Providing the entrance soundtrack to the final day of Austin City Limits Music Festival was Sound Tribe Sector Nine. STS9, a super spacey phsychadelic trance outfit from Santa Cruz California, is a six piece synth heavy band that has interested me more than any other band in what you could call the electronic jam genre. Having seen them a couple times before in Minneapolis, I wasn't too disappointed to miss them, but it was nice to hear them from a distance and have some cool tunes to accompany the walk into the festival.
The first band we saw on Sunday was one of the best surprises the weekend had to offer, Grace Potter and the Nocturnals. I had seen Grace's name around before but never heard her music, and what I had read about her had been overhemingly positive, so we thought it was worth a shot. Grace plays keyboards and guitar, and is quite a musician on both instruments. She was at times literally jumping up and down while playing the keys, she was so overcome with the spirit to move. And although she had a perfectly capable (read: bad-ass) lead guitar player, she still stepped up to the front of the stage frequently to strap on a guitar and rock. Did I mention she can sing? Well she can. She can fucking rip. She has a really cool, big bluesy voice for a skinny white girl, and the way she commanded the stage was downright sexy. Between the singing, guitar playing, dancing and all around rocking, Grace Potter and the Nocturnals made me a fan almost instantly and I am really excited to see her open for Gov't Mule on Halloween at the O'Shaughnessy Theatre.
heres a brief video i took of Grace and her band-the quality is not great, (turn down the volume) but at the end she does this awesome jump while shredding some geet.
We had to leave Grace's dynamite show a little early beacuse Ziggy Marley was playing on the smallest stage of all, the Austin Kiddie Limits Stage. As the name suggests, this was a stage for youngsters, but there were no Teletubbies or Barneys here. They had about the first 50 feet roped off for a nice sit down area for parents and their little children, and there were hundreds of kids around, doing things like getting their faces painted and getting punk rock haridos with painted mohawks, learning to be an M.C., playing around with instruments, and doing breakdancing workshops. Contributing to the abundance of kids was the fact that children 10 and younger got to go to the festival free with their parents, making it a very family friendly atmosphere.
Ziggy was scheduled to play a quick 15 minute set but ended up doing more like 45 minutes or so, and it was a spectacular, intimate, acoustic performance, with everyone being very hush hush and couteous of the youngsters' first taste of the blessed reggae music.
After Ziggy played, Paul Green's School of Rock All Stars played a set, with about 10 or so little teenage prodigies blasting away on guitars, drums, and vocals. Paul Green started the first school of it's kind it Austin, where kids and teenagers learn the finer points of rock and roll. A couple of them were very very impressive, and some of them were clearly no older than 13. They played Zepplin, Black Sabbath, Megadeath, and some originals too. This little kid was sitting next to us, grooving and clapping his little hands.
He kept smiling at Brianna, until I yelled "Quit lookin at my girlfriend you little punk!" His mom gave me a mean look, but the little brat decided to wise up and keep his eyes to himself.
Bloc Party and Lucinda Williams played at the same time, which casued one of surprisingly few scheduling conflicts for us all weekend. Bloc Party is an English band (the fourth immensely popular English act at ACL) that plays English indie rock with a bit of an arty feel. Although it was fun to see a gay, black, British man greet the Texas crowd with a friendly "Howdy y'all!", somehow they were not all that exciting live and we quickly decided Lucida was where it was at.
As we neared the stage Lucinda was on, we heard a lazy, slow cover of "Riders on the Storm", and knew we'd made the right call. Lucinda was wasted, that much was clear. Her singing was a little slurred and she was super chatty between songs. Apparently this is not uncommon for Lucinda Williams. Another reason it was obvious she was tipsy was her rant against the war in Iraq. Of course, she didn't actually say Iraq, referring instead to the "fighting overseas" or some such nonsense, but it was obvious she was talking about Iraq. Now don't get me wrong, you don't have to be drunk to publicly take a stand against the war, but you could tell she was a tiny bit unsure of herself as she tiptoed around the subject, and the alcohol was giving her a little extra courage. Before she played a song called "Get Right with God" she called out Christians who support the war, saying that it was an immoral and unchristian war, and then she encouraged Christians to themselves "get right with god" and help stop said war. You could sense that a lot of people in the crowd were not thrilled with this political banter, and one guy nearby us (perhaps jokingly?) yelled, "Stick to the music!"
It was the only mention of the war from any of the performers, (even though it was not a direct mention) and it was great to see someone face that contentious issue, knowing that some of the people in the audience would gripe about it.
The crowd over at Lucinda was much older and whiter than that of Bloc Party, and I felt like her anti-war tirade would have been better recieved and even celebrated by the younger, more diverse Bloc Party fans. In any case, she put on a good show, despite not playing "Passionate Kisses", which may be my favorite song by her. She strutted about the stage dressed in all black with a cowboy hat on, while occasionally playing the keyboards that sat front and center stage.
Regina Spektor, the cute and smiley 27 year-old who was born in Moscow drew so many teenage girls than I thought I may be at a Justin Timberlake concert. There were seriously thousands of little girls huddled around, and this was without question the most packed show of the weekend. Athough she was on one of the biggest stages, it was nearly impossible to move anywhere in the thick crowd, and our usual method of advancing toward the stage on either side was not effective at all. She has a really cool, unique voice and all the little kiddies were singing along with big smiles on their faces.
My Morning Jacket was on the big stage next, and Jim James was rocking a crazy long white wig for the whole show. Common was a last minute addition to the lineup, as Rodrigo and Gabriela cancelled, so we got to check him out for a bit. I really like Common, hip-hop needs more intelligenet artists like him.
Ziggy Marley was, for some absurd reason, booked on the tent stage, one of the smallest stages at the festival. There were thousands of people in that small space. It was, along with Ms. Regina Spektor, the only mismanaged stage debacle of the weekend. We were glad we got to see him earlier in the day, because it was way too crowded and we couldnt get close to the action. As his set went on, I was surprised at how familiar I was with his orginal material. He, like his brother, did some of his father's legendary songs, but Ziggy can draw from a lenghty musical career and moreso than Stephen is his own performer. Songs like "Love is my Religion", "Dragonfly", "True to Myself", and "Rainbow in the Sky" are Ziggy's own fantastic songs. I own his "Draonfly" album, and it is spectacular.
Bob Dylan was hands down the biggest show of the weekend, and it was the very last. Every other stage went dark as the legend had nearly all of the 65,000 people in attendance clamoring for spots to sit. Older folks had staked out their spot with their folding chairs hours beforehand, and young parents with babies excitedly awaited Bobby D to start. We saw one cute lil guy in a stroller wearing a "Baby's first Dylan show" t-shirt. Booby D started off his set with "Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35", and also played classics like "It Aint Me, Babe", "Watching the River Flow", "Tangled Up in Blue", and "Highway 61 Revisited". He also played some newer tunes like "Thunder on the Mountain" and "Workingman's Blues #2". "Like A Rolling Stone" and "I Shall Be Released were the songs he wisely chose for the encore.
At the beginning of the show, his voice was so hoarse, and his lyrics so unintelligible that I thought he may have been intentionally trying to thin out the crowd so that he could really get down to business and rock with his real fans. And, while he started out on the guitar, he soon moved over to the right side of the stage, where he played piano for the remainder of the show. I had seen him do this before, in 2002 when he toured with The Dead, but from what I understand he usually doesn't play the piano. As the set went on, his voice seemed to get looser and he seemed more relaxed. The guy is a living legend at 66 years old, although some people like to complain about his voice, I think we are lucky that he is still tourng at all.
Bob had capped off a fantastic weekend of music, and the festival had impressed Brianna and I to no end. We saw about three dozen or so awesome acts play at the festival, and a couple more at local nightclubs to boot. There was 140 bands at the festival, so even with all we saw, there was tons more action that we missed. Before we left Austin a couple days later, we had the chance to check out Stevie Ray Vaughn's larger than life statue sitting in a beautiful park next to the Colorado River, and visit a small gas station turned bar where Janis Joplin played some of her first gigs. Austin is an incredible town, and I would highly recommend it to any music fan.
