XL on ACL: Pigs Fly Pink Floyd's pig flies again at ACL fest  The pig made famous by Pink Floyd soars overhead during the String Cheese Incident performance Saturday night. Larry Kolvoord AMERICAN-STATESMAN By Michael Corcoran Austin American-Statesman Sept. 21, 2003 In July 2002, the manager of String Cheese Incident bought one of the most infamous stage props in rock history, Pink Floyd's 40-foot inflatable pig. He wanted to use it at a special String Cheese concert, but the airborne porker, believed to be from the 1988 Pink Floyd tour, was badly damaged, torn into five sections, with chunks missing. The band took it to the country's top hot-air balloon shop, which is in the band's hometown of Boulder, Colo., and was told it couldn't be repaired. "When pigs fly" went back to being a way of saying, "Not gonna happen." Saturday night at the Austin City Limits Music Festival, the swine was sailing. After a video of the pig's history was shown on the jumbo screen during the String Cheese set, break spotlights hit the reconstructed pig as an eight-man crew walked it through the disbelieving crowd. Then the band played "Another Brick In the Wall" to send the moment into the stratosphere. Fans can thank Nga Keith of Bluebonnet Cut & Sew on Lamar Boulevard for putting the pig back in the sky. "At first I wasn't sure I could fix it," said the Vietnam native who settled in Austin in 1981. "The face was almost gone." An agricultural economist in her homeland, Keith, 49, credits her math aptitude with helping her solve the puzzle. "I laid the pieces out flat and calculated how they would look in three dimensions," she said. Keith was able to match the fabric, an acrylic material also used for parachutes, to reconstruct the pig in four places. SCI's management had sent the butchered hog to Austin a month ago when Stubb's co-owner Jeff Waughtal, a partner with ACL Fest booker Charles Attal, said he knew someone who might be able to do the job. "Nga loves a challenge," Waughtal said. For SCI co-manager Mike Luba, the launch was sweet vindication. "Everybody thought I was nuts — the band, my partners," Luba said. "They looked at that box full of rags and said I was crazy to buy it." Luba said he got the prop, introduced into Floyd lore on the cover of 1977's "Animals," from a former Floyd stagehand. The first zeppelin was a female, but after Roger Waters left the group in 1984 and tried to block them from using the Pink Floyd name, the band created a male pig. Told that the pile of fabric that filled her shop for three weeks once flew over millions of concert fans, Nga Keith was incredulous. "I had no idea the pig was famous," she said. Other festival news: Two arrests were reported Saturday. One person was arrested for passing a counterfeit $20 bill and renowned street person Leslie Cochran was arrested for charges that were unclear at presstime. There were also 30 injuries, which were described by an emergency services worker as somewhat more serious than Friday's injuries. Manyweredue to excessive alcohol consumption. One person was taken to the hospital for alcohol poisoning. | ||||
 |
Advertisement
This week:
» DJ Spooky's polar attraction
» One Dish Wonders: Mr. Natural
» Tapestry contemplates 'what if?'
Advertise Online or in Print | Subscribe to the Newspaper |
Presented by The Austin American-Statesman. Contact us. Careers. Corrections. Site Requirements.
Please read our Privacy Policy. By using this site, you accept the terms of our Visitor Agreement.
