In preparation for our town's nonstop schedule of fall festivals, Austinist ventured over to Seattle to check out the long-running Bumbershoot Music and Arts Festival, a massive three-day affair that takes place on the sprawling "Seattle Center" near the famous Space Needle. What began as a modest city-funded event in the early seventies has today grown into an impressive spectacle celebrating just about everything in the Arts & Entertainment realm — and while the impressive list of musical acts garners the most attention, Bumbershoot boasts its share of comedic talent, independent film, avant-garde dance troupes, and more. It's also one of the sites of the Flatstock poster convention. more ›

One of our favorite parts of SXSW Music last year was only tangentially related to the thousand-plus bands in town -- it was Flatstock 6, a three-day gigposter show over at the Austin Convention Center that featured some of the world's most talented screen printers (we snagged a limited-edition print of the cover of Michael Chabon's The Final Solution, as well as some classic Flaming Lips show posters). And this South by, they're coming... more ›

Waterloo Records, one of our finest independently-owned, nationally-renowned music stores, has been nominated for a prestigious PLUG Independent Music Award, along with Austin festivals SXSW and ACL. Sponsored by URB, Spin, Insound and Evolvs Media, the annual nominees are selected by a group of "writers, DJs, webmasters, bloggers, artists, filmmakers, managers, indie retailers, and most importantly, fans." Now that the lists have been narrowed down to a lucky few in categories such as the... more ›