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Austin City Limits Festival

Gomez at ACLFest

I'm an avid music fan living in the "live music capital of the world," but I seldom take time these days for live in-person music, so attending the Austin City Limits Music Festival over the weekend was like a great meal after a fast. But the air conditioner's broken, it's complicated to cook, some of it tastes a little flat; in the end I'm elated but my stomach's rumbling sore.

Complicated to cook.

The logistics for ACLFest are complicated but handled very well by the folks that organize the thing. The toughest part is getting there, but you have several options: you can park at the Long Center, which is a mile or so away... or you can park in one of the state parking garages along Trinity/San Jacinto and ride one of a jillion shuttles that run throughout the event. You can take a bicycle or a taxi or a bicycle-rickshaw (saw plenty of those around). However you do it, there's some walking involved, and this year the weather was HOT and muggy, so you could be dripping sweat by the time you get to the gate.

Once you're there you generally have to hustle from one stage to another to catch the acts you want to see, and often one's starting before another begins, and the crowds this year were so much more than last year's, we found it more difficult to get from one stage to another; you had to push your way through people who were jammed together in crowds that were especially huge and dense at the stages for the major acts. And then there were the chair people to contend with.

The chair people.

Of the 75,000 or so attending, I figure half or maybe two-thirds brought collapsible chairs, the kind you can fold and store in an easy-to-carry bag. Last year we thought this was a great idea, even brought our own for one or two days. However this year with so many people on hand the chairs were a nuisance, and there was a particular breed of chair-toting whacko that we referred to as the chair people – people who treated their chairspace as property, and god help trespassers who wander through. Wandering in for the Sheryl Crow set, we stopped to stand in a relatively clear space in front of a couple of these creatures, and they simply went nuts. "This is not going to work," they told us. "You can't stand there. We came here 45 minutes ago so that we'd have a place with nobody standing in front of us." Eh? You've got about 50 rows of people in front of you and they're all going to be standing. Aren't YOU going to stand? "That's not the point. We were here first, you can't just come and stand in front of us." That's not exactly the way we usually do it in Austin general admission shows, but from the looks of 'em, these folks hadn't been to many of those. (They were evidently young Republican typse who were set off by the Kerry bumpersticker Marsha was wearing.) We did okay, though... we moved a few feet over into a passel of young girls who knew Crow's songs by heart and became an emergent choir each time she it a particularly striking chorus. Amazing harmony! They took the Crow set to another level. In fact, this was one of the best sets - Sheryl was bubbly in love, her boyfriend Lance Armstrong hanging around the periphery of the set. Her band is incredibly tight, and she had a couple of extras (Ryan Adams and Doyle Bramhall).

Some of it tastes a little flat.

A couple of disappointments: The Pixies had a bad start, attributable mostly to a bad mix, though they didn't seem passionate about the music when they started... this might've been because they knew the sound sucked. The mix was thin and Joey Santiago was buried. After three or four songs we were wandering away, but stopped to talk to friends and, as we were talking, the sound system kicked in. The rest of the set was pretty good but not great.

Wilco didn't quite fly, either, though I think it was because we'd just walked over from the Drive-By Truckers set, and Wilco opened with a set of songs that were softer and less compelling. I think Tweedy was onto this; there was an up-tempo shift for the last half of the set, capturing the crowd's attention, which had been wandering.

The best of the best.

Four bands blew me away, and one was a surprise: I'd heard of Drive-By Truckers but I should've paid more attention. Their set was the most energized of all... explosive manic rock that drove the crowd wild. They were the second great Southern rockblues band we saw, the first being the North Mississippi All Stars, already one of our favorites. The All Stars play blues resonant with The Allman Brothers and Derek Trucks, at least Luther Dickinson's guitar style is Allmanesque (similar, but not derivative: his chops are his own). Then there was Gomez – I've been listening to their recorded music a lot lately, a kind of pop psychedelic blues combo, infectious listening. No disapppointment here, the band blasted through their set with relentless energy.

I'm elated but my stomach's rumbling sore

Heh - we had a great weekend but the heat and the walking and standing and DANCING wiped me out!

I should recover in time for next year's festival, though...

jon posted this at 8:24 AM
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