SOUTH BY SOUTHWEST STRIKES ALL-INCLUSIVE CHORD.

Byline: Billy Altman Correspondent

It's just past midnight along jam-packed Sixth Street in downtown Austin, Texas, during the recently completed South by Southwest music festival, and even by witching-hour standards, what's transpiring on stage at the Eternal club is enough to make you pinch yourself in disbelief.

An eight-piece group called Goldie Lookin Chain is leading a delirious crowd in chanting the ``Woo-Woo-Woo'' chorus of a giddy number called ``Guns Don't Kill People, Rappers Do.'' Darting in, out and around each other and jumping up and down in unison, arms akimbo, gold chains flying, they're the very model of a modern major hip-hop crew. Even if they just happen to be a bunch of white kids who originate from that noted hotbed of rap music, Newport, in the south of Wales.

Meanwhile, scarcely 45 minutes later at another club a few blocks away, even more eye-opening antics are unfolding in the form of a rare performance by Miami's Blowfly, the notorious alter ego of '70s funkmeister and pioneering disco producer Clarence Reid. With his too-snug silver superhero costume - replete with tights, cape and mask - the now-60-year-old Blowfly looks like the Bizarro World version of Mr. Incredible.

Yet, working the room in front of a full show band featuring a horn section as well as bustier-clad dancers whose wigs sport the cutest little devil horns, BF barks his way through such raunchy classics as ``Funky Party'' and ``Booty Bus'' like an X-rated James Brown.

Artists like Goldie Lookin Chain and Blowfly epitomize the unpredictable, unexpected delights that always seem to lurk, literally, around every corner during the ever-dizzying SXSW, which this year presented some 1,300 acts at more than 50 venues over the course of four exhausting nights of nonstop music (not to mention the countless daytime and after-hours affiliated and unaffiliated showcases).

Like the season it heralds, this annual spring festival - which is perhaps the equivalent of filmdom's Sundance Festival - celebrates the ever-replenishing breadth and vitality of popular music in all its assorted forms. (Simplest example: 2005 performers ranged in age from the 10- and 12-year-olds of Seattle synth sister act Smoosh to the nonagenarian blues pianist Pinetop Perkins, sitting in with former Howlin' Wolf guitarist Hubert Sumlin.)

Moreover, with a record turnout of both artists and listeners, SXSW continues to underscore the ever-widening gulf between a stumbling, bean counter-controlled record industry and a disaffected audience that, between downloads, iPods and satellite radio, is doing a better job at seeking out talent than the powers that be.

Still, each edition of Austin's musical March madness invariably distinguishes itself in some way, and this one seemed to be highlighted by a healthy dose of what you might call musical civic pride. For all the talk about globalization and homogenization in the contemporary music scene, one was continually struck by the regional influences through which so many acts' stylistic approaches were filtered - while acknowledging the bedrock foundation of roots music (blues/folk/country/r&b) that continues to provide ground common to them all.

For a fitting microcosm, you didn't have to look any further than Los Super Seven, the rotating all-star collective of (appropriately) South and Soutwestern musicians who were debuting material from their upcoming CD, ``Heard It on the X,'' a rollicking tribute to the eclectic sounds of old-Texas/Mexico border radio.

Their lineup here featured singers Joe Ely, Rick Trevino, Raul Malo and Ruben Ramos, and instrumentalists including Bob Dylan guitarist Charlie Sexton, longtime Doug Sahm organist Augie Meyers and members of the Tucson band Calexico. Their set list - ranging from Bob Wills' ``My Window Faces the South'' and Woody Guthrie's ``Deportee'' to Buddy Holly's ``Learning the Game,'' the Bobby Fuller Four's ``Let Her Dance'' and Sunny and the Sunglows' ``Talk to Me'' - was an object lesson in musical/cultural cross-pollination.

They weren't alone in providing useful tutorials, either, as numerous artists evoked flash-card-like inspirational moments to remember them by. There was Nashville contrarian Webb Wilder (of ``Horror Hayride'' fame) somehow managing to meld hillbilly and heavy metal with ``Human Cannonball,'' while Janet Weiss of the eternal Northwestern riot grrrl trio Sleater-Kinney evoked no less than grunge rock presagers Blue Cheer's tubthumper Paul Whaley with her hellbent drumming.

There was merry olde UK hard-rock god Robert Plant, after all these years, finally releasing his inner hippie with noodly versions of his old Led Zeppelin classics, while the ever flamboyant David Johansen of the reunited New York Dolls saluted girl-group darlings the Shangri-Las with a devout reading of ``Out in the Street.''

There was also the wonderful counter-balance of seeing (at a nonfestival event) ex-Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen Bill Kirchen referencing virtually every well-known guitar riff of the last half-century (''Rebel Rouser,'' ``Secret Agent Man,'' ``Smoke on the Water,'' etc.) in a sizzling version of the twang-busting evergreen ``Hot Rod Lincoln'' - and, later in the day, watching onetime Captain Beefheart aide de camp Gary Lucas extracting the sounds of the spheres out of his dazzling Stratocaster with his open-ended jazz-rock-whatsis band, Gods and Monsters.

Still, amid all the impressionable juxtapositions of the old and new, as well as the hip (ex-Pavement lo-fi prince Stephen Malkmus, country- pure songstress Laura Cantrell) and the hyped (buzzworthy newcomers like England's post-punkish Futureheads and Canadian popsters Hot Hot Heat), perhaps the most lasting memories of SXSW 2005 will be of two musicians whom we didn't see play a single note. Roky Erickson, vocalist for Austin's mid-'60s garage-rock heroes the 13th Floor Elevators, and Brian Wilson, the ex-Beach Boys leader who just completed his long-abandoned ``Smile'' project, were the subjects of remarkable daytime conference panels.

Both, in their own ways, have been forced to deal with debilitating emotional problems over the years - the higher profiled Wilson, somewhat more successfully than Erickson - and the outpouring of support from those attending their panels was poignant. As critic David Fricke noted, ``Rock 'n' roll takes people and shakes them.'' Some, clearly, more than others.

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David Johansen of the reunited New York Dolls was one of hundreds of musicians pulling out the stops at South by Southwest, the sprawling music festival in Austin, Texas.

Sung Park/Austin American-Statesman