Austin City Limits Festival: Day One

posted on September 26, 2008 in Music // View Comments

After having the fortune to be chosen as a three-day, $50 ticket lottery winner following last year’s ACL Festival, I was excited to attend this year because I didn’t feel pressured to get my money’s worth. The wife and I didn’t go last year because of the expense, but now it seems like we’re living extravagantly because she didn’t even get to attend the first day, and I only saw a few acts. But heck, $50 is the price of one ticket for most of these acts in the first place.

I saw Jakob Dylan and the Gold Mountain Rebels first. He’d never been to ACL and I’d never seen him live, so we both had a unique experience today. His band started off fairly mellow, and it took the sound guys about three songs to finally get the mix right. But the group simmered for awhile until they really started to rock, pulling out a few Wallflowers songs. And yes, Jakob Dylan was more intelligible than his father. But give him another 20 years and we’ll see. (Better review here)

Then I wandered around. I started to see the rise of the dreaded, ominous, and foreboding dustcloud of doom. One would think the event planners had planned well enough to prevent the cloud. But it was happening, and it’s only Friday, typically the lowest attended day. A few years ago we saw Coldplay finish the Festival, and the cloud of dust was horrendous. I hope that doesn’t happen this year, for everyone’s health and sanity.

On a sidenote, I wanted to Twitter from ACL, but was prevented from doing that and even being able to contact anyone because my phone had no signal. Ironically, AT&T is a sponsor of the Festival. One would think they’d know their towers would get hammered. So I wasn’t able to contact a friend there, but, and this is one of the stranger things about this Festival of 50,000 people (I think?) – you typically run into your friends or aquaintances or long-lost roommates at the most random moments. It’s a swirling mass of humanity, but you’ll always find someone you know. It’s weird the first time, but expected to happen thenceforth.

So I met the friend I had tried to text earlier. Not ten minutes after we met up did her text get through to me. After catching up with her, I slung a Stubb’s chopped beef sandwich down my gullet. We met my friend’s friend at the very front of the stage for David “Same As It Ever Was” Bryne’s set. I didn’t know much of his music; I just knew he was creative, talented, and a might bit eccentric.

The set did not disappoint: from the percussionist’s fantastic syncopated abilities, to the drummer’s double-bass, double-snare, double-hi-hat rig, to the frenetic choreography throughout the set and Bryne’s own leadership in the style of cool funk, the hour-long set passed too quickly. Although I think his dancer’s were about to pass out. And when you can sing a song from an office chair while having your dancers enact the words while also sitting in office chairs?

Eccentric, yes, but there are reasons we pay to see shows like this; we need something that is not the norm, especially when the specter of WaMu and all that it now represents hangs over one of the main stages as a sponsor. The world became as small as that stage, focused on the choreographed frenzy of light, sound, and movement. (Better review here).

I left the show thinking, Now if only I could be as cool as David Byrne when I’m older. Now I’m thinking, If only I could be as cool as David Byrne now…

It was a good first day, a nice way to ease into the Festival. Tomorrow brings John Fogerty and Robert Plant and Alison Krauss.

BlakeAtwood.com