This year’s Austin City Limits Music Festival - held this past weekend in the city’s Zilker Park, and from which I’ll be recovering for the next month - featured both the worst scheduling conflict in recent festival history (Wilco vs. My Morning Jacket, both playing at exactly the same time) and the most lackluster headlining performance I’ve personally ever seen, from living legend Bob Dylan, now resigned to looking silly and sounding like a croaking frog.
Almost everyone (myself included) left before he was even halfway done, but they can’t be blamed: Three days in the sun, with Texas-style beer drinking encouraged (rather than our Cali fests, where it’s relegated to sealed-off gardens that don’t have views of the stage), can leave even the most devout music fan as haggard as Bob himself. But it also left me with a few thoughts …
1. I couldn’t help but look proudly upon Cold War Kids, the Silverlake-via-Torrance foursome I once saw play to 20 people at the Echo, playing heartfelt blues- and-soul-tinged rock to what looked like 50,000 fans, all of whom knew the words to “Hospital Beds.” Their ascension has been quick, though it was recently dealt a blow when the White Stripes cancelled their tour, which CWK were scheduled to open. Hopefully they won’t end up being a hype-machine byproduct. If the rest of their new songs sound like their U2-ish opener here, that’s unlikely.
2. My Morning Jacket - clad in Hawiian party gear to complement a Tiki stage setup - are totally worth missing Wilco for.
3. Why can’t L.A. or O.C. do a festival like this? ACL exists in a park in the middle of the city and feels like a genuine celebration of the town’s musical roots. Our closest rival, Detour, the 2-year-old, single-day fest that closes the streets of downtown L.A., is headlined this year (on Oct. 6) by Justice and Bloc Party (fronted by Kele Okereke, seen in the pic from ACL above, courtesy of Associated Press) - two British bands with none of the local cache afforded to ACL headliners like Dylan, or even the new electro-rock band Ghostland Observatory, let alone last year’s headliner, Beck.
ACL boasts local food instead of the normal burgers-and-Thai-noodle greasiness of most fests (at affordable prices to boot), giving this fest the feel of a giant gathering of the most open-eared folks in the city. It’s why I return year after year, for it has something missing even at Coachella, Street Scene and Bonnaroo: a sense of community that exists when you leave the festival grounds. In fact, being at ACL feels just like being in Austin proper.
… Desert Jeff Miller
Jeff is L.A. edtior of Thrillist.com and his work can regularly be seen at Esquire.com
