In regard to the Chronicle‘s debut international bands supplement, which will be redistributed during SXSW, it should be. After all, of the more than 300 international acts from Uzbekistan to Tehran, our swift overview of approximately half of these far-flung global acts was researched almost entirely on the Internet. Armed with 300 URLs, our Music staff streamed music, video, and downloaded MP3s to get a leg up on musical acts as foreign as their lands of origin. As the Canadians might say, “Beauty, eh?” Issues of copyright aside, democracy has finally infiltrated the music business; no longer are we dependant on the media or even albums themselves to do our music research. That said, the irony of the Chronicle‘s returning to its massive SXSW international band overviews after discontinuing them years ago because they’d spiraled out of control isn’t lost on this particular editor. Maybe next year, we’ll simply publish the URLs and let y’all do the Net-working.

This article appears in February 25 • 2005.

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San Francisco native Raoul Hernandez crossed the border into Texas on July 2, 1992, and began writing about music for the Chronicle that fall, debuting with an album review of Keith Richards’ Main Offender. By virtue of local show previews – first “Recommendeds,” now calendar picks – his writing’s appeared in almost every issue since 1993.