Day One... Friday. Toots and the Maytals and Gomez Got to the festival around 6. Parked and walked to the festival shuttles. Waited in line for about 40 minutes. Got to the festival and got my ticket at will call... walked to the gate and traded the ticket for a wristband. The wristband is your ticket for the next 2 days and it allows you in and out at your leisure. The festival is HUGE. I had no idea this much land was tucked away in Zilker Park. There TONS of people, smelly hippies, a touch of patchouli, the wafting smell of weed, food and beer booths, port a potties and trash. Typical festival. We made our way as close as possible to see Toots and the Maytals. There were tons of people around this stage and it was crowded. Toots came out as the sun went down and it looked like this... We stayed for a bit of Toot's set, then wandered over to see Gomez on the Heineken stage and it was surprisingly small... we got pretty close and waited... Gomez threw down. TThey were excellent live. After their set, we caught the shuttles back to our parking area. That went surprisingly fast and smooth. Tomorrow night may be different since we'll be staying till the final bands. Tonight we left before the actual festival ended. Check in for day two... coming up... Big Head Todd & The Monsters, Modest Mouse, Elvis Costello, The Wailers, The Pixies, more sun and smelly hippies.
I just saw Franz Ferdinand in Houston last Wednesday. They absolutely rocked. They are much better live, and had such great showmanship. I wish I could go to the Austin Festival to see em again.
I'm so disappointed that I didn't make it there today. Got too busy at work. Haven't decided if I'll make it tomorrow either. Lots of great bands on Saturday, but I've seen two of the six I want to see (New Monsoon and Old 97s), two others should be easy enough to see again upcoming (My Morning Jacket -- just played Houston, but they'll be back, and the Gourds are from Texas, so they play here a lot), and I suspect Modest Mouse will return soon-ish. It's not like they've got a 2 hour set or anything, so while I'm missing them, it's not too bad. Sunday's the day I REALLY want to be there, so I might forego Saturday (money is tight, plus I could use some rest), and just go on Sunday.
Got ticket? Just a heads-up; they sold out all of the 3-days and said they only had limited 1-days remaining. We're not going...again...but next year the kids go to the grandparent's...
Gomez put on a great show. Los Lonely Boys also jammed preaty hard at times. Tons of people, and hot as hell. Pixies today and I can't wait.
i got there late but just in time for toots and the maytals. they were really good. i do like the reggae. i than saw franz ferdinand, who i had never heard but heard much about. they were good, but i was getting bored about halfway thru their set. i think they wear their influences on their sleves a little too much. one song would sound like new order, one would sound like the cure and than one would sound like joy division. those are 3 of my favorite all-time bands, but i like some originality. i guess im just getting harder to please in my old age. and every song has the same disco/dance beat. i saw about 10 minutes of sheryl crow, who is really good at what she does. ryan adams came out and played on that "if it makes you happy it cant be that bad" song. he gave it a little bit of a stones swagger w/ his keef richards style playing and back-up vox. i also saw about 20 minutes of los lonley boys. i prefer delta style acoustic blues to SRV electified, but these guys are good. they had a percussionist and organ player and had some nice santana style jams. interesting hybrid of tejano/blues. plus they're texans! it does seem to be WAY more crowded than the last 2 festivals (and this was only friday). not alot of open space at all out there.
This is my first year, but trust me there were THRONGS of people... the newspaper said 70,000 on Friday alone... I think there will be a lot more people today... I also can't get over how huge the area where the festival is... something like 15 acres. It's huge... If I make it through the day (it's pretty hot here) I'll report back with more pics.
I'll be out there today ~ if you can try and check out Cooper's Uncle my friend's bluegrass band (12:50 Austin Ventures stage).
I'm so friggin' jealous of the ones who got to see the Pixies live tonight. I caught it live on the Yahoo Broadcast, and dayum! They absolutely rocked! I CANNOT WAIT until their concert here next month. One of the best bands ever!
Day 2: Hot and mega crowded... Our day started at 12pm as we caught the shuttles to the festival... 1pm was showtime for Cat Power... She had a great set, but at the end said to the crowd that it had sucked. Sounded good to me. Here she is on stage... After Cat, we got something to eat and then made our way over to see Big Head Todd and the Monsters. They put on a rockin' good show. By the time BHT was over, the place was packed... there was no longer very much room to move, it was hot and mega crowded. We got something to drink and headed over to get ready to see Modest Mouse. MM played one of the two biggest stages, the area around the stage was packed and folks were spread out all over the place. We made our way as close to the stage as possible... That was our view for the entire MM show... not too bad, but not too good... after MM, it was about 6 pm and we were beat... we still had the Wailers and the Pixies to see... but it was so crowded and so hot that we decided we'd seen enough. The place was sold out and there were bodies everywhere. With barely room to move, to me, it was no longer fun. We caught the shuttle back to the parking areas and headed home. Six hours was enough. Here's some crowd pics snagged from the Austin newspaper... here's a shot of the crowd I took... I don't regret missing any of the bands I missed... It was rather uncomfortable towards the end. Tomorrow... 3rd and final day... We're gonna try to see Elvis Costello and Wilco
Hey rockHEAD. I just wanted to let you know that your goal of edjumacating the ignorant is not being done in vain. After hearing your lessons (link in your sig) on the evil that is "leeching images", I've changed my ways. Instead of direct linking to the site that I find the images on, I get them hosted on ImageShack. Once I found out that it's free, and you don't need to signup then it was a no brainer. It's a little bit of extra effort on my part, but if it means some dude doesn't get hit with a huge bill because his pic got posted on a message board that gets hundreds of views, then it's worth the effort. I'm not much of an image poster, but I guess every bit counts. Keep on fighting the good fight RH.
FYI: On the news tonight here in Austin, they showed the lost-and-found at the ACL. People turned-in tons of drivers licenses and credit cards. One girl happened to find here wallet while they were taping and even the cash was still there. Last year, a woman lost a diamond ring. A guy playing football in Zilker...nine months later...found it. I love Texas.
Any of you sporting a Rockets jersey at ACL? I noticed a guy at the show for Cake wearing a T-Mac Rockets jersey. Cake actually came out for encores, unlike the Pixies. Both were enjoyable.
Day Three... Elvis Costello Wilco Elvis went on at 4:30 and with the shuttles running constantly, we got there in perfect time to get a decent spot, we weren't sure how close we could get, but it was amazingly easy, the crowd was a bit more mellow than the Modest Mouse crowd the day before. Elvis came out and rocked that stage. He and The Imposters tore it up with a perfect blend of old and new stuff. He did a couple of songs off the new CD "The Delivery Man" threw in some classic stuff and did one encore which included him combining one of his songs with Elvis' Suspicious Minds. The song escapes me, but the show was great! After Elvis, we walked across the festival to see Wilco, it was super crowded and as you can tell from the pictures, we didn't get as close... it didn't matter, Wilco rocked from anywhere you stood. They put together an awesome set and did plenty of material from A Ghost Is Born. Really excellent... and I leave you with this last picture, The ACL sunset... I'm not ruling out attending another ACL, the shuttle service was amazing and big props to the organizers for putting it all together and doing it well. The longest we waited for shuttles was on the first day... about 35-40 minutes in line, but the following two days, there was no wait. The food was affordable, my only complaint would be to have 2 concession areas instead of one. To be honest, the lines did move pretty fast, it was just crowded.
