Austin Sound

Last week it was finally announced what UT is going to do with the Cactus Cafe. If you haven’t been keeping up, we recommend you check out Austin Powell’s coverage in the Chronicle, which he’s managed to milk for eleven freakin’ weeks. tl;dr. The basic deal that was struck was that KUT will hire a manager for the place and book most of the shows, while the University Union will handle the bar. KUT and the Union are going to split the profits (read: losses). This means KUT is about to put more FUN in their Fund drives!

So the big question is, should we care that the Cactus has been granted a stay of execution, or that it’s now KUT’s clubhouse? Over the past few months as this debacle unfolded, we heard from the traditional Austin old-guard that the Cactus is an invaluable institution to the city. Meanwhile, it seems that most of the younger indie bloggers and folks around let out a collective sigh of “meh.” Now, we realize that the three readers that keep up with Austin Sound (thanks mom!) fall mostly in the latter category. But then we’re old in blog years, and we have seen some amazing shows at the Cactus. Or contention is, in fact, that you should care about the Cactus, and that the deal with KUT is pretty rad. Here are some reasons why:

1. KUT has been trying out a ton of new stuff, a lot of which came to fruition at SXSW this year. Because they’re an NPR station, they carry impressive national clout to book some incredible acts in the venue. And in the past few years, NPR as a whole has managed to emerge as a pretty damn reputable tastemaker, even in the indie scene. Hell, they’ve hosted first streams of Spoon, Dark Night of the Soul, and recently, Sleigh Bells. Watch out, you’re mom is getting hip.

2. Though KUT hasn’t come up with, or at least released, a business plan for the Cactus yet, the fact that they will absorb half the losses (um, we mean profits) likely means that all those “friends of the cactus” (over 9,000 now!) will be able to put their money where their mouths are. Whether some of the operating costs will come from KUT’s twice-yearly fund raising on air, or whether they’re going to try to make the Cactus a separate endeavor, we don’t know. But we’ll put money down that they’ll be asking the community to chip in one way or another.

3. The Cactus is the best listening room in town. That is a fact. That’s not to say it doesn’t have its problems, which may or may not be improvable. But it is certainly worth having around, at least until a comparable or better venue in that vein comes along. We haven’t seen it.

4. We are actually very curious and a little tingly with anticipation (ok, we’re really just drunk) about what kind of things KUT will do with “their own” venue. They’ve organized some pretty awesome shows in the Austin City Limits studios, but if ACL ever manages to actually move downtown, the Cactus will suffice for a close to home space for some shows for the radio station. In fact, they’ll probably end up doing some crazy, intimate solo shows and stuff with some pretty big name folks for fund-raisers, etc. Not that any of us could ever afford to go to them, but they’ll probably stream it live, anyway.

So those are some of the reasons why we think this is a pretty ideal set-up, even if UT has amazingly botched their handling of the Cactus debacle every step along the way. Or maybe we’re wrong. Guess we’ll see when they start booking.