Inside the Dell Dome: music, mirth and ping-pong

By Patrick Beach
AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Thursday, September 25, 2008

The dome at this year's Austin City Limits Music Festival is not, have no fear, Biosphere II come to roost in Austin. It's the new Dell Dome, a mobile version of the music-art-interactive-whatever Dell Lounge, and it's been hopping from festival to festival since Lollapalooza in Chicago. And it sounds like a good bit of fun.

Graffiti artist Mike Ming decorates the canvas exterior, and fest-goers can transfer his artwork to their own duds with a T-shirt station. There are airbrush tattoos available. You can make a custom playlist of ACL Fest bands' tracks and download 10 tunes for free courtesy of Dell and Paste magazine when you get home. You can go online and update your MySpace to prove you just saw the most awesome band ever.

It appears the thing has been something of a hit this summer. (At ACL Fest, the dome will be just west of the Dell Stage.)

"It's a way of bringing the lounge to live events," said Susan Kittleson, the company's director of consumer marketing for the Americas. "It's a celebration of the democratization of music and the ability to express yourself through music and design. We've been amazed at how many people come. At one of the festivals we had 20,000 people go through the dome over three days."

Maybe the hot draw is getting your hair done like Amy Winehouse. This, sadly, is not a joke. And the wait has been up to four hours for that particular service.

Also, bands — including Roky Erickson, White Denim and this year's winner of the Sound and the Jury competition — will be doing interviews inside, with clips up the following day.

Also, and still not joking: There will be ping-pong. Yes, the one thing everyone has said ACL Fest has sorely been lacking lo these many years.