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Hi everybody- Did anyone go to the Austin City Limits music festival this weekend?
Portapotties on Fire at ACL.
More later...
...Well, two of my friends flew down to Austin from New York to see some of the festival and drink margaritas. Unfortunately, the one who is supposed to sub for me today did more of the latter than the former and missed his 5a.m. flight back home. All of the flights happened to be fully booked today, he was about 12th on the standby list, and so now he has been sucked into the vortex of O'Hare and won't get in until after midnight. He's one of those guys that cause me to bury my face in my hands and wonder how he gets away with this shit; he doesn't exactly have a slacker job- he's a lawyer at a huge white shoe firm.
For the sake of adding another voice to the mix of our humble log, I'm really hoping me at least scrawls something on a napkin that I can scan and post tomorrow morning. In the meantime, he has relayed to me that:
1.) He missed The Arcade Fire, LCD SoundSystem, well pretty much everything on Friday but had some good margaritas and Mexican food. There's some long and convoluted (probably work related) story to explain why this happened.
2.) He saw Bob Dylan in a small venue and it was one of the [insert superlative] shows ever.
3.) There were green lasers at one concert. He doesn't remember who was on stage, but the laser light show was fantastic.
4.) He thinks the crowd liked the Arctic Monkeys, and because the crowd was happy, that made him like the Arctic Monkeys too.
Email Received from Green Lantern: Tuesday, September 18, 2007 04:33 pm
I am one of the two BBODG[ed.] friends who ventured to ACL. Just a quick elaboration on points raised by BBODG[ed.].
1.) I missed all of Friday because of work demands. However, we did go
swimming at Deep Eddies Friday night and, Austin being a rather small town,
could hear Bjork performing across the river at the festival. Hearing a
performer play when you're not at the actual performance is emblematic of
the superiority of small towns to large towns for music festivals. In
small towns, the festival spills over into the streets and parks and
restaurants.
2.) Arcade Fire was Saturday night. I missed them so I could see Bob
Dylan's "private" show at Stubbs. Nice to be able to say "I saw Bob" but
the performance was a bit forgettable. Other than Tangled Up in Blue and
All Along the Watchtower, he played new material, for which the audience
was not exactly clamoring. It's a touchy situation. On the one hand, I
suspect Bob doesn't want to be a mere nostalgia act. On the other, he
sells out performances and makes people excited at the prospect of seeing
him based on his oeuvre, not his latest album which many may have not
actually digested.
I know others felt differently. Some at the concert indicated they
followed him around the country and thought his performance was intense.
Another concert goer effused about Civil War connotations in his new album.
Maybe the lesson learned is don't go see someone like Bob unless
you've never done it and need to scratch it from your
things-to-do-before-I-die-list or unless you've actually heard his latest
work.
3.) Green lasers were part of Ghost Observatories performance. I
appreciate visually stimulating shows. I suspect the segregation of music
from live performance (with associated showmanship) is a rather recent
human phenomena. A live performance should be both an aural and a visual
experience. Not necessarily green lasers (although I'm partial to them)
but something, even just gestures, that engages the audience visually and
help brings the crowd into the same headspace.
4.) Two Australians thought the crowd wasn't too in to Artic Monkeys
because they weren't familiar with them. I guess it's a different world
than when I followed music more intensely. Overall, I was struck by how
into Austin bands the crowd was and how they were less bowled over by
bands that I would think merited a more global following.
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Because the people who wear white shoes need not have any indication of what my friend does with the time he spends outside of a particularly large building in midtown, we will have to refer to him as "Green Lantern." Sorry for getting the Arctic Monkeys part of the story wrong, GL. You couldn't think of any superlatives to associate with Bob Dylan's performance?
Labels: ACL
16 Comments:
Is that the smoke from Willie's bus?
I just saw the Arctic Monkeys and I wasn't all that impressed. The crowd here seemed to like them too, but that didn't help me.
Maybe if I saw Bob Dylan in a small venue I'd understand. I doubt it though.
The Onion AV Club reviewer hated Dylan. I liked seeing him but I can't really imagine his current performing style converting the uninitiated.
What the hell is a white shoe firm?
a white shoe law firm is, in rough terms, an old (like a century-plus)and prestigious law firm. The "white shoe" part connotes both formality and oldness, as white (dress) shoes are a super-formal footwear choice (think top hat and tails level formal) that nobody actually makes anymore.
more interesting than white shoes is whether or not Godzilla has retained the discipline for right thinking, and if he ever resurfaces...
When he says "a small venue" is he talking about Stubb's?
Daniel, based on the communication I just received from GL, he was at Stubbs. I presume from your question that Stubbs is not small. Well, sometimes one has to make just enough irritating misstatements in order to get a response from GL.
I like how GL refers to Austin as a small town, though.
Austin is indeed a small town. Stubb's, though, is not small. It's so not small that it's outside. I think there might be a smaller indoor type stage somewhere, but I've never seen it and doubt very much that Dylan would have played on that stage. Also, it surprises me very little that Austin people were into Austin bands. Austin people are into anything having to do with Austin. It's all part of the ridiculous civic boosterism that comes with living there.
Austin may be small-er than some larger cities such as Houston, or New York, and it can certainly seem small sometimes, but is it really accurate to actually call it a small town? It does have more than a million people.
Well, it is physically small. Or at least the part of Austin where you can actually do anything, not the suburbs that have fenced it in. I suspect this is why it was easy to find people in bars that had spilled over from ACL. The bars aren't that far away. And they're all in same area.
But beyond the size, Austin just isn't a very cosmopolitan city (town, whatever) and that also makes it seem small. It's only recently that you can find any ethnic foods that aren't Mexican there and a lot of those are in those suburbs, where you usually wouldn't go. I guess that's one thing you can do in the suburbs.
I know what you mean Justin and at the same time Austin is too big.
I've always been told size is not all that important.
That's what they tell smaller cities, Carlos but I don't think Mother Earth can take that throbbing mass of humanity in such a sensitive spot.
Austin... I recently returned from revisiting the City. There's 10 new condos under construction in down town. And what's up with the toll road that's not even on any maps and it's 20 stories in the sky and stretches into outerspace going into Destination unknown with mysterious Sailor Bob like occupants manning the FREE booths? Justin?
False Pass, Alaska is small. My driveway is the highway.
I'm not familiar with this particular toll road, but there certainly are quite a few toll roads springing up. And just try to find a piece of land on Lake Travis that somebody doesn't own. I dare you.
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