Subject: ACL

Ok, I spent yesterday a good part of the day at the Austin City Limits festival. The temperature was a pleasant 85 or so. Much better than a couple of years ago at the "dust bowl" festival where it was 105 all weekend. And note that this is out in Zilker park, where there's not a lot of shade to be found.

First act I saw was Gogol Bordello. I'd only read about them. Amazing show. This clip captures their energy quite well:



And they were pretty much like that for an hour straight.

Second act was David Byrne. Bizarre. He has an album out with Brian Eno, and I think I recognized one song from hearing it on the radio. But after half a dozen song it was like he thought "Oh, let's be real, my glory days were 20 years ago. Let's just do some Talking Heads songs". Which they then did for a rest of the set. And not bad at all. Except for some terribly bad dancers on stage. Beats me what that was about.

It was kinda bizarre seeing a bunch of 20-something kids sing along with "Once in a lifetime" with full conviction. I mean, they could barely have been born when that song came out. Must have heard it on oldies radio.

Act number 3, sort of the headliner, since he closed out the evening and was the last one playing on the parallel stages, was Manu Chao. Lots of energy, but not very technically refined. He must be a lot more popular with the hispanic population than the caucasian, because a large part of the audience knew where to shout what in his mostly spanish-language songs. Some songs were sung along with.

It was amusing for a while, but then all the songs got a bit much the same. Same 2 or 3 chords, same reggae/ska rhythm.

Victor.

PS, ok, I'll leave you with more by the most awesome group I've seen in quite a while.

Purple my favorite color

Now that Purple wearing vid is what I call an entertaining group... love that zany-ness..... and look.....I just realised, I'm wearing purple LOL, M