A friend alerted me to Roseana Auten's breakdown of women in bands at South by Southwest this year, which I found enlightening. We were indeed were out en masse, whether in bands, as poster artists exhibiting at Flatstock, or in the Film and Interactive portions of the fest. ATL's Coathangers and Seattle's Tacocat both took me back to my late high school/early college riot grrl days. NYC girl group Vivian Girls put on a fair show, though the harmonies failed to live up to those on their debut album. I really wanted to like Angel Deradoorian's set, since I love her soulful debut EP Mind Raft, but on stage solo with just her guitar inside at Mohawk, she was drowned out by female-fronted Canadian thrashers AIDS Wolf, which played outside and was pretty awesome.

Between, tributes, panels, and posters, it seemed as if Doug Sahm was the most ubiquitous person at South by Southwest. He hasn’t been with us for 10 years, yet somehow I imagined I’d see his cowboy hat bobbing through the crowd the same way I always think I see Clifford Antone’s ballcap in the crowd at Antone’s. Nostalgia seemed to be the unspoken theme amid the hot young acts, or at least what’s old is new. Metallica, Jane’s Addiction, and Devo are spring chickens, and while the Fireants were the youngest band to perform at the Music Awards, the Dicks, Roky Erickson, and the Doug Sahm tribute garnered the most ink. Surfing the net during SXSW is better than Twitter, especially when you find information such as the reference to “Jimmy Vaughn, Stevie’s little brother.” My highlights were spontaneous and fun. Author and queen of all groupies Pamela Des Barres called me late afternoon at the Music Awards saying Exene Cervenka was in town and wanted to present an award and here’s her cellphone. I said hell yeah and promptly forgot about it. Three hours later, the staff radioed that Exene had arrived and where was her presenter info? Fortunately, Exene is a pro and joined David Yow onstage for the Dicks’ Hall of Fame award, then gave Best Punk Band to One-Eyed Doll.

Although Wired magazine editor Chris Anderson was the Tuesday keynote speaker for the Interactive portion of South by Southwest, his concepts of the Long Tail and the freeconomics of his upcoming book, Free, have had perhaps more theoretical impact on the emerging digital music economy than any other writer today. His conversation with doubtful venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki was spirited, but left the question open of whether the model of Free, proven to have worked in a limited capacity already, will be able to generate money for the more general economy. Music, of course, is ground zero for many of these ideas. Anderson’s declaration that “Free is the best way to maximize your reach” may be true, but the important aspect of that equation for artists and their business partners (be they labels, managers, or agents), is converting that attention and reputation to money.

The MIMS-evoking hooks following Zumbi’s hostile declaration of The Take Over(Gold Dust Media) appear courtesy of Zion I’s immaculate DJ AmpLive, whose mission to jack up the industry on the duo’s sixth LP starts with the ringtone rappers. Filtering Roland TR-808 synth beats into a rhythmic jungle complete with a chanting choir, MC Zumbi laments on unofficial opener “Geek to the Beat,” “You way too watered down, I need it uncut. Don’t play it flaccid, Babylon will have you fucked up.” Play the analogy as though Zion I is Babylon, working its way towards solving the confusion behind the language of hip-hop. That helps explain why the Bay Area duo can’t sit still, why they choose to – most of the time successfully – one-up each particular subgenre’s supposed leaders. The tracks play out abstractly, working Damian Marley’s Kingston slum on third track “Take Over” and the emotronic crowd on follow-up lesson “Antenna.” Devin the Dude exhales over the laid-back Southern playfulness of “Country Backyard Yams”; “Gumbo” follows up the dirtiest brass section with 45 seconds of stone-cold NOLA bounce. AmpLive dices up each style in tandem with Zumbi, his sparring partner since 1997. The kinky-afroed rapper jumps on Brother Ali’s ideal “Caged Bird Part 1” and the appropriately named Black Eyed Peas knock “Radio.” Genuine affection beats on “DJ DJ,” homage to Kool Herc, Kid Capri, Afrika Bambaataa, and their 1970s revolution. Over the Zulu Nation’s futurism, Zumbi professes, “Gratefully, now pump your fist. If it wasn’t for the DJ, we couldn’t exist.” Zion I rolls through Back Alley Social, Wednesday, March 18, 9:10pm.

What better way to bring in St. Patrick’s Day on Tuesday than at the Dog & Duck’s annual bash? The beloved UT-area pub boasts a canny lineup for the day with trad Celtic acts – Black Irish, Capitol City Highlanders, Ed Miller and Rich Brotherton – then turns charmingly kick-ass eclectic with the all-star Magic Christian, the original Reivers (who were originally Zeitgeist) now playing as Right or Happy, 20/20, local buzz band T Bird & the Breaks, plus Sean Orr & Black Dagger, Band of Brothers, and Ian McLagan & the Bump Band. A most appropriate bill that starts out St. Pat’s and ends up South by Southwest. The Dog & Duck has been around so long that its English pub atmosphere feels as authentic as the last pub I visited in London, which happened to be the utterly delightful Duke of Kendall pub with its weekly singalongs. Only when I think hard do I remember the D&D in previous incarnations, such as Mrs. Robinson’s around 1974. The rest of the memories are warm and perhaps a tad beer-goggled. I’ve always had a fondness for its nooks and cute waiters and proximity to Hunter Darby (who booked this killer lineup with Kent Benjamin). Free!

Last week, the Country Music Association released the findings of their Consumer Research Study, estimated by CMT president Brian Phillips as “perhaps the most far-reaching and comprehensive study of country music consumer attitudes and behavior ever undertaken,” and sampling more than 7,000 consumers. Perhaps the most interesting finding was that among those fans devoted to the genre and labeled “Countryphiles,” only about half have home Internet access. This is compared to the 70 percent of country music consumers considered more general music fans that do have home Internet access. The digital divide between Countryphiles and the trending of the rest of the industry makes sense, as this group is largely rural and older. Radio is still the dominant medium for discovery of new country music among these consumers, and they still purchase CDs over Mp3s. According to the survey, the group’s disinterest in the Internet was propelled by “three key reasons…: the cost, they had no interest/or need, and their inexperience or content concern.”

Still have pocket change after getting tickets to the Boss and Leonard Cohen? Kevin Shields’ shoegaze messiahs My Bloody Valentine are coming to the Austin Music Hall on April 21, immediately after an appearance at Coachella, as part of a five-city US tour. Tickets are on sale now and won't be around for long. Asleep at the Wheel’s Ray Benson has high hopes for his tribute musical A Ride with Bob, which runs Friday and Saturday at the Long Center for Performing Arts. “We really want to do the film some day,” he says. “This is a G-rated show, but to be honest with you, Bob Wills lived an X-rated life.”

Thank the Beatles for the latest from the Willie Nelson camp. Naked Willie arrives in stores next week, and Mickey Raphael, “unproducer” and longtime harmonica player with Nelson, maintains that hearing Let It Be … Naked sparked the idea in him. “They took off the strings that Phil Spector put on," he explains from his home in Nashville. "I thought it would be great if we did the same thing to some of songs that Willie did. I knew that he had no say in the production. I mean he was happy to be doing it, but back then Chet Atkins produced him, and the artists really didn’t get involved in the production of their records. Knowing Willie like I do now, his mantra is ‘less is more.’ He likes things simple. I thought, ‘These are great songs. It’d be heresy to cut them again. I wonder what would happen if we just stripped everything off and kind of do it like Willie had produced himself.’” When Nelson recorded for RCA from 1965 until 1971, Atkins was famous for his trademark Nashville sound, which included lush orchestral arrangements and backing vocals that often ran counter to the mood or message of the song itself. “It’s not to say that Chet’s production was wrong or bad, I just wanted to look at them through another lens,” Raphael clarifies. “I love these songs. I listen to the RCA era all the time. It’s the first batch of Willie recordings that I ever heard. I didn’t really know about him until I went to work for him. Darrell Royal introduced me to Willie in '72,'73. I was just a struggling harmonica player, hanging out in coffeehouses in Austin. When Willie hired me, I had to do a crash course in country music. So this era was my education.”