Austin City Limits Music Festival – Day 3

Well, this post is a little late. It’s probably because I slept in (very late) for the first time in years, recovering from these past few days of walking, dust, and nonstop music. Going to bed at around 4am because of an early morning visit from the police probably didn’t help, but that’s another entry. Don’t worry, it was nothing.

Anyway, we ended the weekend with another successful ACL experience. The weather was decent (in ACL terms), the parking was easy, the event was well planned, and the great acts were abundant. This will not only be my evaluation of the music we experienced the final day, but on the aforementioned as well. I’ll start with the weather.

The temperature lingered around 90º most days with low humidity, fair cloud cover, and a sporadic breeze to add to the cooling factor. This probably still sounds rough, but considering the average ACL has been closer to 100º (108º in 2005), this was welcome. The dust was really the worst part. It’s been a while since Austin received any real rain, so there wasn’t much that could be done about the bone sucking conditions. This brings me to my next assessment.

As anyone that’s attended ACL year after year can attest to, the planning for this event has gotten better each time. To combat the dust this year, the park management watered everything down the night before. This didn’t stop the dust, as the dark stuff in my sinuses can prove, but I can’t imagine how bad it would have been if they hadn’t done this. Actually I can; I was there pre-sprinkler system. Another thing I noticed was how clean everything was during and after all three days. I can contribute this to the wonderful incentive they started where if an event-goer can fill a trash bag with recyclables, they get a free t-shirt. People were everywhere collecting. I also noticed management hauling out bags and bags of trash during the entire event, never letting things overflow and become scattered all over the place. That was awesome. I liked the wristbands too. They were soft fabric instead of wrist-cutting plastic. I’m sure there were many other improvements this year, but these were the main things I noticed.

I didn’t eat much at ACL, but I got the chicken cone from Hudson’s that I’d been craving for days. Basically, it was a chicken breast rolled in a mixture of almonds, sesame seeds, corn flakes, chili flakes, and sugar, then fried and placed in a flower tortilla “cone”. Yes, It was as good as it sounds. Per usual, I’ll give my props to the food at ACL. Big selection. All good.

On a side note, we got very “lucky” with parking this year. I entered from the West side of Zilker to drop off Jess as close as I could before searching for an area within a couple of miles of the event. Instead, I was navigated towards Barton Springs by a parking volunteer. Two more volunteers waved me through to a parking area right in front of the entrance. At the time I thought I got lucky and found a place not many knew about, but on day two, I found out the real circumstance when the first attendant told us past that point was strictly the VIP area. I explained that I had parked there the day before, but he stood firm in his story. I told him that I would turn around, but Jess told me to gun it and blow through the barricade. Well, there wasn’t a barricade and I didn’t gun it, but I did keep driving towards the lot I parked in on the previous day. Sure enough, the last two attendants waved us through…nice.

Okay, music! Yeah, umm…another great day! We opened with The Octopus Project, who completely blew me away. It’s the first time I’ve seen them and I’m amazed at their musicianship. Toto Miranda is in one word, badass. He plays everything, and everything well. Yyonne Lambert has such poise and glamor while running the electronics and directing her theremin. She’s a feminine oasis in a desert of testosterone. Kevin Adickes and Josh Lambert are incredible too. I’m proud to have such local talent. Throughout the rest of the day, we jumped from band to band seeing Flyleaf, Massacoustics, Stars, Blues Traveler, and Silversun Pickups. No one really impressed until we saw The Raconteurs. Jack White (White Stripes) and Brendan Benson traded vocals, while they lay down heavy rock riffs with the rest of the band. They sounded phenomenal. As we cut out early in order to get decent seating for the Foo Fighters, a friend noticed an excited Elijah Wood rocking out to them. I completely walked right passed him. I think he recognized me from the few seconds earlier, or thought I was someone else for a brief second, because when I came back he said “Hey, it’s you!”. He was probably just messing with me. I don’t get star struck, but I was completely panicking to get a picture taken. So much so, that I forgot to get MY picture taken with him. I guess I’ll just have to enjoy looking at Jess’ incredible excitement in the photo. He was so nice and accommodating. Being on that high made waiting an hour for the Foo Fighters to take the stage, bearable. It was worth the wait. They were incredibly tight, and their lighting and sound engineers have it down perfectly. I was, however, disappointed with the restructuring/acoustifying/plain de-rocking of their more popular hits. These songs completely rocked in their original form, and they turned them into mush. My only other disappointment was not seeing Tegan and Sara. The logistics of leaving the AT&T main stage, and then getting back, were just too complicated.

So another year of ACL ends with the contemplation, “Was it worth it?” Yes it was.