Most music festivals are treated like a sketchy red light district, shunted off to a field, park or island on the outskirts of town. Not South-by-Southwest, though, where the city of Austin literally hands itself over to the music masses.(There are not many urban mayors who big-up Gibson guitars while boasting to the media that their city's success is largely due to an annual musical orgy.)

As the festival kicked of its opening day, cops closed down streets to cars while workers constructed impromptu stages in parking lots and laneways. Badge-holders and wristband-wearers alike started wandering around looking for their first fix. By the time I rolled into Red 7 to see one of my favourite bands, Portland punks The Thermals, the venue's backyard was already at capacity.
The power trio didn't disappoint, delivering a full-barreled blast despite the early afternoon hour (and the fact that this is their first of eight shows). Mixing up tracks from their upcoming album Now We Can See and their under-appreciated agit-pop classic The Body, The Blood, The Machine, they were a perfect example of the elusive quality that makes or breaks bands here. On the surface, they're not doing anything different from every other indie punk band, they even look pretty indistinct, and yet their songs are just simply better than the competition. I expect they will leave Texas will many more fans than they arrived with.

From there it was off to witness our tax dollars at work at the annual Canadian Blast BBQ, which the gov bankrolls and which is brilliantly set-up right with free food, beer and bands right outside the convention center where everyone and their dog has to go to register.

Working-class rockers The Arkells played their Constantines-inspired sounds, but since the Cons have mellowed out in recent years, I have grown increasingly fond of their Hamilton-based descendants. Mother Mother impressed with "Oh My Heart" (though that's about it) and Shout Out Out Out delivered some serious synth-rock freak-outs, except the lack of anyone dancing made it come off a lot less interesting than usual.

Then we were off to have drinks with the Mayor at City Hall, in which he described Austin as the safest, most-educated, youngest and fastest-growing city in America, and I don't doubt it. This place truly really is a bastion of awesomeness.

Earlier I'd been chatting with Gareth Jones, who helms Upper Class Recordings (home to Cadence Weapon, The Cansecos and Russian Futurists) and was noting how few marquee names there are this year and how every party is booking the same 10 or 20 bands.

"I feel like the parties are more on point than ever this year-everyone's got their sponsor on-but there are no bands to draw in the masses," he said, pointing out the absence of obvious acts like indie faves like Fleet Foxes or Lily Allen. "It's the bands responsibility to support the best festival in North America for new bands."

Which, of course, is the point-this festival is supposed to be about emerging artists. So I headed over the Fader Fort, a daytime festival-within-a-festival, too see Britain's heavily buzzed Little Boots. The disco princess came onstage in a purple micro-dress and with several samplers, sequencers and some sort of Theremin-and proceeded to steal hearts. Though she took a few songs to warm up, she soon kicked into serious dance-pop gear, with rubbery basslines and thick synthesizers backing up her button-cute vocals which mix swagger with sweet.

Eventually, the crowd went wild for her electronic pop, Giorgio Moroder covers and big-room dance anthems. Unlike the UK's recent wave of throwback songstresses, Little Boots actually sounds like she's from this millennium. She's the buzz to beat right now and I expect by week's end she will be a full-fledged pop star on this side of the pond.

From there it was a genre whirlwind, as I hit up a soul revue (Brooklyn's Kendra Ross, Washington's Grammy-winning Mayna); saw some New Zealand rock (Ladyhawke), North Carolina "bluegrass-grunge" (Avette Brothers) and German techno (Booka Shade).

The latter was actually the second-best performance after Little Boots, as the tall Teutonic duo used electronic drum pads and a bank of electronics to drop a fiery, feel-good techno set that was practically stuck on epic.

Though the night was done, at SXSW it never is...so we went to the Red Bull Moon Tower party which was not, in fact, at the moon tower from Austin-filmed Dazed and Confused which was a big bummer for me as that movie is one of the all-time best movies ever.

Shepard Fairey, who created that iconic Obama poster, was DJing when we got there (spinning Joy Division and The Go-Gos) and was followed by the Israel chaos-rockers Monotonix, who have absolutely no songs but do perform on the floor and lose their minds crawling over each other and the moshing crowd while blowing eardrums as best they can.

It was fun the first time, in Toronto last year, but not so much without the shock value so at the cusp of 4:30am it wasfinally time to call it a night, er, day.