austin, texas

A backwards farming town distinguished by a curious disease. No one knows exactly how the disease began, but its consequences are clear: the devaluation of art. Particularly hard hit has been music. One of the typical symptoms of this disease is the irrational assessment that any four foot square space is a suitable "venue" for "live music." As a consequence, most of the inhabitants of Austin have succumbed to the delusion that they are in "bands" and can regularly be seen filling any available four foot square space with the performance of bizarre rituals which can only be described as a crude and perverse imitation of music. The victims of the disease seem to think that any collection of sounds whatsoever is suitable for "performance" in said manner, provided one's accompanying ritual is sufficiently pretentious (corollary: or one's tie-dye sufficiently lurid). To date, the disease has consumed the majority of Austin's once-noble populace. Yet with more than 90% of the town operating under the delusion that they are musicians, there is no effective procedure by which to locate any actual musicians who might reside there. Instead, any tentative venture out into public is immediately sullied by a barrage of derivative and uninspired sounds issuing from every building and public space, combining to form a cacophony which immediately reduces both one's expectations and one's desire for music. In such a restriction-free environment, how can art even exist? This is why the town has been dubbed by some "The Live Music Anti-Capital of the World."