South Buy Southwest

Green Day just announced that it will premiere ¡Quatro! and Broadway Idiot at SXSW 2013 and then play a show at the Moody Theater on March 15. The documentaries make sense, but the show choice stinks like dookie. SXSW should pave the way for indie bands, not lay down a red carpet for pop musicians.

Green Day, really? That’s like getting a shitty mega-director like Michael Bay to show Transformers 4 at Sundance, Tribeca, or even SXSW. I can imagine it right now, massive transformer-sized Green Day guys chasing down indie bands in slow motion.

SXSW has established a reputation for breeding new bands, directors, and technologies, not housing a band that has sold over 25 million albums and can fill a stadium faster than one of its two-and-a-half minute songs.

There is a delicate fence to balance on with booking bands, but Green Day tips the scale. And I know in the music business you need to attract a crowd with bigger bands so the smaller bands get exposure, but you can find plenty of other bands further down the music food chain to fill that void.

There are gazillions of other bands going to the festival that definitely ride the fence leaning far to one side and can attract large crowds: Macklemore And Ryan Lewis, Tegan And Sara, Dead Prez, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Talib Kweli, Vampire Weekend, and The Flaming Lips. SXSW already has these bands that have made a name for themselves—some of them probably shouldn’t be there—but it’s good for the newbies.

The list of indie bands is huge for this shindig—practically every indie band in the U.S. is going to be there. My eyes and brain started to ache just looking at the list of bands at SXSW.

There are always other local Denver bands and local bands in other cities that could be there instead, but aren’t. SXSW should be opening up doors to new musicians, instead of slamming doors in faces with a “Good Riddance” poster pinned to the door with gold plated guitar picks.