Well, it’s eight million degrees and the skeeters are out, so naturally that means that it must be time for the Austin City Limits Music Festival!
Ray and I have never been to ACL Fest, which invades Zilker Park every year in September, and he was really thrilled about the lineup and found us 3-day passes. Me, I just wanted to see Crowded House.
So, yesterday was the first day of the festival, and Ray’s pal Joanna scored us a parking pass in a garage next to the park. Let me clarify: the garage is next to the park. ACL Fest, however, is in a subset of the park, that isn’t adjacent to the garage, however, the alternative is to join the hordes who either pay through their noses for a spot in the neighborhood, or park in downtown Austin and take the shuttles in. So we walk it – it’s about a half hour in each direction.
The Weather Channel was promising highs in the mid-80s all weekend, and so we were a little surprised-nay, bummed-to get out of the car and start walking only to discover that we’d surpassed the mid-80s by 9 am and were on our way to the mid-90s, which feels much hotter when you’re sitting out in the direct sunlight, all of the shade having been co-opted by the crazy insane people who showed up at 9 am.
Even when we got there, around noon, it was still pretty sparse:
And so. We hung around for a group we’d never heard of called the Heartless Bastards, and all I shall say there is that after a couple of songs, Joanna leaned over and asked me, “Is she singing in English?” Ouch.
After that, we moved on to the main stage at the other end of the park – the AT&T stage, not to be confused with the AT&T Blue Room stage–where Pete Yorn was on. Joanna’s a big fan. So, we get over there and Pete — we’re on a first name basis, me and Pete — starts playing and gets immediately upstaged by The Fire:
A propane tank exploded, and apparently several people were critically injured. Pete Yorn was eventually replaced on the stage by one of the security guys who asked everyone to move over to allow the Fire Department to do their business, which was probably just as well, because by that point no one was looking at the stage anyway:
People moved, Pete finished his set, and then it was on to Peter Björn and John, a group whose recordings I don’t mind, but I’d heard they weren’t that good live and … well, what I heard wasn’t wrong.
It wasn’t that they were bad, it was that it sounded like they didn’t have anyone controlling the sound – it all sounded flat and kind of muffled.
We were initially planning to stay for a bit and then move over to get good seats for Crowded House, but we were worried that we wouldn’t be able to make our way through the crowd with all of our stuff. That turned out to be not such a worry, since by the time we were ready to go, a lot of other people had been ready and already left.
Sorry, guys, better luck next time.
I adore Crowded House, and even though Ray and Joanna only knew one song each (“Don’t Dream it’s Over” – the song everyone knows), I made them stay for the entire set because Crowded House was the only act I was really excited about seeing the entire weekend. Bah. They’re a lovely live band, and had I known we’d have a better view 100 feet to the left, we might have moved, but …
By this point, the crowd was kicking and it was pretty packed – as the evening goes on, the names get bigger and the number of acts gets smaller, so it becomes harder to fend for a space in the crowd:
Anyway, to round out the night were Queens of the Stone Age … eh … and The Killers, who were headlining opposite Björk on the other side of the park. I know that Shin will find it horribly shocking that we didn’t go see Björk, but Joanna and Ray are both big fans of The Killers and they were really good, even to someone like me who only knew the 2 songs that get played on the radio.
Overall, a lot of fun, expensive food, hot boys shirtless (and, unfortunately, a lot of really not hot boys shirtless as well. Straight men have absolutely no concept of body consciousness, do they?), and good music. And so, we trudged back to the car dutifully afterwards, exhausted, sweaty, and covered in bug repellent and sunscreen. Ray has already pared back the schedule for the next two days so as to minimize our time in the heat and/or movement about the park — it was really brutal, and we’re both sluggish this morning in getting ready to head down there again.
And that was my Friday. It doesn’t involve an iPhone, naturally, but still a change from the norm.
It sounds like a fun event so far. Checking out the lineup, it sounds like there were a lot of good acts. Wilco – I would love to catch them live. Thanks for putting me and Bjork in the same sentence.