« limbo | Main | acl 2006, day two »
acl 2006, day one
September 18, 2006
this weekend, on saturday, the blog turned two. a dubious anniversary for some, it rather poetically was marked by the same event with which it began, the austin city limits musical festival.
friday, i rode my bike to work, bided my time in the job that has grabbed the number one spot on the all time worst job charts, changed into my bright red shoes, running shorts, and a peter gabriel tshirt. i had my little red backpack whose small size and poor construction would render it useless, did it not also conceal a .7 liter camelback water bladder in it. in it, i packed an extra shirt, a towel (as the hitchhiker's guide would dictate), phone, wet wipes, wallet, good old film camera, and notebook...
friday
i rode down to zilker park, and felt a little free, in a way, on my old bike in the middle of the afternoon, but the anxiety that's persistently shadowed me, and even overtaken me, was there with me, still. the thoughts have been racing again, a constant maelstrom of often contradictory images and feelings and ideas. i just wanted them to quiet down. i looked forward to the music, and to our 12-mile progressive-pace run saturday morning, where every mile, you gather speed in 15 second chunks. i needed to feel that, feel the gathering of confidence and momentum as i gathered speed.
i saw the stars, a band out of canada that i had seen at stubbs late last year with my friend amber. i like them, but still haven't bouight any of their albums - there's something weirdly cheesey about them. the man that splits the singing duties with a female bandmate often looks like he's singing educational songs to a class of first graders.
already, the crowds seem bigger than before, and it's hard to feel close, a part of the music.
i move down to see gnarls barkley, the enigmatic group that is one of the most ballyhooed shows of the festival.
it immediately grabs me - everyone comes out in white lab coats - the principals dj danger mouse and rapper/singer cee-lo, three backup singers, and three or four women playing electric stringed instruments provocatively. they immediately launch into thomas dolby's "she blinded me with science," and they have my attention.
they quickly lose it. cee-lo doesn't know the lyrics, and mumbles through them. he has a passable voice. the sound is a mess. the songs are riff-heavy and have nice vocal melodies, but no structure to give them substance.
i don't get very close. i walk up one of two major pathways through the crowd to the stage, then pull off into a vacant spot to watch and listen. a group of people in their mid-twenties, led by a couple of large frat-boy types come by, and one of them stops in the middle of the aisle and says (i shit you not), "seriously, dude, let's just sit here. fuck everyone else."
some of his companions look uncomfortable, but he keeps arguing the inarguable logic and moral imperative of "fuck them, let's sit," so they do.
i wander off to meet up with shannon and brian.
next up is cat power, who i missed a couple of years ago at acl. she's got a whole old-style country rhythm section backing her up, and she's fantastic. she's got an easy and casual way with the music and the crowd that still commands attention. she sings the heavily country-inflected songs from her latest album, songs that patsy cline could have sung, except with slightly sharper lyrics. she slinks through a version of "satisfaction". at one point, she even asks if anyone else had seen gnarls barkley, and she starts singing "crazy," and as she did with "satisfaction", she makes it work, gives it something new.
thievery corporation (one of three bands over the weekend featured on the garden state soundtrack), was playing at the gargantuan at&t stage, which is generally attended by a two or three-hundred yard long throng of people. i listened from a distance, and once again, just couldn't feel the music.
i went to see about getting some food, and found the lines were easily 40-50 yards long.
i stopped at the "general store" and picked out some sort of small fruit and nut bar. $5. i declined, and went to the stage where john mayer would be playing in half an hour...
friday, 7:48pmso, maybe this is it for me and outdoor music festivals.
i know what you're thinking - what a wuss. ok, probably a worse word.
but here's the thing, or rather, the things. no, wait, it really is just the one thing - it's the people, all the damned people.
i could split this problem into two things, i guess: the sheer quantity of people being one, and the fairly consistent tendency of most of those people to act, as a friend points out, just like people.
i doesn't help that i've been in this sort of winnowing process lately. my life has been separating before my eyes, like substances in a chemistry experiment, into the meaningful and the meaningless. it's also happening with the people around me. i've become a lot more aware of how disappointing people can be. i've attributed some with more meaning in my life than they deserved. and, to be fair, i've disappointed more people lately than i think i ever have. so, there's that.
so, do i really want to wait 15 more minutes for john mayer? i've seen him twice, and he was great - in fact, he was one of the best guitar players i've seen, and i've seen stevie, clapton, guy, moore, cray, and some of the other blues greats. but that feeling, that sad anger, is back. it's risen again and again tonight, to the point that every slight by another person, real or perceived, makes me want to hurt the person, or to get hurt by the person. it doesn't matter. i just want something to happen, and i want an end.
yeah, i love john mayer, but i can't do it tonight. and amidst the flood of random thoughts and emotions, there's still one odd question that floats through: why, why god why, did john mayer date jessica simpson?
i'm going home. and i don't know that i'll come back.
Posted by Rob at September 18, 2006 10:04 PM
Comments
the people make the festival man...i really didn't come face to face with any horrible people at acl this year. i could complain about not hearing willie, or long food lines, or not enough hand sanitizer, but i'm going to die in 60 years.
maybe my proximity to the festival makes it too easy for me, but i consistently think ACL is one of the best run events I go to annually.
Posted by: longfellow at September 18, 2006 11:53 PM
ok, i should say, and hopefully would have at some point, that acl is definitely an incredibly well-run production. the only gripe i've ever had was them shutting down muse, one of the best shows i'd seen all weekend, 20 minutes early so they wouldn't step on tom petty. poor planning.
other than that, i am a huge supporter of the festival. i won't stomach people bitching about it.
but i'm having issues with people. and i will say that while i also met some really nice people and saw a lot of people being cool, i saw many as many or more people so self-absorbed that, at best, they really didn't give a damn about the consequences of their actions. they were there for themselves.
hopefully, i'll be in a better place for it next year, and i'll also do some things differently myself.
thanks, incidentally, for having the after-party saturday night. it gave us a place to kind of relax and gather the strength to make the rest of the various treks we all had to make.
Posted by: rob at September 19, 2006 12:01 AM
John Mayer didn't date Jessica Simpson. He has come out and called her a pathetic publicity starved creep for thying to make it look that way.
Posted by: hb at September 19, 2006 05:57 PM