2017 and 2018 were the last instances of Austin City Limits I experienced before my big move from nearby San Antonio to Stuttgart, Germany. Unlike the last three, I went to these by myself without any "fam" or "base camp."
2017
This year I was being my characteristically lazy self in waiting to buy my ticket, probably because I was waiting to see who I knew was going and on what weekend. By the time I got around to finally pushing the button for weekend one, all-weekend passes were sold out so I had to buy separate wristbands for Saturday and Sunday, while forgoing Friday. This meant I would have to miss out on Crystal Castles, Foster the People, and Martin Garrix.
Saturday, October 7, 2017
Thinking back in hindsight, I should've gone there a lot earlier on Saturday than I did. I left San Antonio way too late, not realizing how long it would take to get into the fest after suffering through I-35's infamous traffic jams and checking into a hotel which was about a 15-20 minute walk from a Capitol MetroRail station. So I wound up missing out on even more artists I wanted to see, Muna, Capyac, and Dreamcar.
But I did get there in time to see Cut Copy at the Honda stage!
After dinner I caught the tail end of Alison Wonderland's set at the Tito's Handmade Vodka stage. I wasn't too eager to see this set since I had just experienced her full set at Middlelands only five months earlier. I got there just in time for "Messiah" and that was her last song of the night.
So I just saw Cut Copy and Alison Wonderland, and after that was my third Aussie artist in a row, Rüfüs Du Sol. I had planned to go see Tove Lo, the Swedish singer, over at the Barton Springs stage, but Rüfüs distracted me enough to keep me at Homeaway. This is an EDM trio who are a bit different, you can dance to their music but I'd describe it as somewhat...dark and brooding? Maybe...that label doesn't quite fit, but it's not the sort of thing you'd expect to hear at the Tomorrowland main stage. Well anyway, I really enjoyed their set, and would come back for more at Electric Forest the next year, and at ACL 2021.
The Saturday night headliners, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, are way up there on the American Express stage--formerly the Samsung stage in previous years--even if it's not all that obvious from this photo. It's not often I get to see a band like this, whose career spans decades and whose fanbase spans generations. A much different band with a similar description would be on this stage a year later.
Sunday, October 8, 2017
On Sunday the weather was oppressively hot as the blazing sun was beating down on Zilker Park. Everyone there was trying hard to stay in the shade. My favorite place to escape the heat was, of course, the Barton Springs Beer Hall.
Bored of all the Miller Lite and Lone Star for sale everywhere else in the fest? Then come in here and enjoy something a little better. They always have craft beer from all over the country, from breweries like Ziegenbock, Goose Island, Bell's, and many, many others. Off to the left of this is a big lounge area with projection TVs, usually showing football games.
Jamila Woods warming up the Tito's Handmade Vodka stage early on Sunday afternoon.
On that sweltering hot day I was wearing a shirt I got from Middlelands, a mostly EDM festival that happened at the Texas Ren Faire grounds near Houston five months earlier. I partially regretted wearing this because it was made from a fabric that didn't breathe very well, which only made the heat feel worse and cause me to sweat even more. But at the same time I was glad I wore it because so many people recognized it. "Hell yeah Middlelands!" I heard at least one person say. Apparently in the preceding months that festival had acquired near-legendary status. I even met someone there who had heard of it, but wasn't sure if it had really happened! I confirmed for him that yes, it was real, and it was all kinds of awesome.
At one point while escaping the heat under some shade I met this one guy, probably someone else who had recognized my Middlelands shirt, who had brought his mother (!) there. She told me about the Crystal Castles set I had missed the night before. When she was younger she had gone to a bunch of crazy shows back in the '80s, and she said that Crystal Castles put on a great show that held up well compared to anything she had seen back then.
Just like last year, Waterloo Records had set up shop there. This time I got CDs from three artists I'd missed--Capyac Movement Swallows Us, Muna About U, and Dreamcar's self-titled debut--along with one I had not, Cut Copy Free Your Mind.
Here's Badbadnotgood at the Tito's Handmade Vodka stage. I'd wanted to see them at Euphoria six months earlier but they had to cancel their set there.
During the late afternoon I caught two artists at the Barton Springs stage I'd already seen at Middlelands: Louis the Child and Zhu. They weren't that much different from five months earlier. Louis the Child went on while the weather was still burning hot, and I thought "Weekend" was a great song to hear while being mildly intoxicated while sweating under the blazing sun.
Zhu at the Barton Springs stage.
At the end of the night, I had to choose between which headliner I wanted to see: Gorillaz at the Honda stage, or the Killers at American Express. It was a bit of a tough decision but I went with Gorillaz since I'd already seen the Killers ten years earlier on their Sam's Town tour.
It was a little different from what I expected. Gorillaz of course are a fictional band of animated characters played and voiced in the studio entirely by Damon Albarn. I'd read that their past concerts consisted of Albarn and his touring musicians behind a screen on which the cartoons were projected. Here however said musicians were out in the open with Albarn getting to be a front man while the band's videos played behind them.
Just about every guest musician that appeared on a Gorillaz track was there that night. Here's Del the Funky Homosapien rapping on "Clint Eastwood."
Want to experience the whole set? Someone recorded the whole thing and put it on YouTube.
It must have taken at least two hours to get out of there. It was a long enough walk from the festival gates to the shuttle bus pickup point, waiting to board the bus, the bus ride from there to downtown, waiting for the next MetroRail train, the train ride to Highland Station...
One more night in a hotel, and then a drive back to San Antonio on Monday morning while listening to Cut Copy and Muna.
So to sum that up, 2017 was a great experience, but in the end it just didn't measure up to the expectation set by 2016. I'm not exactly sure why; maybe it was the fact that there was no more fam to be rooted to and I was solo'ing this instance? Or just that fact that I'd missed out on so many artists I'd gotten pumped up for? Maybe both?
2018
I'm still not sure what my favorite ACL was, 2016 or 2018. This one had some incredibly memorable moments, but it was all overshadowed by the fact that I was in the process of moving to Germany and this was going to be not only my last ACL but the last thing I ever did in south Texas for the foreseeable future. It used to be I'd drive up to Austin, do ACL over the weekend, and then drive back to San Antonio and life would go on. This time there would be no return trip as my one-way flight out of DFW would be leaving in less than a week...
This year I'd actually installed the ACL app on my phone, which let me see the schedule long before the fest actually happened. I'd wanted to see Odesza, who I was curious about, but some organizer had put them on at the same time as Paul McCartney! Seriously? Paul is one of the most iconic artists of any generation still alive today, you just can't schedule anyone else playing at the same time, I don't care who it is!
Friday, October 5, 2018
Some things never change. I always arrived at the fest many hours after I planned, and this year was no exception. I had to hit up the cable company's office to turn in my cable box and modem, then go meet an SA friend to give away some speakers because they were 120 volt and thus useless in Germany, do the hour-long drive north on I-35, check into my hotel, watch the sun go down while riding a series of buses to the festival gates...I missed some of Paul McCartney's set but there was still plenty left by the time I got in, after all he had several decades of material to go through. By the time I got in, he was going through his '70s Wings material, like "Band on the Run."
After the hectic rush I'd been through that night, I just wanted to relax with a beer, so at the Barton Springs Beer Hall I got myself a Kona Big Wave. With that I just sat down on the grass, slowly sipping the lager as Paul sang all the Beatles classics he had sung lead on, like "Back in the USSR," "Hey Jude," and "Let It Be."
After the festival closed down, I wasn't ready to turn in yet, and so found my way to 6th Street where I had a drink or two at Maggie Mae's.
There was a '90s cover band playing at Maggie Mae's. When I took this pic they were playing the Gin Blossoms' "Hey Jealousy." Before this they played Blind Melon “No Rain” and Goo Goo Dolls “Slide.”
This is on the wall at Maggie Mae's. This has to be the most Austin thing you will ever look at.
Saturday, October 6, 2018
I entered the fest early Saturday afternoon when everything was just starting up and all the unknowns were playing. Mostly I burned up the afternoon wandering from stage to stage while occasionally stopping at the Barton Springs Beer Hall waiting for the artists I wanted to see.
Here's Slenderbodies. I thought they were OK and gave them a few listens in the following weeks, but haven't kept up with them since.
This is Sweet Spirit who I last saw at Float Fest in 2017.
Blood Orange, on the Miller Lite stage, was someone I'd recently discovered that summer. Devonté Hynes is actually a multi-talented, multi-genre, multi-aliased artist originally from London but now based in New York City, and under the name Blood Orange he's released a few albums that could be described as "pop" but you won't see on the Hot 100. I'd grown to like Blood Orange over the summer, during the run-up to this festival, and later bought two of his CDs at the Waterloo pavilion.
CHVRCHES put on my favorite set of the whole weekend. I'd wanted to see them for a couple years now, and I'd been listening to some of the tracks off their latest Love Is Dead album throughout the summer. They're definitely one of my favorite current artists and I thoroughly enjoyed every song they played.
And check this out, someone filmed the whole CHVRCHES set and put it on YouTube.
Saturday night ended at the American Express stage with the headliner to end all headliners, Metallica. Over two hours they had four decades of metal classics to go through, from their '80s thrash albums all the way up to their newly released Hardwired...to Self-Destruct! album. Often, clips from their videos appeared on the screens behind the stage; I still find "One" uniquely chilling.
It occurred to me that Metallica actually have something in common with the previous night's headliner Paul McCartney: they have a fanbase that spans several generations. There were the older fans who had been long-haired misfits in the '80s who had bought Master of Puppets on vinyl back in 1986, there were the young kids who hadn't even been born yet then but could appreciate great music when they heard it, and people like me in the middle who were introduced to Metallica via Load, Re-Load, and S&M.
I couldn't get any good photos, since I was in the back of the crowd having just walked over from the Honda stage. This is from the official ACL Facebook page.
Sunday, October 7, 2018
As with past ACLs, Waterloo Records had their shop set up, and I went in to engage in the now-rare (for me) practice of buying music on physical media. On CD I got Blood Orange Freetown Sound and Negro Swan, CHVRCHES Every Open Eye and Love Is Dead, Phoenix Ti Amo, Paul McCartney McCartney II and Egypt Station, Wings Greatest, and Metallica's new release Hardwired...To Self Destruct! Knowing that my 120-volt turntable would be out of commission for the next two years, I didn't spend a whole lot of money on vinyl, but I did get used copies of the Beatles Let it Be and Wings Venus and Mars.
There's also always a couple of merch tents, one of which sells artist merch. It was at that one I stopped next and bought a CHVRCHES shirt.
I missed Rezz at Electric Forest three months earlier, so I had to catch her dark and hypnotic beats here at the Homeaway stage.
Sometime in the early evening I am positive I watched Phoenix. There's one thing making me doubt my memory: looking at the printed schedule I still have, Phoenix is nowhere on it. There is a conspicuous blank spot in the 6-7pm timeslot at the Honda stage, and I think that's where they were, so maybe that's where and when Phoenix played and the schedule was misprinted?
Well anyway, I saw Phoenix there on Sunday evening. This is a band from France who made a bit of a splash in the States back in 2010 with two songs, "1901" and "Lisztomania." Since then I hadn't followed them at all but enjoyed their set nonetheless. Their then-new Ti Amo album, which I'd bought a little while ago at Waterloo, was pretty good too, though I haven't listened to it a whole lot since then.
I had one last area friend who lived in Austin who wanted to meet up with me before I moved across the pond. He made it into the fest after Phoenix finished, and we watched Illennium at the Miller Lite stage before leaving the festival and heading off to a south Austin bar where I had my last beer in that city for the next three years...
The next morning I was driving north on I-35 to spend a few days with my parents in the Dallas area before the flight to Germany. For more than a week, I kept my wristband on for a reason. Stuttgart, I knew, has a TV Tower not unlike San Antonio's Tower of the Americas, and I wanted to take a picture of my wrist, with the ACL wristband on it, in front of the tower as a sort of continuity, a bridge between the San Antonio era of my life that was now ending and the Stuttgart era that was about to begin.
A pint of Windsor & Eaton Guardsman at London Heathrow Airport, during a layover on October 12.
It was on October 17, a full ten days after the festival, when I was just barely settled in enough in my new home that I tried to figure out Stuttgart's public transit system, took a bus to the Vaihingen train station, rode the U8 train to the Ruhbank (Fernsehturm) station, walked down a path and...
Didn't turn out the way I'd hoped, with the tower all blurry like that. I took several others but they turned out the same way. I didn't just wear my ACL wristband, but I added all the others from 2018: Lightning in a Bottle, Electric Forest, Float Fest, River City Rockfest, and Co:Creation.
That was my fifth ACL, and my last for the next three years. I didn't feel it was worth the long trip to go to the next one in 2019, and of course 2020 was cancelled like every other festival that year. Finally in 2021 I made it back, but this will have to be the subject of another blog.
