Robert Baird

While it hasn't always made money or hit records, the music business has never been short on ideas. Most are nonsense, but every once in a while—the gramophone, onstage monitors, Les Paul's overdubbing—the biz comes up with a winner.

Many of the craziest ideas I've heard in 30 years of writing about music have been expounded on at the South by Southwest Music Festival, held each year in Austin, Texas. At SXSW, hope springs eternal. Secrets are whispered. Buzz bands gain momentum. Rumors ripple through crowds. Everyone has visions of morphing into a mogul. There's an intoxicating energy to it all.

It's time to address a snarky rumor, a persistent urban legend surrounding music fans who care about listening in the highest quality sound possible. It's been posited from time to time that quality gear and heavy, quiet LP pressings go better with a certain intoxicant—that you have to get high to truly have the fullest possible listening experience.

Perhaps the best attribute that older soul cats bring to a project like this is their knowledge of repertoire.

There are a lot of reasons to love Gotham—most of them having to do with humans `cause let’s face it there just aren’t many mountain vistas here—but the one that tickles my fancy the most is what Billy Joel (sorry) famously called, the “New York State of Mind.” Jay–Z would have it “Empire State of Mind,” but you get the idea. After a premiere showing of Sounds and Silence, Travels with Manfred Eicher, the new film about the ECM founder, owner and inspiration, there was a brief Q&A period chaired by WNYC's Julie Burstein (left in JA's iPhone photo). The first hand up was in the back of the IFC Center in the West Village.