Austin City Limits

Every year, music fans flock to Austin for a 3-day festival called Austin City Limits. Thousands of people. Hundreds of bands. And at least this year, less dust and more rain. People get three day passes and while away the hours sitting on the lawn, rocking out to bands from 11am to 10pm. Just thinking about it is exhausting!

By the time I tried to get tickets, the 3-day passes were gone -- probably a good thing. I got myself a one-day pass for Sunday. KT Tunstall, Buckwheat Zydeco, Matisyahu and the BoDeans, among others... sounded like a great plan. But of course, it was HOT. and muggy, and raining on and off. I went to my favorite class at the gym (20/20 hindsight: either go to ACL or the gym, but not both on the same day!) came home and showered, and finally moseyed down there by about 3:30pm -- Marcia was nice enough to tell me where to park in walking distance to the festival. I heard a little bit of Jack Ingram, then had some food and went to hear Patrice Pike. She used to be in a band called Sister Seven, and was on Rock Star Supernova last season. She has an amazing voice, and was great in concert. (She's from Austin, so she's very popular here!) This was the sea of people I saw when I arrived --->

I had to leave Patrice's set to go listen to Matisyahu. My mom saw him when she was in Israel in April, and she liked him, so I thought "why not?!" I am not much of a reggae fan, but he's very easy to listen to and you find yourself nodding to the beat whether you mean to or not. So I might have to add that to my ever-growing Amazon wish-list. :)

ACL is really a city inside the park, with shopping and food and free water stations. Unfortunately, there isn't much in the way of seating or shade. and it was HOT (did I say that already?) so I wasn't feeling too well by the time I made it to Ben Harper's set. I tried to find Marcia and her sister in the crowd, but only proceeded to get myself stuck in the middle of a huge gaggle of people smoking something other than cigarettes. In fact, I went up to someone I *thought* was Marcia and gave her a little bump with my shoulder, only to realize that it wasn't her! D'oh! After that, I couldn't stand much more of the pushing and shoving, so I negotiated my way to the back of the crowd, and listened to the rest of the set from there. But I didn't have the stamina to stick around for Tom Petty.

Here's what the skyline looked like when I got back to my car, on the roof deck of the parking garage. Nice sunset.

I think the all-day outdoor concert event is just not for me. An evening at Wolf Trap, with a bottle of wine, sure. But I don't think I'll be doing the ACL thing again - unless somebody comes to visit me and really wants to go. But, I did it once, I had to experience it. :)

Comments

Anonymous said…
I thought this was NXNW or North by Northwest
10:48 AM
MelyssaF said…
NXNW is a restaurant. The music/movies/arts festival, coming in March, is SXSW, or South by Southwest. http://2007.sxsw.com/
10:54 AM
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