2005 ACL Fest Home > Reports from the ACL Festival > Archives > 2005 > September > 24
Saturday, September 24, 2005
Lining up for a fiesty Bloc Party
If you blinked at South by Southwest, you missed them. If you overlooked their debut album, “Silent Alarm,� at the record store you missed out. But if you caught Bloc Party at ACL on Saturday you witnessed one of the feistiest sets in the festival’s four-year history. Singer Kele Oreke and guitarist Russell Lissack tried to revive the 1980s snarling punk sound, while shirtless drummer Matt Tong sweated out beats that the Cure would readily adopt in their songs about boredom, arrogance, and sex.
Despite the fact that they played nearly every song from “Alarmâ€? with a spiky friction that had even the security officers jumping up with tension, the set still seemed far too short — I really wish they had shown their softer side with “Compliments.â€? Still, I can’t complain. After all, if you really love something, you have to set it free.
If the sharp “Like Eating Glass,� the luminous “Blue Light� and the newest “Two More Years� are the future wave of British punk music, I’ll gladly migrate to Her Majesty’s homeland. Those of you who were there know what I mean. Those of weren’t, I feel sorry for you. After making a name for themselves at SXSW and forming a widespread fan base with a song on the “Wedding Crashers� soundtrack, it’s going to be hard to get this close to them again.
Oasis answers your questions
When ACL announced it had booked Oasis, questions rose like flies in August.
Would they sample songs from their new album, “Don’t Believe the Truth,� and show the skeptics that they still rocked liked it was 1995? Or would they resuscitate their greatest hits from the lineup that earned them self-acclaimed Beatles status? And most importantly, would there be any obvious tension between Noel and Liam Gallager after their threatened breakups?
Despite the massive cloud of dust that was kicked up during the day, a crowd nearly a third of the population of the United Kingdom shuffled their way to the Cingular stage for the answers.
Yep, they played “Lylaâ€? and “Turn Up the Sunâ€? and proved that they sound more like the Who than ever before — they even covered “My Generation.” Yep, they played “Champagne Supernova,â€? “Wonderwallâ€? and “Don’t Look Back in Anger,â€? so there was no reason for anyone to go home unhappy.
And when two brothers restore British rock ‘n’ roll to this degree, does anyone even care that they threatened to break up for good?
Reverently irreverent Drive-By Truckers
Drive-By Truckers more or less proudly wear a Southern rock mantle borrowed from their greatest inspiration, Lynyrd Skynyrd. But they wear it in an almost Southern gothic style — all creepy and spooky and dark and heavy, like the musty curtains in a decaying mansion. They plumb the dirty South, all right — at least, they did Saturday night at their ACL Fest performance, with several tunes from “The Dirty South” album: “The Day John Henry Died,” “Cottonseed” and “Carl Perkins’ Cadillac” among them.
DBT always has offered an interesting perspective on the human condition — particularly as lived in the South. With both reverence and irreverence, respect and clear-eyed skepticism, they layer story after story into each song. Gritty, grainy, Dust Bowl-dry at times — like Zilker Park was as the sun went down Saturday — DBT delivered well-received commentary on a variety of issues, always told in the context of the double- or triple-guitar attack (in time-honored Southern rock tradition) of Patterson Hood, Mike Cooley and/or Jason Isbell, and the deep, ominous bass of Shonna Tucker, along with propulsive drumming by Brad Morgan.
Perhaps the best statement about what DBT stands for can be summed up in an icon found on the drum riser: a velvet Elvis painting. Reverence and irreverence, indeed.
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Roky resurrected
If you can’t get behind the fact that “I’ve been working in the Kremlin with a two-headed dog” is one of the five hands-down coolest lyrics in rock ’n’ roll, then the fact that Roky Erickson played his first full-length concert on the Austin Ventures stage Saturday night might not mean a great deal.
But to those who recognize Roky and his band, the 13th Floor Elevators, as among the original pioneers of acid rock (they are credited with being the first to use “psychedelic” in a musical context and their 1966 sojourn in San Francisco impacted scores of musicians there), his appearance represented the musical equivalent of touching a saint’s bone. More significantly, for those who have observed Erickson’s decades-long struggle with drugs and mental illness, his performance of a baker’s-dozen of his hits and shoulda-been hits marked a literal resurrection.
Backed up by his longtime collaborators the Explosives (themselves veterans of the heyday of Austin’s punk scene), Erickson played (played!) and sang (sang!) and even joked with a crowd that included the single largest contingent of grey hair at the festival. Let’s face it, the folks who bought the Elevators’ and Erickson’s albums in their first pressings tend to be Fans of A Certain Age — there was a smattering of lovingly faded Armadillo World Headquarters and Eeyore’s Birthday T-shirts, and tie-dye was not necessarily regarded as an ironic retro fashion statement.
That having been said, Erickson’s music remains fresh and compelling today (Hey, the guy’s credited with influencing everyone from Janis Joplin to Henry Rollins.) Listening to him was to realize anew how solidly crafted is his body of work. “Don’t Shake Me Lucifer” and “Bermuda” are hook-heavy rockers with an early-Stones/Chuck Berry appeal. “The Beast” is a lumbering vintage blues shot through with horror movie and Book of Revelations imager. “You’re Gonna Miss Me” is one of the great kiss-off songs in the rock canon, while its polar opposite, “Starry Eyes,” is as perfectly crafted a pop confection as any Roy Orbison or Buddy Holly ever minted.
“Now I’m home to stay,” Erickson sang in “Splash 1.” The fans that have been with him for the whole of the long, strange ride, along with the ones getting their initiation on Saturday might devoutly hope it is so.
Don’t detract from frontmen of John Butler Trio
They call themselves the John Butler Trio, but it sounded like double that number on the Austin Ventures stage Saturday — Butler alone has the intensity of two or three people, and bassist Shannon Birchall and drummer/percussionist Nicky Bomba could convince anyone within earshot that they’re multiples as well.
A dreadlocked Butler, playing a Weissenborn slide and a couple of what looked like custom-made 11-string acoustics, plugged through a pedal-driven effects board, brought to mind both Ben Harper and even, perhaps, the late Michael Hedges. Even if his the nails on his right hand weren’t filed to acrylic-reinforced points, he’d still be scarily virtuosic. Though his 45-minute set contained only seven songs, there was no meandering. If there was a tighter trio performing at ACL this weekend, I sure missed it.
But the true highlight of Butler’s set had to be his solo “Ocean,” a tune dedicated to those in Florida, New Orleans, Alabama and parts of Texas who have suffered the both hurricanes’ wrath and “feeling abandoned by their government.” The instrumental was absolutely beautiful.
Aside from the sound problems faced by all artists on that particular stage (lyrics were particularly difficult to decipher), the only other jarring aspect of Butler’s set was the lighting engineer’s attempt to get wild and crazy. Somebody should have told him or her that such efforts were pointless (and distracting) at 5:45 p.m., well before the sun went down. Note to all lighting people: like Keith Richards said, a sideman’s job is to support the front man. If people don’t notice you, you’re doing it right.
Fortunately, the music more than offset such annoyances. Perhaps next year, Butler will be on a bigger stage — where lighting will matter.
The Dirty Dozen resound with New Orleans culture
The Dirty Dozen Social and Pleasure Club provided the 1977 genesis for the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, the pioneers in the revival of New Orleans’ historic, though moribund, brass-band tradition. And indeed, their Saturday set at the Capital Metro stage was both sociable (the joint was packed) and pleasurable (if the throngs of dancers and hankie-waving second liners is any indication).
But underneath the gaiety, there seemed to be an undercurrent of anger and injury. The New Orleans musicians who are playing the ACL festival (the Dirty Dozen, Kermit Ruffins, the Iguanas) are in pain — and the fact that the city was flooding again even as the band took the stage had the recurrent quality of a nightmare.
To these ears, the Dirty Dozen’s set was a roar of defiance from nine throats — a back-atcha riposte to the malicious forces of nature. Oh, sure, the show fell into discrete songs — the funk vamp that opened the set, the NOLA standard “Junko Partner,” a call-and-response carnival take of Dave Bartholomew’s “The Monkey Speaks His Mind,” a roof-raising excursion that used “When the Saints Go Marching In” as its jumping-off point (with founding member Efrem Towns in a Saints jersey serving as head cheerleader), and a thunderous take on Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition.”
But as a whole, the Dirty Dozen’s show was the sound of a city shouting back in the face of loss and despair. The band, for a moment, was in fact a city in microcosm — there was the blare of car horns, the wail of a cop’s siren, the rumble of the streetcar, the jive and rebop of the street hustlers, the eternal, irresistible groove that might be the sound a river makes if a river could set itself to music. For just a little while, it was all there — the Crescent City, whole and inviolate and destined to rise once more. That’s a gift not only to the rest of us, but to all the musicians of New Orleans itself.
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Tech glitches don’t slow down Death Cab
Sure, it’s hot. Sure, it’s not raining when it was scheduled to. Sure, you’re sweltering in Zilker’s 15-acre field as much as you were this time last year. But is that really going to stop you from mellowing out to the festival’s favorite indie-rock band?
Death Cab For Cutie played during one of the sweatiest time slots — nearly 4:30 — but that didn’t stop fans from pitching blanket to their finest classics — “Title and Resignation,” “Sound of Settling” and “New Year” almost allowed you to forget about the heat — and their trendiest selections from their newest album, “Plans.”
The heat may have stifled the volume, or maybe its because the Cingular stage is cursed with technical problems. But when you’re listening to “Resignation” while lead singer Ben Gibbard wails away like Meg White on a simplistic snare drum riff or noticing how much they have improved upon that song with their latest single, “Where Soul Meets Body,” who really cares about technical problems?
Cuts and scrapes, not much more
As of 5 p.m. Saturday, emergency medical technicians have treated approximately 60 case of heat-related exhaustion, 20 eye injuries related to blowing dust, more than 100 blisters, cuts and scrapes, four alcohol- and drug-related illnesses. There were no ambulance transports out of Zilker Park, down from 11 transports on Friday.
Southwest Emergency Action Team president Tannifer Ayers, a presence at ACL Fest since the first year, said there was no particular explanation for the rash of transports on Friday. “They were mostly medical,” she said. “Those can happen at any time,” citing broken bones, a cardiac event and a diabetic emergency.
Ayers also added that she expected injuries to rise before the end of the evening. “We often see some drug- and alcohol-related events after Widespread Panic,” she said.
There have been no arrests today.
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Missing Aussie and backstage vibe
Missy Higgins was crossed off the ACL gig list because her flight from Houston canceled.
Members of the acts, Widespread Panic and Blues Traveler, talked cool backstage vibe with musicians interacting.
“The people have their ears on here,” said John Popper of Blues Traveler of the ACL mobs.
Our Buddy
One never knows which Buddy Guy is going to show for any given performance — the one who phones it in or the one who means it. Fortunately, Guy decided this ACL Fest crowd was worth cranking it out for — at least part of the time — and so he did.
“I know it’s kinda hot. I’m hot, too.” Guy told the crowd Saturday. “Let’s get it on!”
The intensity of his performance eventually got as hot as the beating midday sun. Though he’s about to reach 70, he had no problem hitting high notes as easily with his voice as he did with his brown Fender Telecaster, which he played before switching to his more familiar polka-dotted Strat.
Guy delivered “I’ve Got Dreams to Remember” and “What Kind of Woman is This” from his new album, “Bring ’Em In,” (out this Tuesday) a collection of classics done as duets with fellow guitar greats, and some others not on the album (a snippet of “Fever,” another of “Feels Like Rain,”) before slipping into his unnecessary renditions of other guitarists, including Muddy Waters and Eric Clapton (he chose the Cream tune, “Strange Brew,” perhaps because those guys are heading stateside for three reunion shows).
He nearly let his sax player steal the show several times, but when Guy decided he still had something to prove, he went for it — taking his also-familiar stroll through the audience (so to speak; he had an empty aisle straight to the soundboard) and wowing the crowd with a few vicious licks. He was playing a song from “Damn Right, I’ve Got the Blues, ” but as he sashayed toward the board, his gold watch, gold rings and gold teeth gleaming, he wore a huge “No-I-don’t-really-have-the-blues-at-all!” grin. By the time he was done, neither did anyone who was listening.
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Sonny Ortiz back on his old stomping grounds
It’s been a long time since Domingo (“Sonny”) Ortiz opened for Christopher Cross at Steamboat on Sixth Street and this ain’t no Aquafest. Ortiz plays percussion for Widespread Panic, one of the top concert draws in the country, and Saturday’s co-headliner (with Oasis).
“This is a special show for us,” said Ortiz, who moved to Austin from his native Waco in 1975 and played in various local outfits until moving to Athens, Ga., in 1986. “We’ve heard good things about the festival and when there was some question about whether the hurricane would hit Austin, we were really concerned that we might miss the opportunity.”
Later he played for surely his largest-ever Austin crowd, an estimated 28,000.
Ortiz spent his last three years in Austin living at the New Manor, the infamous “clothing optional” apartment complex on Manor Road. “I got in a lot of trouble there,” he said, with a laugh. “My buddy had just opened a club in Georgia and he said, ‘you should check out the scene.’ ” Ortiz met the other members of Panic, as all their fans call them, when they played Athens’ Uptown Lounge every Monday. He was soon sitting in and eventually became an official member.
Asked which Austin restaurant he most misses, Ortiz said “Tamale House No. 2. You have to understand that I was a starving musician. Back then, that was the most food for the least money in town.”
Some things haven’t changed, Sonny.
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Move over Wilco, Death Cab, it’s time for Built to Spill
Some music is made for festivals, some isn’t. Hip-hop doesn’t work all that well in the blazing sun, but guitar epics sound just perfect.
Built to Spill hasn’t released an album in four years, but they sounded right at home on the Cingular stage Saturday afternoon and drew a massive crowd. Of course, some of that crowd might have been there to get good seats for Death Cab for Cutie, which was the next band on the Cingular stage. The irony is that Death Cab often wascalled Built to Spill, Jr., but now the younger Death Cabbers have a hyped-to-the-hills album, plugs on “the O.C.” and a better time slot than the band Spill jacked its sound from.
With the bald spot on his head looking awfully red on the Jumbotron, guitarist/singer/leader Doug Martsch filled the band’s hour with his high, reedy, Neil Young-ish voice and reams of interlocking guitar, bass and drums steady and rolling. The band stuck largely to hits (such as they are; the band has never really broken out of college radio). Songs such as “The Plan,” “In Your Mind” and the giant “I Would Hurt A Fly” were pulled and stretched like taffy. For those of us who worship the sound of an amp feeding back, Built to Spill set standard for the weekend, with Martsch leaning into his amp while his two hired gun six-stringers soloed away. It was an excellent set all around, but for some of us who grow weary of roots rock and sunscreen, the best part were the reams of guitar noise, shapely and shuddering in the hot, dusty afternoon. Wilco, it’s your move.
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Of wind and cabs
While Chicago blues ambassador Buddy Guy played slow, sticky blues in the midday heat, Zilker Park turned into a Windy City of its own, with gusts measuring an estimated 20 mph. The parched fields turned into a dust bowl. It was a bad day for contact lenses.
On hearing that cab drivers were gouging desperate concertgoers, festival promoter Charlie Jones said, “That really (ticks) me off. We meet with all the cab companies and work on the situation, but there are always going to be rebels that we have no control over.”
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Worst-case ACL scenarios turn sunny
Matthew Seiler, owner of Maine Root Handcrafted Beverages, drove down to Austin from Portland, Maine, early in the week with his radio tuned to news stations. In the back of his truck were 20 pallets, 1,200 cases of root beer earmarked for sale at the Austin City Limits Music Festival. But as the dire reports about Hurricane Rita filtered in, so did news that four of his employees had to bail out because their flights through Houston had been canceled. Saturday afternoon, shorthanded Seiler was slammed by thirsty festgoers, but he couldn’t have been happier. “I thought ‘worst case scenario’ all the way down,” he said. “I woke up this morning and the sun was shining and I’ve been in a great mood ever since.”
Transportation out of the festival remained a headache for many. “There was no sign outside our exit to tell us to go right to get cabs,” said Nate Douglas of Atlanta. “Everyone who walked to the left — and there were hundreds of us — were going where there were no cabs.” A few drivers were offering their cabs to the highest bidder. “One guy was charging $60,” said Douglas, who went back to catch a shuttle bus to 15th and San Jacinto streets. “It was so crazy and confused at 15th Street,” he said. “Nobody knew where to go or what to do when they got there.” It took him more than two hours to get to his friend’s house at 45th Street and Burnet Road.
Charlie Jones of CSE says promoters will address refund requests for fans who couldn’t make it to Austin on a case by case basis.
The tour manager from Oasis waited for an hour at his hotel downtown for a cab before deciding to take a shuttle bus. “He was on a bus in two minutes and at the front gate in 10.
Eleven transports to the hospital Friday. “There were a couple of broken bones, one cardiac arrest and some people with asthma complained about all the dust,” said Mark Higgins of CSE. There was one arrest Friday night for marijuana possession with intent to distribute.
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Squeezing Cory Morrow’s muscular Texas music
Out of state visitors to the ACL Festival wishing to sample the latest iteration of Texas’ long-running fusion of country, rock and singer-songwriter acumen would have done well to park themselves by the SBC stage early Saturday afternoon, the better to sample Cory Morrow’s muscular, energetic take on what is referred to, shorthand-style as “Texas Music” (there’s lots more to the story, of course, but that’s another review).
One of the grandchildren of “Willie, Waylon and the boys,” Austin native Morrow until the last couple of years had trouble breaking out of a crowded pack that included the likes of Pat Green, Kevin Fowler (who also played on Saturday), Roger Creager and others. But with his latest album, “Nothing Left To Hide,” Morrow has found a distinctive voice and a singular artistic identity. Ironically, a whole mess of recent legal troubles have seemingly focused Morrow’s attention in a way that is already paying musical dividends.
Onstage, Morrow is voluble, and as frisky as a kid on the first day of summer. His band’s music is deceptively unadorned, as straightforward as Morrow’s uniform of unadorned T-shirt, non-designer jeans and (yep) bare feet. Songs such as the anthemic “Heart of Fire,” Light On the Stage” and his current single, “Beat of Your Heart” are solidly entertaining without ever condescending to the audience’s most easily-fulfilled expectations.
Whether soft-shoeing across the stage during Allen Toussaint’s “Southern Nights” (one of Morrow’s few covers) or unabashedly and good-naturedly soliciting rounds of applause from the audience (hey, he said, it’s cheap validation), Morrow’s onstage persona is sunny and inclusive. Those may not be the most resonant qualities on which to build an artistic career, but the crowd sitting in the hot sun and sipping the first beer of the day appeared to be in his pocket, out of towners and all.
Seeing New Orleans with the Jones Family Singers
Alice Spoonts closed her eyes Saturday minutes before noon and saw New Orleans. “We’ve been going to Jazz Fest for 15 years, and, I’ll tell ya, we’ve never seen a group in the gospel tent there better than this one,” she said. Yes, the Jones Family Singers, from Bay City, were that good, with lead singer Alexis Jones Roberts matching the Staple sisters, the wail of Mavis and the growl of Cleotha, in intensity.
They were five women of various age and hairstyles, in lime green T-shirts and jean skirts, whipping up a smallish audience of maybe 50 (though it grew as the set went on) like they were playing a jampacked Baptist Church on a Sunday morning.
“Now you’ve all heard about that Hurricane Rita, bearing down on Texas, but we’re all here, safe and happy,” said Roberts, a master of call-and-response, slowing down a Holy Ghost stomper. “Now how many people think Jesus worked it out?” Hands shot up.
The hour flew by, with 12-year-old drummer Ian Wade never dropping the beat and the Rev. Fred Jones coming out for some Julius Cheeks-styled exalting to give Roberts a break. Guitarist Fred Jones Jr. did an impossibly high falsetto lead on one number and Velma Davis took the lead on Motown-like “Going Over Yonder” to put a little break, a little more melody in the hard gospel fire. But the group was at its best on “Rock and Roll With Jesus,” when little pockets of fervor broke out and the lime-topped five swayed and rolled their arms and pointed in approval to fans who had cut lose from inhibitions.
Amid the day’s sweat, you can be sure a few tears welled up. It just didn’t seem possible that music could be more passionate, more joyful, more of a reason to come out on a hot and windy morning.
Bare Jr. set added; more cancellations
Breaking news of the popularity kind: Bobby Bare Jr. is playing a second set today at 4:40 p.m. at the BMI stage. Bare is the son of country songster Bobby Bare, and Junior’s Friday set was one of that morning’s most popular.
Also looks like Los Aterciopelados and Naturally 7 have cancelled too for their Sunday spots, according the the ACL Web site.
