The Geek Weekly Interview: Brent Grulke

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We tried, we really did, to get another rock critic interview for the issue, but as you have already read, were unsuccessful. Fortunately, the Creative Director of SXSW, Brent Grulke, was more than happy to go off on Austin, the behavior of rock musicians, andother [and other] topics at Opal Divine's this February.

I want to mention before we begin that you volunteered for this interview.

Absolutely. As a Geek Weekly fan, I wanted to be subjected to the rigors of your interviewing

I'd like to apologize for the absence of Jennifer LaSuprema tonight.

That is too bad.

You don't really get the full treatment. But then again, I had to do the Rob Patterson interview by myself as well. Not that I'm comparing these two. But I wanted to ask you why you volunteered.

Honestly, I just – the interviews with Rob and Margaret, and the general take that you have on things, it sounded fun and challenging, both. You get a lot out of people that otherwise – I've never seen anything like with Michael Corcoran – all of those people I never have seen be quite so frank and I thought that was impressive.

We always like to start put at the beginning, and as far as I know you started as a Cornhusker.

I'm originally from Nebraska. I was born in Nebraska and spent most of my first 13 years in Nebraska. I moved to Texas just before I entered high school, I moved to Houston. I went to school at UT, so I'm not actually a Cornhusker. I never went to the University of Nebraska, but I grew up with the University of Nebraska in my heart.

And you root for Big Red?

Oh yeah. Unless they're playing Texas, and then I get conflicted. The only surety is that I will never ever root for Oklahoma in anything.

So, everyone talks about how great Austin was back in the day, but I want to know what was horrible back in the old days.

Well, the most horrible thing about Austin in the old days was that it was really hard to find a job. As a consquence, it was really hard for anybody to make any money at all. It was just really hard to make money – job or pursuit of art. It was really cheap, but it was really hard to find any work.

So, you were a journalism major?

I was an RTF major.

And there was no student radio – did you get to work at KUT?

No.

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