roll pioneer Ike Turner. Danger enticed the Keys (”One of my favorite bands,” he says) to write some songs for the project. The Keys turned in demos for Turner to learn, but when sessions bogged down, the project was temporarily shelved. The band eventually decided to make the tunes the heart of its fifth album, and Danger Mouse was the natural choice as producer. “Even when we gave the songs to Ike, they felt like Black Keys songs,” Auerbach says.

The album comes out April 1. The Keys start touring next month, including a stop at a South by Southwest party thrown by Scene and its sister papers. – Joe P. Tone

After assurances that there would, indeed, be plenty of Pabst and chicken wings, Akron blues-rockers The Black Keys will headline a party thrown by Scene and its sister papers at March’s South by Southwest festival.

The two-man team is hitting the road hard next month, escaping the friendly confines of the 330 to scare up mojo for Attack and Release, its new, Danger Mouse-produced record, due out this spring. (Sadly, no appearances by Cee-Lo. But it should rock the kids’ Crocs off nonetheless.)

If you can’t make the fest – and you probably shouldn’t, since it’s in Texas, and sunlight is deadly until at least June 1 – stay tuned March 9-18, when we’ll post pictures and indecipherable dispatches from our drunken music critics, who fed us wine coolers and gasoline and somehow talked us into paying their way. The sneaky bastards.

Read on for the line-up and details.

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