WRAPPING UP SXSW: South by Southwest has come and gone for another year, and our local media outlets blanketed the music portion over the weekend. Among the more interesting reports are:

• DFW.com caught up with Crowley drummer Jordan Richardson, who is manning the kit for Ben Harper’s new band, Relentless7. Harper and the band taped an episode of Austin City Limits while down at the festival.
• Quickdfw.com has several videos up of some of the performances, including footage of Roy G and the Biv, Janelle Monae and Wavves.
• The DC9 at Night blog gets you into the secret Metallica show that went down at Stubbs. It was secret only because it wasn’t techincally on the bill, but no worries – plenty of people managed to find out about it.

REVIEWS MIXES FOR ‘TABLE MANNERS’: Stage West debuted Table Manners over the weekend, the first of three plays that make up The Norman Conquests. Lawson Taitte says there’s still some work to do for the actors to settle into their roles. Writing for Guidelive.com, he says, “With five weeks more to be working on these characters, the actors may eventually settle into them. It needs to happen: The circumstances underlying any Ayckbourn play are always too unpleasant to endure happily if the cast doesn’t unlock the glee in all that suffering.” Lawson saw the play on Saturday night, so there’s a chance that some work was done before Sunday’s performance. That’s when Punch Shaw reviewed it for DFW.com. According to that review, Table Manners is a sign of more good things to come from the next two installments. “Most of the six actors are excellent. And knowing that their characterizations and timing are likely to get even better as they work through the three plays is enough to make anyone who saw the Sunday matinee seen for this review want to come back for more.” Theaterjones.com hasn’t weighed in just yet, but if they do, maybe we’ll let them break the tie.

A NEW WAY TO SOUND: Wired.com has a story about a competition to design a new musical instrument that went down recently. More than 60 people entered, and 25 were chosen to demonstrate their inventions. As you might guess, many of them have some computer element to them. Click through on the story to see video examples and listen to audio of them. If you find a favorite in there, let us know.