A great show is a great show. But when more than 2,000 bands gather in Austin, Texas, each year for the SXSW Music and Media Conference, you get great shows and a whole lot more: surprise collaborations, -- along with the odd bits of violence, breakdowns and actual arrests. As SXSW turns 25 in 2011, ...

In the history of South by Southwest, somebody has always left the festival as a fabled "buzz band." Yes, even pre-Internet -- the first SXSW took place in 1987. Some artists come to Austin as unknowns and leave on everybody's tongue. Others transform word-of-mouth on their first tour or debut record into heat-bigger ...

Wilco have already inspired a Toronto sandwich shop with no connection to the band, and teamed up with with Chicago's Intelligentsia Coffee for a mug. Now they've turned to their neighborhood roaster -- which provided coffee at the band's Solid Sound Festival this past summer -- for Wilco-approved beans. The energizing product is now available from ...

Bob King, Redferns / Getty Images "He who's tired of Weird Al is tired of life," Homer Simpson once said while playing an erstwhile grunge-rock icon on 'The Simpsons.' And no one at Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin, Texas this weekend showed any signs of being tired of life. Friday, at the Live Music Capital of the World's Waterloo Park, an audience ...

Ben Hider, Getty Images For a punk singer-songwriter, Ted Leo has written his fair share of lengthy tunes. But Sunday night at the Matador 21 birthday concert in Las Vegas, when Leo said "we've got two more" despite there being at least 15 minutes left in his allotted set, you knew something was up. There was. First, an epic, thrashing take on ...

Jordi Vidal, Redferns Anyone who thought Las Vegas was a strange place to hold the Matador at 21 concert is probably unfamiliar with the Belle and Sebastian live experience. Fastidious, musicianly and beautiful on record, the band remains those things onstage, but with a let-us-entertain-you presence that invariably includes comic banter, props ...

David Becker, WireImage.com / Getty Images If the Matador at 21 concerts are as much about the newer artists as past favorites, Friday night belonged to one of the label's more recent signings: a plucky little band from New York City known as Sonic Youth, which signed to Matador in 2008 after almost two decades on Geffen. "This is from our ...