Not everything is expected to go according your plan at a music festival like ACL, but an event like this is about doing whatever you please. Seeing whichever bands you please until you grow tired of them, and then having the freedom to head to the next.
Not everything has gone according to plan this weekend, but I’m not complaining.
Friday, I danced with the up close crowds at Miike Snow – a surprisingly talented group of young men in metal masks. They even invited Ezra Koenig (Vampire Weekend) to the stage to sing “The Kids Don’t Stand a Chance.”
This was followed by a distant view of The Black Keys, who played a wide range of songs from their older and newer albums.
The obvious choice to follow was Beach House, who seemed extremely happy to be back in Austin. “You are the most loving, patient happy people,” lead singer Victoria Legrand said. This was their first trip to ACL and their songs added a peaceful element to an otherwise rowdy day of indie rock.
Then the hard decisions fell as the next four hours were filled with awesome guitar driven rock. Spoon, Sonic Youth, Vampire Weekend, The Strokes and Phish were all on the schedule for the rest of the night and all are worth seeing.
After a long discussion with my festival friends Stephanie and Logan, with strong memories of how far away we were from The Black Keys, we chose Spoon who were playing the same stage as The Strokes so we could move our way up to the front for that concert. I must say that was a good decision.
Spoon’s concert being as good as it was, was a pleasant surprise for me. Their songs are basically all upbeat, and even the ones the crowd wasn’t as familiar with, still kept them dancing.
The Strokes are performing together for the first time in four years, which is a fairly typical habit for them. The chemistry must be natural for them, because the performance was spectacular. The played almost the entire album, “This is It” tempered by older songs. The light show was also one of the best of the weekend, with images from old video games including PacMan flashing behind them.
Getting out of Zilker Park took almost as long as the hour we waited for The Strokes. Expecting 60,000 people to exit the same gate at the same time, is a crowd control fail. Fortunately pot is not an angry drug, or there might have been riots in the stand-still crowd. Songs soon erupted amongst the people who had been listening to music all day, including the well known Journey and Queen ballads.
Overall the day was filled with a sense of camaraderie which can only come from a common appreciation of the same art, which in this case is really good music.
