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Mostly that I'm in charge of the music festival, that's mostly what I do. Coordi-
nate what venues we use and how many bands we'll have and what bands and I
work on the panels too.
And how long have you been doing that?
I think 8 years now? I did panels the first year I came back, maybe this is my 7th
year of doing the music fest. I'm really bad with time.
I saw the toilet [part of a band's application] in your office today - do you get a
lot of crap like that from the bands?
Oh yeah, somebody sent a stripper in with the case that had a bottle of Jack
Daniel's in it.
Did she actually dance?
No, and you know what's kind of dumb is, I'm kind of stupid, because they said,
"Hey Brent, would you come downstairs, somebody's got something for you,"
and I came downstairs and there was a woman there, and I didn't quite figure it
out. I didn't know she was a stripper, and everybody kind of pointed it out
afterwards. I was just kind of embarrassed, because everybody was like, "Hey,
somebody wants to give you something," and I was like, "Hey, I'm busy, why
do I have to come downstairs?" There were all these people gathered around to
watch. She didn't take her shirt off, and I don't know if she was predisposed to
or not, but I wasn't predisposed to have her do it.
That would have considerably lightened the workplace mood.
The thing is - this sounds jaded, I suppsoe, if you don't notice a stripper walking
into your office, you're clearly jaded, but there was - people have come in and
done all kinds of nutty things, people have sent kegs -
So did the band get in?
I don't even know who it was. I made sure I wasn't going to pay attention.
So do you feel you're performing a great service for these bands? Do you feel
gratified when stuff happens for them?
Absolutley. I know that people have fun. On one hand you just feel like you're
being one of the hosts of a great big party, and who doesn't like to be a host of a
party? That's always gratifying. Just that simple thing. But on top of that, if
people are able to find it useful, more importantly if they're able to find it useful
and actually get something that they find useful whatever that may be, that's
what's gratifying. It's not enjoyable for the people that work on it, it's really
hard work and nobody has much fun. You don't get to attend South by South-
west if you're working on it, so you wanna gave that thrill vicariously. The
reward is in a job well done. If the prospect of being able to have other people
have fun and get business don doesn't give you a sense of satisfaction, then it's
not going to work out.
I know that you sit around and listen to all of these completely unknown bands
before SXSW, but then you get to invite the famous people to come down. I want
to know the really good requests you get when you deal with acts like that.
It varies. My favorite was Tom Waits. It was a really miraculous show. Every

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Geek Weekly #9

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