Ballroom Dancing

Photo By Gary Miller

What Do You Want From Life?

Austin Convention Center, Friday, March 16

How many people here this week will realize they're never going to make it? Probably quite a few. And yet, few musicians who have that epiphany pawn all their equipment. A panel of musicians involved in answering the very amorphous question – what do you want from life? – included Tom Morello, Aqualung's Matt Hales, the Hoodoo Gurus' Dave Faulkner, hometown boy Britt Daniel, Touch & Go Records founder Corey Rusk, and Taylor Hanson, of Hanson. They struggled with their place in the music industry, declining album sales, the end of artistic vision, and, as Hanson put it, the inherent talent for "bending over" in order to make it. Mmmbop. There was no shortage of ruminations on fuck-ups past – as Hales so nicely summed up, "If someone tells you how to get to the party, you'll never get home" – but the answer to the titular question remained as elusive as a flyer for your band's show laying in a puddle of vomit on Sixth Street.