ACL 2010

So I thought I'd mix it up this year, maybe hit up a different music festival, but as fate would have it, Austin sucked me back in with its yearly Austin City Limits Music Festival! Last year was pretty fantastic, catering to my love of 90's grunge with Pearl Jam headlining. And I (finally) saw Dave Matthews. So... was this year's music better than last? No idea. But it was fun!

For me, Friday's highlights were Spoon and Vampire Weekend. I was actually a little disappointed at the Strokes, but they did make me laugh with their filler between songs. Probably should have seen Phish, since their Ben & Jerry's ice cream flavor "Phish Food" is in my freezer just waiting to be eaten. Mmmm.

Saturday was really fun, mostly because of our adventure trying to catch a cab to Kerby Lane after the show. But that's a story for another day! MIA was amazing, I had tickets to see her in LA over the summer but the show got cancelled for some reason. It was worth the wait! She has such a great energy. I also liked the explosions on the screens with 'Paper Planes'. See picture here (thanks RJ!) :)

The XX were really cool, a friend of mine who'd seen them before said she was afraid they were on sedatives. In their defense, their music is really mellow. Beautiful and mellow. I'm not sure you could really rock out to it, but there were definitely people in the crowd having a great time doing that!

More Saturday coolness: Ozomatli (finally saw them!), Silversun Pickups, LCD Soundsystem and Grace Potter and the Nocturnals. At the end of the Grace Potter set, the entire band started playing the same drumset! We caught the very end of Muse, their song from the radio sounded pretty good from halfway across the park.

Sunday I only caught the Flaming Lips and Norah Jones, mostly because I wanted to spend a little time with my family and brother's dog, Keira, who's the prettiest Golden Retriever ever. She also likes to lick ears and hands which makes for some slightly confusing mornings. Sometimes I'd wake up with a ball by my ear and Keira sitting patiently by the bed waiting for me to throw it.

The Flaming Lips were part of the reason I went this year and wanted to catch them before they retire! Really fun show, but I don't think I'd want to be those kids in the audience watching them with their parents! Their opener was kinda awkward, probably a little to explicit for me to mention here. And parents... really? Babies at a Flaming Lips show? Norah Jones took me back to College and Schnucks grocery runs. Awww sunrise... sunrise! :)

Overall, fantastic time. Miss you Austin! :)

Here in center frame, here there's only air... and just enough space to fit

Clarity, Jimmy Eat World’s release in 1999 (before they exploded into the pop music scene) is my favorite album of all time. I remember in high school hearing this great song on the radio that went something like “you’re not bigger than this, not better, why can you learn?” and I fell in love! But what was the name? Who was the band? The mystery song made it onto a mixtape I took to college, radio static and all.

Skip forward a few tracks to junior year of college. I remember being at KWUR and popping in an old Jimmy Eat World CD. I thought, “wow, I like their new stuff, I wonder how their old stuff sounds.” The last DJ who reviewed it gave Track 2 the most stars so I cued it up. Just as it started playing I had the most awesome flashback to when I first heard it. That was when I fell in love with Jimmy Eat World, and their album Clarity became timeless to me.

And I’m not alone! Last year Jimmy decided to play Clarity in its entirety at five shows across the country to celebrate the 10th anniversary of its release. Unfortunately, the last show was last March and I realized this last June. Blast. But... yesterday I found out that they recorded that show, and it’s on sale! Since April of last year. I may be the worst die-hard fan of my favorite band ever.

Go here to hear/see/buy it!

And for your listening/dancing pleasure:

Ode to Water, Power, and Music.

Holy goodness... a lot has happened. Galveston was pretty much annihilated from Ike. Boo Ike... BOO! But now I know my neighbors since we were powerless for a week afterwards. The older man who lives next door to me is a professional violinist in the Houston orchestra and in a band that plays “a kind of Egyptian Jazz music.” He says that in this awesome European accent... I totally love that I can hear him practicing through my walls.

It is kind of neat that despite camping out for so long the atmosphere in houston and the hospitals was pretty upbeat the whole time, even with all the Galveston residents relocated here who lost their homes. I guess such a strange/sad situation can be pretty uniting! Apparently I qualify for some sort of government reimbursement but it’d kinda be lame to ask for it since my place was fine, I was stranded in LA of all places (yay!!), and this gave me an excuse to mooch of my friends in Houston with apartments much nicer than mine. But now a lot has changed--all the stoplights work and I don't need to leave for work an hour early anymore! I have POWER and WATER!

The music festival in Austin was awesome! There was so much good music, and much of it was new to me. The most impressive thing about ACL this year was that they really improved the sound leak between stages—that was very annoying in years past. Outside water was allowed in, and there was plenty of power... so much that my Sprint cell phone kept switching between eastern and central time! It was political at times with many artists giving shout-outs to both candidates. I was surprised when bands who mentioned their support for McCain were rewarded by silence (given that I was supposed to still be in TX) but I have to admit it was pretty funny. I do think they need to sell fewer tickets as there was very little space between crowds around stages at opposite ends of Zilker. Also, the Frisbees we threw around seemed to hit people more often. Unless you're a Russian guy with superior aim whose discs only go to Siri.

My fav: The Swell Season, with Glen Hassard and Marketa Irglova from the move ‘Once,’ who played Friday. I still can’t believe I got to see them... they sounded beautiful. I think what made the night was Glen Hassard’s attempts at philosophizing. His speeches/song explanations were usually accompanied by wild guesturing, and while some of it might be over my head he did say one profound thought. I am paraphrasing, with hopefully less rambling. "Sometimes when you have an obstacle in front of you that’s like an endless wall… and you can’t go around or over it, I've learned sometimes you can walk away from it... and keep walking so that eventually you walk around the whole f*ing world and find yourself where you wanted to be in the first place!" Genius.

Other favorites: Tristan Prettyman, Erykah Badu (this woman is phenomenal. she's also very pregnant!), Jose Gonzales, Jenny Lewis, Okerville River, Beck (yay!), and Manu Chao mostly because I figured that anyone new I saw after the Swell Season wouldn't be able to hold my attention, but I was wrong--Manu Chao was freakin amazing.. yo yo yo! I also loved a three minute moment during the Foo Fighter’s encore where they busted out with ‘Big Me,’ only after butchering my favorite Foo Fighter song ‘Monkey Wrench.’ And let's talk about this Monkey Wrench thing. I was SO looking forward to rocking out to that fun yelling thing he does at the end of the song... but where was it? Oh after the false ending and weird creative drumming and... lets pretend we're stopping the song again... oh wait no here's the rest of it.... and yes, here is that fun yelling part only I'm not going to yell with the music... and I'm going to cut the stage lights again. Not that I'm bitter. :-)

But then they played Big Me... it's the sweetest song of all time! My love is regained!