XL ETC
Highlights from this week's XL blogs
Sept. 23, 2004
ACL FEST'S BIG ALBATROSS
It's gotten too big, too soon. In its third year, the Austin City Limits Music Festival was bursting at the seams with crowds of 70,000 to 75,000 a day (not counting the world's largest guest list) squeezing and craning and squinting out stage views from as far away as Barry Bonds can hit a baseball. Add 100-degree days and, well, I'm guessing quite a few of those 75,000 people had a less than delightful time.
If you're like me, here's how the experience went: The first day was greeted with trepidation. How am I gonna get there? How am I gonna get home? Will I be able to withstand the heat, especially with all the walking I'm going to do? Why couldn't I be a movie critic?
 Michael Corcoran |
Then, like me, you'd probably had enough of this whole dang thing by about 3 p.m. Saturday. You even left before the Pixies, the one band you wanted to see, because the crowds and the heat finally got to you and made you realize that sitting at home in your underwear watching Auburn vs. LSU is paradise. On paper, this was one of the greatest music festivals ever booked. But you could put the paper in the oven and arrange a bag of tater tots on top of it for how it played out.
On Sunday, spiritually recharged by a day of watching football, you returned to Zilker and had a couple of good hours before you got swallowed up again by this mini-city of umbrella chairs and shirtless guys and teenagers who couldn't care less about the music but showed up because the worst thing that can happen to a high schooler is for something awesome to occur and them being the only one of their clique to not be there.
In the end, the hassles and the magic canceled each other out.
So what happens next year to make this fest more manageable, like the first two years? Does Charles Attal book fewer big names? Do organizers raise ticket prices precipitously? Do the organizers go ahead and schedule the fest to coincide with a home football game? Will they schedule this thing a couple weeks later, when temperatures start to drop?
No, no, no and yes. Since "scaling back" is not in the CSE vocabulary, and a major price increase goes against the populist vibe, what the ACL Fest needs to do is expand to the other side of Barton Springs Road, where a huge, barren field sat completely without purpose, except to park a few cars and land a couple helicopters, this past weekend. This field could hold at least two stages, drawing 20,000 to 30,000 fans from the main area. Everybody would be able to get closer to the stages. The percentage of happy festers would rise.
Also, based on the UT football schedule which CSE has always used to set the date, the fourth annual ACL Music Fest will almost surely be held from Sept. 30-Oct. 2, 2005. The Longhorns have an away game against Missouri on Oct. 1.
During the first year of the ACL Fest, it didn't seem possible that the Zilker Park soccer fields would prove to be too small to accommodate the crowds in just two years. But that's what happened this weekend.
Luckily, the answer sits just across the street.
JOHNNY, JUDE, JENNIFER AND JOHNNY
Wednesday afternoon, my brother called me up and told me that a tornado had hit our folks' house in Georgia. Everybody's fine and the house is still standing, though a little worse for wear. I have been walking around for the past day with that feeling you get when you're almost in a car accident but at the last minute the other driver doesn't hit you.
 Sarah Lindner |
I also checked out the local media and found this report from the amazingly named Melissa Kill. Really: Melissa Kill. That's so going be my band name. And we will own SXSW next spring.
My Orlando friends totally dodged this storm, but apparently have other things to worry about. The only time I ever had an altercation with a Disney character during my Orlando years was when Buzz Lightyear thought my friend and I were checking out his rear end. Please! Who would even look at Buzz with Woody nearby?
Keyed up over the tornado, I've calmed myself down by reading the wonderful feature on the unlikely bond between Johnny Cash and producer Rick Rubin in the new Vanity Fair, the one with Jude Law on the cover. Check it out. Although the issue also troubles me, because I just don't think Jude Law is attractive anymore. How did he suddenly un-cute himself? Why do I see only Michael Caine when I look at him now?
More troubling reading: I hate to call Entertainment Weekly out on anything, especially since I got this week's issue even after all of those urgent warnings that "Your subscription is about to expire!" and "Your subscription has now expired!!!" and "We are totally not kidding. We are not sending you this magazine anymore. EVAH!!!"
But did the magazine have to emphasize plus-size chick-lit author Jennifer Weiner's weight above all else? As we all know, if you're overweight, that negates every other quality you possess. It is possible that you do not even have a soul. I'm not saying don't mention it -- Weiner's heroines are overweight -- but the whole article doesn't have to read like "LOOK! She's fat!"
Some sadness today over the passing of Johnny Ramone and the fact that we are now down to one founding Ramone. I'm a huge fan of the group (although I admit my personal fondness extended only to Joey) and no matter how much I've grown to love more discursive groups like Yo La Tengo, there's always part of me that thinks a band isn't really trying if it can't bring its songs in under three minutes. Something to look forward to: The Ramones doc "End of the Century" is tentatively set to open in Austin next month.
