Day three is always the best, and this year was no exception. It was the day I was most looking forward to, and, in hindsight, I should have just bought a one day pass instead of the three day, but…maybe next year I’ll be more frugal. Rachel had a soccer game, but it (fortunately) got cancelled, so we got to head down to Zilker Park early and managed to catch K.T. Tunstall. I’d only heard her single on the radio, and liked it alright, but was pleasantly surprised when the rest of her music was pretty good. She’s a Brit too, so that was fun.
After her was Matisyahu, an Orthodox Jewish Reggae Rapper. No lie. And his set was amazing. Especially his ad-lib when he somehow incorporated the people sitting on the porta-potties. I’ve got video of that, which will be uploaded soon. The rest of the set was almost worshipful. I was a fan of his music before, and the live show only cemented that.
After him was a band I’d also just recently discovered in the last year, The Flaming Lips. Their music and lyrics may be strange (Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots and At War With the Mystics are their last two albums), but it’s intriguingly uplifting and moving. Their shows are visual cornucopias, nearly overwhelming the senses with their absurdity and discordance. For example, dancing santas populated the right side of the stage. Their counterparts on the left side? Dancing martian women.
Also, I had hoped to see the Bubble Boy at the end of the show, but no, they surprised me and opened with it. Wayne Coyne, the lead singer and head Lip, climbs into a transparent bubble, then walks onto the crowd. It’s great. I’ve got video of that as well, soon to be uploaded. They shot confetti into the audience during almost every song. Their guitar techs were all dressed as superheroes. Their onstage camera woman was dressed as Wonder Woman.
For reasons beyond my comprehension, Wayne often puts fake blood on his face during his sets. This year, not to be outdone by Ben Kweller, who, on the previous day suffered a nosebleed which was stopped with a tampon, Wayne doused himself in fake blood and then asked the audience to throw tampons onto the stage, which the Austin crowd aquiesed to with much gusto, tampons flying through the air like so many tiny white missiles. Strange, yes. Funny, of course.
I was a fan before, and even with the aforementioned incident, I still am. I keep thinking back to that set and to Matisyahu’s, wishing I could go back and hear and see it again. That’s the sign of a good concert.
The closer for the Festival was Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. I’m not a huge Tom Petty fan, and I’m still not. The set was good, even though there was about a 30 minute rain break (which brought much needed coolness to the area). To me, most of his songs sound too similar. But we stayed the whole way through.
The Festival was great, and Sunday was the best.
The Raconteurs, Jack White’s new band, were good. I was only familiar with their current radio single, which I like, and there were moments that I got into, but I wasn’t overly thrilled with them.
Willie, unfortunately, got the short end of the sound check stick. Although we were pretty far in the back of the crowd, there were repeated shouts of “Turn it up! Turn it up!” but to no avail. We headed to the merch store, I bought two 
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