The story headline for the feature on the front page of the arts section in today’s NYT is “Hitting the Rader: A Festival Soars in Texas,” byline Nate Chinen. It’s possible that this is a first-time visit to Austin for the author. His verdict? In brief, it’s that, “judging by the strength of the music, the smoothness of operations and the fervor of crowds averaging 65,000 daily — [the ACL fest] deserves recognition as a first-tier rock fest, with a regional twist.” Cons mentioned are sound bleed between the stages, heat, and dust. Heat? This weather was practically arctic, compared to what we’ve endured thus summer! The pros, according to the reporter, are many. He seems to especially like all the must Austin-specific features.

There was barely any music to be heard away from the festival site; when there was, it was full-spectrum sound, not just bass only, and it was always dampened within five minutes. This is different from other years, so there was not much in the way of free music outside a very small radius. It also seemed as though there were fewer out-of-town attendees. In saying this, I’m going only by the few requests for directions and sightings of perplexed map-reviewers. There was little evidence of touring neighborhoods in rental cars, but there were more people out on scooters and bikes. Either there was less beer-drinking, more care taken about containers leaving the park, a more sober crowd, or one composed of anti-litter activists. There was no beverage trash in any nearby gutters on any of the following mornings, including this one. One significant effect beyond the pay-to-go-in area was that dust was carried quite far by any prevailing breezes, and there’s been much sneezing to be heard. And something that has never happened before is that the aroma of cooking food and the scent of smoke covered a widespread area on Friday and Saturday nights and, minus the smell of food, well on into the early morning. It reminded me of the old days, when there were active railroad sidings downtown and when one of Austin’s largest hobo camps was along the river, concentrated near where the physical plant of the local daily covers all that once was wild. Right along by Duplex Sign, at the southeast end of the Congress bridge, on a cold morning the rising auras of woodsmoke, coffee, bacon, and chile would greet the pedestrian heading downtown to work.

I tried to perpetuate the rumor that Prince might play ACL this year. As I’m sure everyone is aware by now, the lineup was released today and we got Foo Fighters instead.

I must say that it appears that the ACL organizers are listening to feedback. The festival is the latest in the year it’s been and this is the best mix of bands in the last few years. I’m still just going to buy a 1 Day pass and try to catch some of the side shows this year though. Foo Fighters are a good choice for headliner. They crossed over to arena rock level with the last tour. I’m not that interested in fighting the ACL headliner crowds to see them.

I’m sure you’re dying to hear my opinion so here’s the names that I’ll pull out of the lineup:

Mates of State - Husband and wife duo that I saw at Fun Fun Fun Fest.

M. Ward - I’d check him out though I wish he were with Zooey Deschanel doing She and Him instead.

MGMT - A little too electronic for me, but lots of people dig them.

Man Man - Caught them at SXSW this year. I’d see them again. Crazy stuff. I still need to post a review.

Vampire Weekend - They were the darlings of this year’s SXSW. Now you have a chance to see them.

Against Me! - No doubt to quell the complaints of the lack of harder stuff and the advanced age of most of the ACL artists in past festivals

Silversun Pickups - I’ve heard they’re better live than in recordings.

Gogol Bordello - They also made a splash at SXSW several years ago. You should’ve caught them at Emo’s, but they’ll still be fun at ACL.

Erykah Badu - She’s amazing. Again, glad to see they’re branching out a bit from the typical ACL fare.

N.E.R.D - See above.

Raconteurs - Rocked it at ACL two years ago and we don’t have to worry about Meg White ruining the whole thing and canceling it.

Mars Volta - I loved At The Drive-In and the first two Mars Volta records. They lost me with Amputechture and I haven’t even checked out the new one. Stiil would be worth checking out if you missed them last week.

Beck - Still kicking myself for missing his SXSW performance in, what was it? 1993? 1994? Should be good.

Who’re you going to see?

In what’s becoming an annual tradition, I once again scored some free tickets to Fun Fun Fun Fest this weekend in Waterloo Park (Thanks, Austinist!). I went last year and enjoyed myself despite the cold temperatures. By moving the festival a month earlier, the organizers were rewarded with near perfect weather. In fact, it was a bit on the warm side with temperatures reaching the low to mid 80s in the afternoon. As with last year, I completely neglected the third stage which features mostly DJs and dance music, not really my cup of tea…
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Every year for the last several years, I’ve longingly gazed at the Fantastic Fest schedules before the event and then jealously read the reviews coming out of the festival. If you’re like me, your “real life” (work, family, etc.) doesn’t allow you to commit the kind of time that you need to really take advantage of Fantastic Fest. On top of that, it always falls right around the same time as ACL and who has the kind of cash to shell out for both of these things? I might have a better chance next year as my four e-mail addresses falied to win the $50 3 day passes this week (Did anybody get them?) and I’ve decided that I’m going to wait for the lineups and decide if a single day pass is in order for next year.

Anyway, I digress. Even though I couldn’t make Fantastic Fest, which ends tonight, there’s a slew of local bloggers who’ve been posting their impressions. Here’s just a few of them:

• Jette from Slackerwood and Cinematical - Here’s her Fantastic Fest category on Slackerwood.
• Wiley’s Fantastic Fest posts
• The Alamo’s own blog has tons of video posts with those involved in Fantastic Fest
• Not surprisingly, Ain’t It Cool News also has posts about Fantastic Fest, but I’ve always hated the design, layout and organization of that site. It’s pretty much unreadable for me, but if you can handle it, have at it.

Update (2007.09.28 18:16 CDT): I would’ve linked SXSW Flim organizer, Matt Dentler’s, blog, but I didn’t have a good way of linking just his Fantastic Fest posts. You should check out his blog anyway. Also, last night’s surprise closer was Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood.

PS The Alamo Drafthouse newsletter says that VIP badges for next year’s Fantastic Fest are already half gone. So if you want to get in on this stuff yourself next year, you’d better get on it.

I scored a couple of free tickets to Fun Fun Fun Fest on Friday from Austinist (thanks, guys!). I got there around 6:30 or 7 in enough time to see Riverboat Gamblers. I’d seen them at the X / Rollins Band show at Stubb’s earlier this year. They put on a good show. We shuffled over to check out Peaches at the Indie Stage. I can appreciate what she’s trying to do, but the music wasn’t all that interesting to me. Next up was Negative Approach. I’d never seen them or heard any of their music. I can definitely hear their influence on current bands though. Solid Stuff. The band I came to see, however, was up next. The Circle Jerks have retained 3 of the 4 members that were around when I first heard them in 1984 or 1985. Keith Morris has been sporting some massive dreadlocks for the past 15 years or so. Like Henry Rollins and a few others, he’s become sort of a punk rock elder statesman. They blasted through several older songs, including “Deny Everything”, “Beverly Hills”, “World Up My Ass”, “I & I”, “When the Shit Hits the Fan” and “I Just Want Some Skank”.

The Chronicle had some info on the organizing of the festival. I like that Graham Williams mentioned ACL and how it doesn’t really represent the sort of bands that he had at Fun Fun Fun Fest. The crowds weren’t too large as to make it impossible to see the bands. I would recommend that they double the number of port-a-potties next time though. It was at least a 20 minute wait for the bathrooms the whole time I was there. Lines for the food and drinks were reasonable. I realize it was all kind of last minute and that Texas weather can be unpredictable anyway, but if they have it again, I’d pick a month other than December, January or February.

Joe Gross of the Statesman Blogs posted a favorable review yesterday.

I got a few shots of Negative Approach and Circle Jerks. There’s some crappy video after the jump to go with the crappy photos. I probably should bring a tripod next time although I’m not sure they would’ve allowed it.

Update (12.106.2006 - 13:43 CST) - Steve Hopson has some much better shots from the festival.
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The wife and kids arrived at ACL just after the noontime downpour. They checked out the kid area and The Boy sampled The Black Angels and Husky Rescue at my recommendation. It was his consolation for having to miss The Raconteurs the day before. He liked Black Angels better than Husky Rescue. The Wife thought the opposite. I would’ve liked to have seen Husky Rescue. We noticed the beach area had been improved from last year, complete with misting fans and tents to provide more shade than the umbrellas that were available the past few years. I think after the blistering temperatures last year, they heeded the complaints of festival-goes with kids and added much needed heat relief for the little ones.
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Andy attended Day One, focusing mostly on the festival itself and not the music.

I said earlier this year that I wasn’t going after the heat and dust last year. Finding a cheap 3-Day Pass from someone who couldn’t make it up from Galveston because of an exam changed my mind. I neglected to bring my camera yesterday (and buy liter bottles of water at the gas station by my house where they’re 99 cents as opposed to the $2 or $2.50 near Zilker Park) so no pretty pictures for you.

We arrived yesterday around 2:30 and sat down at the Austin Ventures stage to watch Blue Van. I wandered off to look for a cheap hat, an unsuccessful trip because of my enormous noggin, but was underwhelmed by the few songs I heard.

We parked ourselves at the AT&T Blue Room stage for Nada Surf. I loved “Popular” when it came out and had heard good things about the band. They were ok, not great. We headed over to the AT&T stage for The Shins and I remained in that general area for the rest of the day. The Shins were good. I wouldn’t buy their music, but I enjoyed them. I turned around to watch Aimee Mann from a distance at the Heineken stage. I could hear pretty well actually and the jumbo screen made it easy to see.

The Raconteurs were up next, by far the best band of the day. I’d only heard “Steady As She Goes”. The whole band was amazing; great drummer, excellent harmonies and Jack White can bring it. They did a couple of covers: “Bang, Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)” and was that a Yes cover at the end? We moved up for Massive Attack since it seemed that most of the festival goers headed to the other end of the park for Willie. I’ll never understand why you’d want to go see a guy you can see many other times throughout the year in better surroundings when a band that hardly ever comes to Austin is playing at the same time.

Massive Attack had an impressive light show. The camera work on the jumbo screen was extremely irritating. I don’t know if they were having technical problems or if it was intentional. The video was sepia toned for the Raconteurs, an interesting touch. Massive Attack played several tracks from Mezzanine. They were quite a contrast with the Raconteurs, relying more on the light show and fog for visuals instead of individual performances and kinetic energy. With Tricky long gone, they were also short his replacement; his wife gave birth to a son the night before.

I didn’t see Ben Kweller, but my sister met up with us later in the evening and told quite a story. Apparently, he got a nosebleed partway through his set. He attempted to soldier, shoving a tampon supplied by his girlfriend up his nose. The nosebleed was bad enough that it began to expand in his nostril, causing him to abandon that remedy. He quit early, apologizing for not being able to continue.

The weather cooperated yesterday with cloud cover making most of the day bearable. By the time the sun went down, there was a decent breeze, a welcome contrast to last year’s blast furnace / dust bowl. Since it’s raining right now, it looks like today will be nice and cool as well. I’m not heading over there until 3, but I’ll have the camera today. Stay Tuned…

After much fanfare and hullaballoo, the 2006 Austin City Limits music festival finally arrived yesterday. After missing last year’s festival for an out-of-town wedding, my Friday experience was mostly a familiar rerun of previous incarnations.

Despite the extreme popularity of the festival, Friday morning crowds are still (relatively) sparse enough to enable end-to-end stage hopping and close proximity to the bands. By mid-afternoon, the early-going intimacy and ease gave way to crowds, and the performances increasingly became a soundtrack to the festival rather than a first-person experience.

Temperatures were quite warm for most of the day, and while they remained well below last year’s damnable triple digits, the sun was intense and merciless for both bands and fans. Thankfully, CSE has once again made incremental improvements to help manage the festival around the inevitable heat. Their investment in water sprinklers meant that most of the grass remained intact on Friday, and free water stations were a boon to those caught short on water. I’d still like to cut peak attendance by about 10% and ditch the annoying SoCo market that abuts too closely to the food lines, but overall it was an enjoyable day at the festival.

Getting home was another matter. The post-festival bus lines seemed as chaotic (and long) as ever, making me wonder if there is any effective way to manage such a mass exodus. My initial walk home was relatively clear thanks to a few new street closures, but this seemed to just push the usual crush of overflow parking further back into the neighborhood. To top things off, a water main burst along my street, cutting off both water and street access as crews continue to work on repairs.

I lay in bed last night, unable to come down from the energy of the festival. Or it could have been the sting of my obligatory sunburn. Or the cacophony of heavy equipment. But regardless, I ran down the day’s events and conveyed silent thanks for the weather, the plethora of artists, and the joy that is ACL Fest. And, most especially, that by leaving town tomorrow, I wouldn’t suffer through any more of it.

My photos from ACL are posted on Flickr

Whenever I hear the words “free concert,” I recall a friend’s experience at the gratis Freedom Fest back in the early 90’s. After a long day of crowds and heat, he happened upon a shirtless drunk passed out on the grass. The guy was in bad shape, but over-consumption of beer and sunshine were the least of his problems, as a fellow shirtless drunk straddled his comatose compadre and proceeded to urinate on him. And I’m pretty sure there weren’t any jellyfish around. Ever since hearing this cautionary tale, I balance the temptation of free admission against the likelihood of confronting a public pee assault.

Fortunately, Saturday’s free “Austin Fuzion” event came out on the right side of that equation. The event, put on by Austin’s beloved Alamo Drafthouse and sponsored by the not-so-beloved AT&T (you may remember them as the folks at SBC who couldn’t get your DSL to work for a month), brought DJ’s and VJ’s together for a chill mix of audio-visual entertainment.

The event took place at Waterloo Park, which made for easy access and free parking in the garages along San Jac. As usual for these events, fencing was erected around the park with select access points, but the overall security presence was very low-key. My wife and I got there in time to catch DJ Mel and SUPERCONTINENT leading in to Cut Chemist. Even if you’ve never heard of the Scratch Picklz or cringe at the abuse of a perfectly good phonograph, there’s a lot to enjoy from live DJing and giant video projection. Watching these guys work turntables on 40′ screens showcased their considerable skills (I mean, skillz), and the whole VJ concept of ad-libbed video mixing made for interesting, and occasionally brilliant accompaniment.

Hats off to Alamo and their Rolling Roadshow crew (and AT&T, I guess *grumble grumble*) for setting up a great musical concept and making it accessible and relaxed. In many ways, this event embodied the spirit and atmosphere that are steadily being suffocated beneath the dust and profits at ACL Fest. The gang at Capital Sports and Entertainment would also do well to remember Austin Fuzion, and consider booking musicians that aren’t Ben Harper or a former member of Uncle Tupelo.