March 20, 1999 Paramount Theatre, Austin, TX

Jay S. Jacobs (2000): "Waits's show was the event of the conference. It was one of the view live performances he'd given in over a decade and the first time he'd played Austin in over fifteen years. Tickets for it were like gold. Local fans, record execs, and journalists fought one another for them. Several people were caught trying to sneak in. Everyone knew it was going to be an amazing show. Taking the stage, Waits won over the crowd immediately, happily preaching to the converted. He played a strong and varied set, previewing the new album [Mule Variations] with "House Where Nobody Lives" and "Filipino Box Spring Hog," He threw in several tunes from his Island years and, to the delight of those assembled, dusted off the classic Elektra cuts "Tom Traubert's Blues" and "(Looking For) The Heart of Saturday Night." The band was smoking, and Waits was visibly enjoying his rapport with the crowd. It's sad that such an event had to end on a sour note. Waits was obviously shaken when a woman started heckling him from the crowd, calling him a sellout for allowing so many music-biz types to snatch up tickets, effectively shutting out his "real, " nonprofessional fans. While it's highly unlikely that Waits had decreed how the tickets would be divided up, the woman's words seemed to sting him nonetheless. It might have been because the heckler wasn't completely off base. The days of intimate gigs played in smoky little bars to audiences of twenty or so were long over for Waits. He could no longer lead the life of the troubadour who passes through town and has a drink with the patrons after the show. It was the classic irony of the entertainment business reasserting itself. the more successful you are at connecting with your audience, the more that audience swells, the more isolated you become from it."

"The magic is so quickly followed by mayhem. The night after Tom Waits plays the Paramount Theatre, one of the all-time highlights of SXSW, his friend and sometime-promoter Don Hyde is savagely beaten by bouncers at La Zona Rosa. The bouncers were trying to clear out the crowd after Alejandro Escovedo's set, but when Hyde wants to go backstage to get his bag, there is some jostling, and push soon turns to punch, then to kicks in the side. Hyde suffers five broken ribs, a broken collarbone and a separated shoulder. Waits vows to never play Texas again and has stayed true to his word."