Just got out of the Iggy Pop panel, where the punk-rock icon was interviewed along with Ron and Scott Asheton, his cohorts among the legendary proto-punk firebrands the Stooges. The group reunited recently after more than three decades of silence — "We needed a break," guitarist Ron quipped — and they are here in Austin to support their comeback disc, The Weirdness, just released a couple weeks ago. Somehow, despite years of self-inflicted abuse, Iggy (center, photographed late last year with Ron, right, and Scott) seems preserved in amber; wearing a white wife-beater, he looked like a happy-go-lucky surfer dude, complete with streaky blonde hair and those famously wiry and tan muscled arms of his. Over a 75-minute conversation, the trio covered a long list of topics, including why they never received much commercial success and the genesis of some of their greatest songs. It’s too much to detail in one blog post, but here are a few highlights:
• To promote one of their albums, Elektra records sent Iggy to go visit the "very horny editor" (Iggy’s words) of a teenybopper magazine at her apartment. "They wanted to see if we hit it off." Iggy said. Long pause. "I was on the cover."
• The band’s garage-soul favorite "No Fun" was inspired by three songs. The "no no no" line from the Rolling Stones "(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction," the Beach Boys’ frequent use of the word "fun," and the structure of Johnny Cash’s "I Walk the Line." Not sure if I get it, but it worked.
• The Stooges loved all the critical trashing their albums received when they were released. "Bad reviews are better," said Ron Asheton. "It’s like, come see the circus freaks!" Iggy added his own bit of peculiar wisdom: "What passes for intelligent generally isn’t."
• Iggy’s first attempts at writing and recording music were pretty hippy-dippy. "I was a flower child, wearing beads and a Hindu-style moustache," he recalled. "And I sat in my bedroom writing a rock opera about little mouse in a bucolic world." We’re glad he outgrew that phase.
What’s up with the lines, people?! Everywhere I went on this second day of my tenth South by Southwest, I saw frustrated badge holders doing their best to demonstrate that patience is, indeed, a virtue. Is the number of registrants just so astronomically large this year? Is there a shortage of venues? There certainly seems to be in the parking department. 
Bit of a late start this morning, PopWatchers, and for that I apologize, but I stayed up way too late at the Blender after-hours party, drinking something that may have contained too much vodka and being lulled into a dancing coma by a group of Swedes. Yes, Peter Bjorn & John may be 
Have you ever heard Slash, Tom Morello (Rage Against the Machine/Audioslave), Perry Farrell (Jane’s Addiction), Nuno Bettencourt (Extreme) and Wayne Kramer (MC5) jam together on a revved-up version of Woody Guthrie’s "This Land is Your Land"? Neither had I until I slipped into the after-Midnight gig by Morello (pictured), a.k.a. the 
Howdy, PopWatchers! (Yes, I’m gonna keep saying "howdy." I’m from Texas and can do whatever I want.) I am happily ensconced in a corner of the Driskill Hotel ballroom, where a celebration of the silky-voiced Emmylou Harris (pictured) is currently taking place. I am happy for two reasons: First, it is air-conditioned. (The sun has come out with a vengeance, making all the hoodied hipsters quite sweaty.) And second, I can’t think of any artists whose body of work has pleased me more consistently over the past couple decades.
It’s 11:15 a.m., and I’m sitting at Austin’s Tequila Mockingbird Studios, where Nic Harcourt, the voice of 
The first night of SXSW is a relatively slow one. There aren’t that many MUST see shows, everyone is yawning from their early flights, and Austin’s 6th Street just smells like only beer… not beer, piss, and garbage. By the time I got my badge, ate two tacos, and drank a margarita, I only had the energy for a short night. I wandered easily into the giant outdoor Stubb’s for the NME and Zune-sponsored Brit-centric line up.Catching only the last notes of Wales’ the Automatic, I grabbed a Miller Lite and prepared to be blown away by young English lad Jamie T, a next-big-thing signed to Virgin UK who I’d been told by a friend was the "one musician I am most excited about see this year at SXSW." His sloppy, shambolic set of punky-reggae free-associations sounded like 2nd-gen Arctic Monkeys to me, but why don’t you just hear it for 
It is 6:27 p.m., and the Grand Ballroom of the Austin Hilton is packed with folks in black t-shirts, muddy sneakers, and green SXSW badges, all waiting in eager anticipation for Pete Townshend’s keynote address. We do not yet know what he will be talking about, but there is a clue on our chairs, in the form of a piece of paper titled, simply, THE METHOD. It reads, "Today, as part of his Keynote Address at the South by Southwest Music Festival in Austin, Texas, Pete Townshend is announcing the Method. After more than 25 years of patient research, Pete is launching the website he first described in the science fiction story behind the Who’s legendary Who’s Next album of 1971. The Method — designed by Lawrence Ball — offers subscribers the opportunity to create their own unique musical composition by "sitting" for the Method software composer, just as you would sit for a painter making your portrait." Etc.
