Michael Corcoran, Kinky Friedman For more than four decades Michael Corcoran dissected and defined the music that makes Austin cool, and while his work’s appeared in publications ranging from Spin to Texas Highways , he will always — in my mind at least— be remembered most for his  groundbreaking years at the Austin Chronicle. Collage from Outside Industry: The Story of SXSW , courtesy Arts+Labor. Corky came here from Hawaii in 1983 with fellow wild man Rollo Banks — a tattoo artist with whom he’d been putting out a zine in Honolulu. Within a year of arriving, he was writing what quickly became the most anticipated drop of the week, his column Don’t You Start Me Talking . At the time, the Chronicle was three years old, a scrappy operation, as described by the co-founders and Corcoran in Outside Industry: The Story of SXSW. Fiercely independent and contrarian, Corky loved to lob hand grenades. He famously titled one early column “Austin Music Sucks”.   This caused no small amount of heartburn. That column ran with an editor’s note: “Due to the unusual nature of Corcoran's column in this issue, there was considerable doubt around the office as to whether it should be run at all. One staffer even suggested that publishing it might place Corky in imminent danger of serious bodily harm. It was at that point that we decided to run it.” Kevin Curtin, The Austin Chronicle Eventually tiring of the poison pen (mostly), he turned to research and earned a Grammy nomination for his writings on gospel. I interviewed him for a documentary project in 2015, and Corky explained his attraction to origin stories, as well as how he ended up here. Michael Corcoran spent a lifetime articulating what music tells us about ourselves. If you are curious about Austin, what makes us who and what we are, head to his Substack Overserved . His words have value, they carry weight. FEARLESS TEXAS CHUTZPAH* Kinky Friedman records Austin City Limits, 1975. Photo courtesy Austin City Limits/Austin PBS *Kinky Friedman as described by Taj Mahal Singer, novelist, raconteur…candidate for Governor…Friedman made it his life’s work to provoke.  Of course he also was a tremendously talented entertainer, and in 1975 Austin City Limits invited the Texas Jewboys to tape a show. Friedman wrote the story for Texas Monthly in 2004: The set list hit all sorts of hot buttons — race, immigration, abortion — even a song involving a picture of Jesus and the men’s room. Kinky Friedman, Texas Monthly 2004 Well, good news — all that changed two years later. ACL’s Ed Bailey picks up the story. In 2006, Austin City Limits and New West Records got together and released the first batch of Artists from the fabled ACL Archives. These included Willie Nelson, Susan Tedeschi, Waylon Jennings, Robert Earl Keen, Billie Joe Shaver and others. 2006 was also the year that Kinky Friedman campaigned in a four-way race to become Governor of the State of Texas. This thrust Kinky into the media spotlight. ACL had a "lost" episode recorded with Kinky from ACL Season 1, from 1975, that never made it to the PBS airwaves - a rare occurrence in the history of the series. We decided it was time to let the public have access to it. With Kinky's full involvement, we remastered and released it on July 10, 2007. It has become one of the true collector's items from the ACL Vaults which contain over 1,000 historic performances. Ed Bailey, VP, Brand Development, Austin City Limits So…here you go…Men’s Room L.A. Kinky Friedman, Texas Monthly NO ARMY…NO VETERANS. Twin bombshells last week from the sculpted tower, as SXSW announced first that it would no longer allow the US Army and weapons manufacturers to sponsor the festival, and followed two days later with a Friday afternoon announcement that SXSW had laid off 23 people , or as a friend put it “everyone left that I knew.” Erin McArthur, SXSW HQ, 1989. Both events are tied to a pivot. Earlier this year the fest announced SXSW London, which follows last year’s expansion with SXSW Sydney. Co-President Hugh Forrest is one of the few remaining OGs, an Austin native who’s been with SX since 1989. He issued this statement to the Austin Chronicle. “We are looking forward with a new vision, not just for SXSW as an event in Austin, TX but as a three-stop tour for global professionals with events in Sydney and London. We are also preparing new efforts to position the business as a year-round destination for insights about the future of culture, education, and technology via new roles focused on content and user experience.” Hugh Forrest, SXSW Co-President and Chief Programming Officer Hugh Forrest, then and now. I won’t rehash my SXSW post-mortems — you can read them here and here — except to say that when I saw this Wall Street Journal feature a month after the fest it felt like a look at the future. The article walks us through the global network of ultra-exclusive conferences, one of which is called Sportico, co-hosted by new SXSW owner Jay Penske on Kiawah Island in South Carolina. As the Journal wrote, attendees are drawn by the opportunity… “to exist for a brief time in a buffered safe space where CEOs, celebrities, athletes and political leaders know that no one will tweet a photo of them working out or waiting in line for Champagne. They are invitation-only, and attendees often arrive via private jet and tinted-out SUVs. The talks are off the record. No one who goes cares what it costs.” Sara Ashley O’Brien, Emily Glazer and Jessica Toonkel. The Wall Street Journal, April 20, 2024. Times change, as does the world — and it still comes to Austin every March. But transitions tear at the soul. As Forrest himself wrote in the SXSW statement, his former colleagues “dedicated their hearts and hard work” to making the festival special. They succeeded. The landscape which birthed it simply no longer exists. Here’s hoping they can hold on to the spirit. Alan Berg, Publisher GAY HEAT Pride month might be over, but the heat is still alive. Last week, Brigitte Bandit, Vertarias, Subpar Snatch and Lord Friday the 13th took the stage for GAY HEAT at Still Austin Whiskey Co. happyxheat A post shared by @happyxheat HAPPYIN’ THIS WEEKEND 7/5/24 Friday I'm In Love: An Evening Of Shoegaze & Dream-Pop Keepsake and Bloody Knives at Hotel Vegas 7/6/24 South Austin Summer Fest - Benefiting The Breast Cancer Resource Center A stacked all day line up at the Far Out Lounge. All ages! 7/7/24 Sundance Short Film Festival Tour 2024 at AFS Cinema A 110-minute theatrical program of seven short films curated from the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, including three Festival Award-winning titles. How are we doing? We want to hear from you. Take this quick survey and help us make Happy Heat better. Go see something, tell us about it, we’ll share more stories next week. Let’s build something together. We’d be forever grateful for your help, and an easy way to do so is by subscribing to the Happy Heat Substack. 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