In case you haven't heard, South by Southwest happened last week. Yeah, I checked it out. Here's my two cents (i.e., 5,000-plus words) on it.

What do you call a place where, in a span of four days, you can see sets by Bruce Springsteen, Built to Spill, The Jesus and Mary Chain, The Wedding Present, Dinosaur Jr., Thee Oh Sees, the reunited dB’s and, oh yeah, YouTube sensation Complete?

South by Southwest.

Sounds like a Rock ’n’ Roll Heaven on Earth, right? Wrong. Now I’m not saying that The Lone Star State’s lone spring week as the epicenter of the music world — dimensions big and small — isn’t totally awesome. I’m just saying that whatever the eardrum’s equivalent of the thousand-yard stare is, I now have it. Right now my vestibular nerves are totally rejecting and chucking up any and all music I try to shovel into my external auditory canals. Still, my burgundy earwax isn’t anywhere near as uninteresting as most of the regurgitated audio vomit I had the misfortune of unavoidably suffering while en route to and from the great many kickass killer shows to killer kickass parties I caught last week.

If war is hell, SXSW is a first-world purgatory between a jaw-dropping glut of great shows to see and an exhausting, chaotic clusterfuck of long lines for free drinks, big, bank account-draining bar tabs, ubiquitous freeloaders, food trucks, photo booths and glorified buskers scurrying back and forth across a gridlocked city that’s barely able to contain the critical mass of musicians. Like everything else in life, SXSW’s heavenly pleasures are asterisked with harsh realities and hellish hangovers.

“You guys ever smell mothballs?” Tristen’s guitarist Buddy Hughen sheepishly asked a crowd of semi-indifferent so-and-sos who were gathered for a private party at Hotel St. Cecelia just off of South Congress. “Really? How’d you get their tiny legs apart?” A solid joke if ever there was one. But this was a crowd that seemed more interested in hobnobbing and eating free oysters than hearing some live music. I’d of course already seen Tristen and her band play once at SXSW, and my friends and I had actually made our way out to this party thanks to a hot text-message tip from Hughen: “Open bar confirmed … best Manhattan I’ve ever had. And total scene hang. … Terrence Malick is shooting a film here featuring Roony something.”

The “Roony” in question was actually Rooney Mara (she of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo fame). Also in the crowd were Win, Regine and William of Arcade Fire, and though we never spotted Malick, free booze and oysters were indeed had by all. A couple friends and I had ventured out via exceptionally slow pedicab. Why? Because a significant part of the SXSW experience is freebies, and I hadn’t yet indulged in enough of those. And if we could hear some Tristen tunes, “mothballs” jokes and Madi Diaz tunes (she played some of her pristine pop numbers right after Tristen) while a lady dressed in a giant oyster costume served us cocktails, then why in the hell not?

There’s a lot of ways to ride SX on the cheap and free. Sure, you can bust ass about town, chasing leads, standing in lines and rolling the dice throughout the day in hopes you find the best combo of booze, food and music. But whether you’re a VIP or a VI-me, there’s always a better party somewhere with better bands, better swag and better booze. I found my pot of gold pretty early on in Converse’s Fader Fort and was content to stick with it, as it afforded far too many creature comforts and A-list acts to justify wasting any time gambling about town.

“Whoopi Goldberg is giving a birthing seminar inside.” “Yeah, and Topanga from Boy Meets World is in there, too.” This is how rumors get started. Friday afternoon, as I wandered down Fifth in a desperate attempt to find some music worth seeing, a pair of jokers was shouting false promises at passersby, likely in an attempt just to amuse themselves.

Day Three was the day that things began to get trying. As SXSW attendees nursed their second or third hangovers of the week, tempers flared, and it became easy to feel lonesome amid the increasingly aggro masses. Perhaps that’s why I seemed an easy target for one Krishna monk. As I stood on a street corner — probably looking completely hopeless and alone as I searched for direction on my phone — he approached me, saying he liked my “long hairs” and that I seemed like a nice person. And that if I’d just give him a $6 donation to cover the cost of the book he was placing into my hands, he was sure I’d find spiritual enlightenment. Do I really seem like a sucker to you, Krishna guy? You’ll take this $5 and leave me alone. I’m no pushover. Oh wait … sigh. Swindled, maybe. But I was going to find something worth seeing on Friday, whether or not spiritual enlightenment had anything to do with it.

Honestly, if you’re a fan of rock ‘n’ roll music and Bruce is on your confirmed agenda, it’s difficult to be anything but thoroughly psyched. Fellow Creamsters Adam Gold, Eric England and I woke up Thursday morning to find that we’d all won the lottery to see Springsteen that night at the W Hotel’s Moody Theater. As far as the rest of the day was concerned, it was all just Bruce’s undercard.

I found myself amid the familiar décor of The Stage for one of Paste’s showcases. Despite their name, Rubblebucket was not, in fact, a Blueshammer-y, classic-rock cover band that plays most of its gigs at a crawfish restaurant. As a matter of fact, they were rather good, with sax-playing frontwoman Annakalmia Traver leading them through a set of world-infused, dense dance pop. Rubblebucket (or Rub-buck, as I’ve taken to calling them) was like Yeasayer in that eclectic-Brooklynite sort of way, but with more sugary vocal melodies — a very feel-good sort of pop, rhythmically tight with a gigantic, blasting horn section and thick bass lines, and a bit like Graceland and Hall and Oates and Thriller all rolled up and presented in a bit of a cutie-pie, hipster-friendly way. They marched around the crowd at the end of their set as a pair of gigantic robot puppets made out with one another. Nice to start the day off with some spectacle.

When Jack White moved to Nashville, Mayor Karl Dean invented an award to give him. That’s how excited we all were. And he continues to make Nashville ecstatically proud, especially at South By Southwest.

Last night was the Third Man Records showcase at The Stage in Austin, Texas. The lineup featured TMR acts Karen Elson — yes, the former Mrs. White — The Black Belles, PUJOL and Lanie Lane, along with Reggie Watts, White Rabbits, Natural Child, Electric Guest and Purling Hiss. John C. Reilly (yes, the actor) congratulated Third Man on “three years of kicking ass” during a set of country ballads he performed in a felt cowboy hat. But there was no doubt who was the headliner.

I don’t know what it is you think you know about freelance journalists, but one thing I can tell you is that our bodies are not trained for the endurance required of an event of this magnitude. Hell no.

Our muscles are pretty tender, not unlike that of a baby calf whose fate is a plate of veal. Hence, all this biking, hiking and hustling is more than taking its toll. Yet I trudge through. I trudge for you, readers. I am a martyr for your entertainment. Kidding.

Nobody reads this shit, right?

“Nothin’ ain’t worth nothin’, but it’s free.”

Kris Kristofferson wrote that shit long before SXSW was a gleam some idealistic bastard’s eye. But even, or especially, if you interpret its double negatives literally, it sums about how I’m feeling about this place right now.

I won’t lie, friends. Day one was not a pretty one. When I said 10 a.m. was a perfectly acceptable time to start drinking in Texas, I didn’t mean to imply it was necessarily a smart idea. In fact, when you’re trying to subsist entirely on complimentary tacos, nachos, bags of potato chips and granola bars after a 14-hour drive, it’s kind of a little bit dumb. The pinnacle of these decisions occurred around dusk, when, far beyond my physical limitations, I awoke in a stranger’s hotel room to a young woman’s shrieks — inspired not by the fact a stranger was motionless in her room, but the fact she thought I was literally a dead man. In all fairness, she didn’t know a guy could be so tuckered as to pass out with his eyes open. For that matter, neither did I.

Well, your old pals here at the Cream are alive and kicking, currently messing with Texas and letting South by Southwest have her way with us. As per usual, our flight down on Wednesday morning was a who’s who of Nashville rockdom, with representatives from Grimey’s and The Basement, Mercy Lounge, We Own This Town, Serpents and Snakes and more amid the mob of Austin-bound, tune-craving travelers. I was off to an awkward start, clocking some lady really hard in the back of the dome with my elbow as I stowed my bag in an overhead compartment — like, really hard. I’m really sorry about that, lady.

But we made it to Austin without too much trouble, and managed to secure our press credentials at the convention center with only about half an hour’s worth of hassle — securing press credentials is never fully without hassle, by the way, but this is one of the minor prices you pay as a member of the Fourth Estate. We spotted Neon Indian, hometown heroes PUJOL and a shitload of bands clad in rust-colored pants and straight-billed caps, then we registered for the lottery to see Bruce Springsteen (Spoiler Alert: We won! We’ll be seeing Bruce tonight!), and headed out to catch some live music. First up on the agenda for your humble local music editor was a bit of soul music.

While South by Southwest is already upon us — and Cream contributors including Seth Graves and Steve Cross are currently en route to Austin — Adam Gold, photographer Eric England and yours truly will be heading down tomorrow morning. As a little Music City-centric public service, I've rounded up the respective schedules of a veritable shit ton of Nashvillian performers — Nikki Lane, PUJOL, Turbo Fruits, Natural Child, The Ettes, Tristen, Heypenny, Heavy Cream, Glossary, The Features, Wild Cub, The Black Belles, Brendan Benson, Karen Elson, Scale Model, Otis Gibbs, The Kingston Springs and Jack White among them — and posted them after the jump, in chronological order. To be perfectly honest with you, it took me a long time. Like, a frustrating amount of time. No bother! We temporary Austinites will be knee-deep in jams before you know it, and those of you sticking behind will be steeped even more deeply in our coverage of the events.

Needless to say, the Cream might be a bit lacking when it comes to local haps over the next few days. But we'll be checking in with SXSW updates and reviews on the reg. Now, while SXSW is less a place to see the locals and more an opportunity to feast upon a smorgasbord of tune-peddlers from far and wide, I'd be happy to add your band's dates to the list you find after the jump, so long as you're a Nashvillian.

As far as what I'm looking forward to seeing ... Well, as Seth pointed out, it's more about rolling with the punches than it is about sticking to any sort of schedule. That said, I've heard a lot about Nick Waterhouse, The Allah-Lahs, Hospitality, White Fence and Bleached, and familiar artists I'd like to peep include Sharon Van Etten, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Thee Oh Sees, King Tuff and obviously, Jay-Z, Bruce Springsteen and Built to Spill. What say you? Is there anything else we should add to our must-see list?

Follow me after the jump to see the what the local set will be up to, from Panache Booking's several Nashville-heavy showcases to the epic Third Man showcase at the Stage on Sixth and Kings of Leon's Serpents & Snakes showcase at Lucky Thirteen.