Austin City Limits

This was a fun, albeit long, weekend. I barely have any pictures worth posting from the festival because all I had on me was my phone the whole time, which takes subpar pictures on a good day. But I'll post the few worth posting...

After getting out of work on Friday, I walked North from my office building to Zilker Park. I was incredibly relieved to find that the ticket I had bought off of some random guy on Craigslist was legit. Thanks Austin, for staying semi-honest! (Semi-honest because I have not forgotten nor forgiven the litany of fake apartment and job listings I've had to wade through recently. I suspect this is more about Craigslist than Austin, but I'm holding the city responsible too.)

I did miss the Black Keys. Yes, this is sad. Hopefully I'll see them at some point. I also missed Miike Snow and The Mountain Goats, who played Friday morning. I would've liked to see them live. At the NJFF last year we showed a documentary that was basically just concert footage of John Darnielle doing his thing. It sounded okay (I didn't watch it). Mostly that screening is memorable to me because a woman and her son showed up without checking to see what we were showing; they bought their tickets and entered the theater only to emerge angry and perplexed about 20 minutes later. What the hell kind of trick were we trying to play on them? Why weren't we showing a real movie? We gave them their money back and they went away quietly but I'll never forget the distrust in that woman's eyes... It was like she had found out her whole life was founded upon a lie... We usually showed such good things, she thought she could trust us...

Anyway! Phish played Friday night, they were great. I caught most of Spoon and some of The Sonic Youth/Vampire Weekend while I was wandering around. It was like putting the ipod on shuffle, kind of. Good times. I saw a buttload of acts on Saturday, my favorite of which were Gogol Bordello and Matt & Kim. Really energetic bands- the former because they are crazy gypsy tramps and the latter just seemed really excited to be here. Kim danced on the audience's hands. It was cool. I was disappointed by Pete Yorn though, who played Saturday afternoon and whose album Musicforthemorningafter I have loved since high school. His sound was not good.

But then! Sunday. Oh Sunday. What a wealth of greatness was Sunday. I started off the day with Blind Pilot, who played most of 3 Rounds and a Sound, which I have probably listened to somewhere in the thousands of times at this point. They played a few new songs too, which were lovely. It was perfect, and if you ask me about it to my face I will deny it but... I may or may not have gotten a little verklempt when they played "Oviedo". You didn't hear it from me. Well, you did. But I'll never admit it.

Also very good on Sunday: Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, whose set was eeextremely jam-filled. They sort of played snippets of their songs in between instrumental stuff. Or at least, that's what it seemed like at the time. I don't know. It was late afternoon, the last day of the festival. I was dazed and dehydrated. For all I know they didn't show up and I dreamed the whole thing. So in hindsight the overall performance was sort of cool. Probably. I think.

The first of the last two acts I caught were The Flaming Lips, who were basically awesome. I wish they had played earlier as I was tired by that point, but I was still glad to see them. They're not my favorite band in the whole wide world, but they put on a good show.

The last act I saw was The National, who were disappointing, although I was way back on the hill, reposin', taking in the sights and the beautiful Sunday evening. I like them mostly because in the dead of winter, when you're stuck in New Brunswick (or, God help you, on Livingston Campus) and you've gotta go to class, and the temperature is dropping into the single digits and the wind coming off the Raritan feels like it's driving tiny metal slivers into the marrow of your bones and seperating the flesh of your face from your skull, and the sun's disappearing but it's 4:30 FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS KIND AND GOOD, WHY?!....there's something about bands like The National or Joy Division or The Arcade Fire that make you feel a little bit better about life. You're not the only one who is miserable or confused or tired. You are not alone. There are others thinking about dark, sad things too. And they're doing okay.

Maybe not the best band to see live? Not exactly positive mental associations happening there.

So yeah. That was my festival experience. I skipped out on some of the bigger acts like Norah Jones, Muse, LCD Soundsystem, and the Eagles, mostly because I'm not really a huge fan of those acts and felt kind of ambivalent towards seeing them live. But the weekend was still definitely worth it, if just to see a crowd of people bouncing around in time with "Start Wearing Purple", hear Phish bust out Velvet Underground's "Rock and Roll", or watch Blind Pilot make fans out of n00bs. Not kidding about that one, after their set was over the guy standing next to me (he was a total bro, but I will forgive him that) turned to me and said, "Who was that? I have to remember them when I get home..."

Blind Pilot, I said. That was Blind Pilot, friend.

I actually saw Blind Pilot twice, because I went to their aftershow on Friday night, at Stubb's. As you may have guessed from the picture. They sounded great but I was drunk and exhausted so I only stayed for the first few songs.

There was a veritable wealth of people-watching to be had but this was far and away my favorite. This is the mom who just wanted to hang out, read a John Grisham novel in her fancy beach chair, and enjoy a beer. But no, the fucking festival had to take over her park. Did she roll over like a beached whale? No sir. She fought back. She read her paperback, 30 feet away from the stage, and pretended like it was just another day at Zilker. That's right, mysterious Mom character. Don't let them push you around.

I have to say in general, Austin had their shit together for this. There were literally hundreds of port-o-potties everywhere, free water stations, local vendors selling things for $5-$8, an interesting local art market, an entire army working the merchandise tent, and they were giving away ACL t-shirts to anyone who collected a big trash bag worth of recycled beer cans/water bottles/whathaveyou. It kept things really clean and the free water (that was apparently triple filtered or something? I don't know but it was AWESOME) kept me from being very sad. Huzzah for Austin!

BONUS:

Warrioooooors... Come out and play-aaaaay!!! I loved this movie so much and at some when I have gathered my thoughts together on why exactly it is that I loved it I will document it here. I have a bunch of pictures. It'll be a great post. Just you wait.