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Back in 1998 I made my first real inroads into the SXSW music festival. It’s trite to say it was better back then but it’s true that it certainly was DIFFERENT. The number of venues was a bit more limited and many of the bands were still the up and coming unknowns from all over the globe. There were still some big headlining shows everyone wanted to see at big places like the Austin Music Hall but you could just as good a time (if not better) by starting at one end of Sixth Street and just jumping from club to club. There were less lines at the Sixth Street venues and it meant you could hear a Japanese heavy metal band, a Swedish guitar-pop duo, a wicked DJ from Houston, still make it to see a favorite local band getting a slot at some bar and never have to wait in line longer than it took for someone to check you had a wristband or perhaps a three-deep line at the bar. That’s how I lucked into an amazing set from Yeska. The crowd at Maggie Mae’s seemed to be full of friends or folks who already knew the band so they needed little time to hit a groove. There were so many people jammed on stage I think one horn player was standing by the doorway belting out tunes. They packed a lot of tunes into the 45 minutes alloted to a band and left a hell of an impression on me. I scored a sampler tape from their release Skafrocubanjazz and finally upgraded it to CD/MP3 a while back. Great stuff.