ACL Recap - Friday

I had a great time at ACL again this year. Just like last year, I thought I'd only spring for a one day pass but upon seeing the line-up decided to go all three days again. I think I went for a longer period of time than last year, and I think I had a better time too! I reread my previous entries on ACL before going. I had been thinking this was my third year going, but it's actually my fourth. My first year was before I started blogging so I don't have a writeup for that one. Last year's writeup was pretty short so I'm going to make this one a little longer.

This was my first year not living nearby, so I had to give transportation some thought, and I ended up doing different things. So here's a boring paragraph about how I got to ACL so I remember next year. Friday I planned on using the downtown shuttle but put my bicycle in the car just in case. I ended up parked a little too far away from the shuttle for my tastes, so I ended up biking in. Unfortunately, I didn't have my bike lights operational so getting back to the car after dark was a little scary. I didn't have to worry about getting run over by cars much though as I was mostly on bike paths. I did have to worry plenty about falling into the creek and running over bums, though. Day two I parked downtown near LJ's, had a few there to help my headache, decided to forget the bike and walked to the shuttle and rode it in. The shuttle is just fine for getting there since everyone shows up at different times, but leaving on the shuttle is out of the question. So, I walked from Zilker to LJ's after Willie. A pretty long walk, but given the choice of waiting for a bus for an hour or walking for an hour, I'll take walking. Day three I parked by Donn's Depot on 5th and walked in. I thought about using the bike again but the walk didn't seem far enough and the bike still had potential for being a pain in the ass (I hadn't exactly figured out how to secure my folding chair to the bike rack yet). So, if I go again next year I think I will go with the last option--I was still able to park relatively close, and not even in a residential area where homeowners could get potentially pissed off.

The first band I saw on Friday was Guster, a band I know my sister enjoys. Apparently I started out with a lot of ambition because I was taking notes on every song. That lasted through about five songs. Anyway, if you are curious about what the band (or any band) played, they were nice enough to put up setlists on the aclfestival.com website. I had heard some of Guster's music before, probably because I had downloaded mp3's at some point on my sister's recommendation. Their set was great. I enjoyed the music a lot and the lead guy had a lot of enjoyable banter. Banter is important, I'm telling you! He made the crowd do the wave, revealed how its important to say the name of the state you're in as much as possible when you're on stage, made fun of the ACL guy who had to cut off the band when their set was over, and let everyone know when he could smell someone smoking pot. He noticed prettly late.... I noticed during the third song and I thought that was a little late too. Actually I was a little surprised I smelled regular smoke before I smelled pot smoke. Another interesting note is they had two laptops set up... their keyboards were M-Audio which is also a soundcard maker, so I'm wondering if the keyboards were controlling software synthesizers on the laptops. I'm a bit out of touch when it comes to keyboard equipment so I'll have to look into this. It is probably more powerful and cheaper to do things this way now, and eventually I am going to have to get a newer keyboard setup. I didn't see another full set until Van Morrison, but I saw parts of Gnarls Barkley, Cat Power, Gomez, Thievery Corporation, Del Castillo, and Ray Lamontagne. Gnarls used real strings for Crazy, that was nice. I don't have anything to say about the others, not really excited about any of them. Van Morrison was fine, not great, but fine. He didn't appear too excited or move around much, but he sounded just fine so I have no complaints. His Hammond player was great and the sound of that thing was sweet. I need to get one of those. I think my Friday entry is already longer than last year's entry. I guess I'll be doing one of those multi-post deals...