South by

Yeah, I survived another South by Southwest Music Conference. It's getting tougher each year. For music fans, it's still one of the most amazing bargains in the world. (Your choice of 1,300 bands, over five days, more or less, for $150) For music critics and others working, it's a marathon of 16-hour workdays -- though I'm not going to complain about seeing 50 or so bands and keynote speeches from Neil Young, Morrissey and Chrissie Hynde. Still too amazing to believe.


Anyway, here's some of my coverage for Newsday:

THE ROUNDUP::"I know," Arctic Monkeys singer Alex Turner told the crowd. "We're good, right?"

Well, yeah. But hundreds of the 1,300 bands at South by Southwest were good. Dozens of them were great - from their less-buzzed about British counterparts The Subways and rapper Lady Sovereign to buzz graduates Dashboard Confessional and Long Island's Straylight Run, who were even having a bit of an off night, truth be told.

And dozens more were ready to take Arctic Monkeys' place in the buzz line.

MORRISSEY:For more than two decades, Morrissey has found it hard to hold his tongue. He has found it hard to accept his role as iconic leader of The Smiths, hero to the disenfranchised and the dramatic, the bookish and those bewildered by life. He has found it hard to get comfortable with the world and his place in it. But slowly, then all of a sudden, he has seemingly changed his world view.

His new album, "Ringleader of the Tormentors" (Attack/ Sanctuary), finds the one-time "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now" singer oddly upbeat and even, at times, happy. But don't worry, longtime fans, it's only sometimes.

PICKS: Corinne Bailey Rae and Dashboard Confessional