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XL on ACL:

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More XL ACL Reading
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• Jam-packed
• REM: Still Shiny, Still Happy
• The Many Faces of Al Green
• Stapleton's Sweet Success
• Live music 101, v. 2
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• Jeff Klein
• Raul Malo
• Rise of Southern Rock
• J.T. Van Zandt
• Beth Orton

XL on ACL: Live music 101, v. 2
By Jeff Salamon
Austin American-Statesman
Sept. 18, 2003

More live music.

Is that what Austin really needs?

Let's face it: You can't drive a mile in this town without running over an aspiring singer-songwriter or two. Last Saturday, when I was tending my garden, I accidentally dug up the well-preserved corpse of the late Charles "Buddy" Holly. After helping myself to his once-again fashionable horn-rims, I covered him back up with a two-inch layer of mulch made out of shredded guitar picks.

To put it bluntly, there is, as John Ratliff has noted in these pages, too much live music in Austin. These days, it's hard to drink a beer in peace and quiet any place other than your own home -- and if you live downwind from Stubb's outdoor stage, even that may be out of the question on a Saturday night.

More to the point, there's too much lousy live music in Austin. Not lousy as in inept or ill-wrought -- Austin musicians have chops and taste to spare -- but lousy as in complacent and unambitious. Too many people are content to play (and listen to) the same blues runs and rockabilly licks and Louvin Brothers covers over and over and over again. Come on, people: Idaho may be the Russet Potato Capital of the World, but the residents of Boise don't eat french fries for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Which is why the Austin City Limits Music Festival -- like its older sibling, South by Southwest -- is a good thing for the local music scene. For three days, Austin musicians get to play side by side with musicians from all over the world. They, and their fans, get to compare and contrast and wonder: Why is Omaha's punk scene better known than ours? Why hasn't this town of hippie virtuosi produced a jam band with the global profile of a String Cheese Incident or a Leftover Salmon?

Or, to puff up our chest a bit, how come nobody plays western swing with the verve and precision of our very own Asleep at the Wheel? And, can anyone name a better indie-rock trio than longtime Austinites Spoon? (Well, other than ACL act Yo La Tengo?)

The ACL fest, in other words, is a rare chance for music fans from all over the world to hear what the Austin scene has to offer, and for Austin music fans to hear what the rest of the world has to show for itself. If Terri Hendrix or Gary Clark Jr. picks up 300 more fans or a lucrative record deal, that's great. And if a few striving Austin musicians are inspired by Al Green or Beth Orton to spend another year on the couch woodshedding before they hit the local bar scene, that's even better.

Counterintuitive as it might seem, sometimes the best solution to too much live music is: more live music.

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