And then there are those who intricately plan their schedule down to the last detail, making certain to include alternates in case of disappointment. I fall squarely in the last group.

Beer & BBQ. Ringing ears. Buzz bands. Day parties. Hordes of Brits. Secondhand smoke. Sixth Street. Exhaustion. When approaching South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, the largest annual music event in the world, you've got to take the good with the bad (and the queen). With performances from over 1,300 bands, this year's conference held March 14-17 appears to have broken all former records. Fans and acts heaved from within the confines of the 59 designated venues, not counting the dozens of unofficial backyards and parking lots that also hosted live music.

In the past, SXSW has always featured a full schedule of musical acts from Thursday through Saturday. But this year, Wednesday really broke out on its own. Wednesday used to be for picking up your badge, settling into your hotel, getting acquainted with Austin, and for a few hundred diehards, attending the Austin Music Awards. But now it's a full-fledged conference day, with about as many musical events booked as the other days.

SXSW continues to be a popular spring break for bands and music fans from across the pond. Our U.K. brethren are eager to trade their cold climate for a bit of Texas sunshine, and this year's visiting talent included old hands like Buzzcocks, Donovan, and keynote speaker Pete Townshend, alongside buzz acts Amy Winehouse and Lily Allen, and up-and-comers like Mika, the Fratellis, the Pipettes, the Rumble Strips, the Horrors, Jamie T, and Loney, Dear. It's part of the special magic of SXSW that you can catch a soon-to-be legendary band like the Good, the Bad and the Queen (featuring Blur's Damon Albarn and the Clash's Paul Simonon) at a day party in a tiny club, or an insane double bill featuring Rickie Lee Jones and Lee "Scratch" Perry.

Everyone has their own individual SXSW experience. No two people are going to completely agree on the same schedule. Some folks prefer just wandering down the main music drag of Sixth St., popping into club after club on a blind voyage of discovery. Others prefer to eat and drink, and if a band is playing in the vicinity, well, that's a bonus. And then there are those who intricately plan their schedule down to the last detail, making certain to include alternates in case of disappointment. I fall squarely in the last group.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 13

Upon arrival, I head straight for the afternoon NME party at the outdoor Stubb's amphitheatre. Mumm-Ra is just finishing their set and I'm anxious to catch the jazz-metal riffage of the next act, Enter Shikari. Then I'm told they've cancelled. I cut my losses and head to the hotel to check in and get sorted.

My evening begins at the Dirty Dog on Sixth Street. Thanks to favorable recommendations from Brett Anderson and Mojo magazine, I decide to take in an 8:30 set by Bat for Lashes. Adorned with flamboyant eye makeup and beads in her hair, lead vocalist Natasha Khan makes for a striking earth mother, singing sweet invocations while gingerly squeezing an autoharp. There's a definite air of Nico about her, and the similarly clad female accompanists provide airy but able musical support. Without having heard her debut album, Fur and Gold, I find it hard to totally immerse myself in the set, especially considering that there's about five other things going on that I'd like to see. I make my exit only to be told later that the group played an ethereal take on Springsteen's "I'm On Fire."

Arriving back at the NME party at Stubb's, I'm disappointed to find that I've missed the U.S. debut by Leeds indie rock outfit The Sunshine Underground. Instead, I stake my place near the front of the stage to catch The Automatic, a young Welsh quartet who impressed with a brash and flashy stage show that left no doubt of their stadium aspirations. While the girls swooned for handsome vocalist/bassist Rob Hawkins, the obvious star of the band is impish prankster Alex Pennie. When not playing keyboards, banging a cowbell, or strolling amid the audience, Pennie was climbing the speaker stacks and inciting the audience to chaos. Initially coming across as desperate and laughable, Pennie stayed his course and won a huge cheer by gig's end. The largely U.K. crowd already knew most of the Automatic's songs by heart, so with a bit of stateside touring this band should make an impression here as well.

Jamie T, a 21-year-old troubadour from Wimbledon, didn't fare so well. With a guitar stance that recalled Joe Strummer, and an "every bloke" demeanor in line with Mike Skinner (the Streets) and Alex Turner (Arctic Monkeys), the plaid-clad youth delivered his ramshackle ska/pop tunes in an accent that was totally lost on us yanks. Plus, the massively distorted sound mix on the bass guitar proved to be an ear-splitting annoyance for the length of his set.

A crowd surge to the front of the stage signalled the late start of Lily Allen's showcase. A bona fide sensation in the United Kingdom, and with a Top 20 debut album to her credit in the United States, Allen strolled on stage with a cig in one hand and a Budweiser in the other, and simply went through the motions. Her creativity and energy were saved for hurling insults at the NME, the presenters of this Stubb's showcase. I'm not sure what her beef is with the publication, but the bitchiness didn't win any fans. It was up to her brass section to enliven proceedings with a few synchronized dance steps.

Exiting Stubb's, I next headed for the nearby Elysium, a long-running goth club in which I saw Skinny Puppy and Revolting Cocks in my misspent youth. I arrived in time to catch the last two songs by Bird, a group fronted by Mark Burgess of the '80s band the Chameleons. His swirling, hypnotic brand of shoegaze rock captivated, and the warm reception from the audience seemed to have made his long trip from Hamburg worthwhile.

Another longtime veteran of the rock wars was up next, Hugh Cornwell, the former vocalist of the Stranglers. Since leaving the Stranglers in 1990, Cornwell has continued to tour and has recorded a string of solo albums, the most recent being 2006's People Places Pieces. Shortly after arriving on stage past midnight, Cornwell recalled his first and only previous time in the city. "Austin, you've changed," he said. "When I was last here in 1980 there were no tall buildings." Cornwell was referring to the Stranglers' 1980 gig at Clubfoot, a time when the first song from his SXSW set, "No More Heroes," was fairly new and winning fans in the States. Cornwell played this Elysium gig solo and acoustic, alternating new songs with Stranglers classics. Many have forgotten what a powerhouse U.K. chart act the Stranglers were during their day, placing 21 Top 40 singles in the charts. His warm, honeyed voice intact, Cornwell enthralled with versions of "Duchess," "Goodbye Toulouse," "Golden Brown," "Always the Sun," and the rousing singalong "Hanging Around." Before launching into the notorious "Nice'n'Sleazy," Cornwell remarked, "For some reason when we used to play this, women would come up on stage and take their clothes off," referring to widely circulated footage of a concert the band played at Battersea Park in 1978. The best of his post-Stranglers output performed tonight were "Nerves of Steel" from 1997's Guilty and a humorous ode to Bob Dylan, "24/7," from 2004's Beyond Elysian Fields.

My one true revelation of this year's conference was up next. I had first discovered IAMX on MySpace, and quickly tracked down the 2005 debut album Kiss + Swallow. Late last year, a second set, The Alternative, was released in Europe, and it's due out in the States next month. Dressed in a tight black coat and a sequined top hat, Chris Corner of IAMX moved across the black stage at Elysium with the physicality of Prince while looking like a live action version of Jack from The Nightmare Before Christmas. The Berlin-based Corner previously enjoyed success with Sneaker Pimps, but IAMX is an altogether more immediate and aggressive vehicle. Backed by an industrial trio that wouldn't look out of place alongside Marilyn Manson, Corner writhed through a fog of dry ice and strobe lights, delivering muscular dance tracks with pervy titles like "Spit It Out" and the aforementioned "Kiss + Swallow." His dramatic half-hour set was a sleek modernist upgrade of Nine Inch Nails' Pretty Hate Machine that will serve him well among the goth and industrial dance set.

Sleep finally came my way as the clock approached 3 a.m.