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Home > Austin Music Source > Archives > 2008 > September > 27 > Entry
Scene report: Day 2
Fleet Foxes, filling in for Ingrid Michaelson, took the stage early at 12:30, one heck of a rough time for such a buzzy band. But the beautifully harmonizing players of fabulist pop got Saturday off to a strong with a wonderful and relatively crowded set.
Bavu Blakes had everyone’s attention (including Mayor Will Wynn, who was in attendance), when he came out in an Obama mask and then put out an energetic set of originals and covers.
Band of Heathens outdid many of his their fellow BMI stage peers with an impressive crowd. I didn’t get a chance to see Man Man, but friends say they totally killed. I was over at the AT&T Blue Room stage at the time, surrounded by a ton of kids for Brazilian electro-pop outfit CSS, whose female lead had the audience swaying their hands in unison and bouncing to the band’s energetic beats.
Local act Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears were a nice ‘local boys done good story’ and played to an appreciative, if not much of a dancing, crowd, mixing retro soul and R&B.
Then it was over to Erykah Badu, the pregnant earth goddess soul sister supreme, who had the crowd eating out of her hand, as she played a healthy mix of old and new tunes and found time to mix in some political messaging in which she rep’d Barack Obama and went on to say that the country doesn’t just need a new president, but a whole new system. The fans responded with hearty approval.
Spritualized kicked things up a notch with their raucous beauty, reminding me of Oasis and the Stones. I imagine these lads made themselves a few new fans and will sell a few more records after this weekend.
John Fogerty, at whose presence some young people had scoffed when seeing the lineup, was a gigantic draw at the AMD stage, and he benefited from some leftover MGMT fans. Oddly, the usually garrulous Fogerty said he only had an hour so he wouldn’t do much talking, so it was on with the hits, and a few new tunes, which met with great singing along from fans of all ages.
Just came from Iron & Wine, who seem to be having some issues with their bass, or at least it sounds that way to me. The booming bass distortion seems more appropriate for gangta rap than singer-songwriter material, and some of the band’s ambient jamming tended to lose me. Nevertheless, still beautiful harmonizing from the talented songwriter Sam Beam and his sister Sarah.
By the time I headed over to the media area, a good number of people were splitting to find space for Beck and Robert Plant & Alison Krauss. The park is just a gigantic mess of people. It is like being in deep sea. We are at the peakest of peak hours.
Time to check out the absurd scientologist (Beck) and the living legend (Plant).
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