That's Right, It's Hot in Texas, and Other Obvious Truths

That's Right, It's Hot in Texas.

So, I think I've started this blog thing. And I think I've started it because all of the people to whom I usually write unnecessarily long emails are living real lives with work and social interaction and all of those things unknown to me...or they're ex-girlfriends, or both, or they've decided to hate me...

There is something crazy about this Austin place in which I am living, and that Crazy thing is called the Sun. He's this big chariot in the sky that decides 'hey...it's fall. Time for the Hottest day of the year in one of the Hottest areas in America.' So there's this funny thing happening where the mercury on the 'thermometers' decides it wants to go up to 105, 106 degrees...Which, normally, wouldn't have Too much of an impact on my largely house-ridden life of waking up late, doing laundry that I forget about until three days later, putting pots of boiling water on the stove (which I forget about until the house fills with that strange burnt metal smell), playing my 11-string guitar (the strings are fallilng apart. One can see their metal guts), and contemplating how I may change the poetic landscape of America.

But, see, this weekend wasn't a normal weekend. It was the weekend of ACL, the Austin City Limits festival, the big shindig, a huge 130-band three-day music festival on the fields of Zilker Park...the kind of thing that happens in Austin which makes Austin so much better than the rest of Texas. The rest of Texas is Like Austin, without the rivers and the trees, and without ACL type things. So ACL is good. But it was also hot. Very hot. And dusty. Very dusty. It reminded me of Burning Man, but with less naked people, more music, and lots of burning men, but no 40-foot tall effigy of a man burning. Just burning. Jude, (good friend Brian Scofield's friend from Notre Dame with whom I'd had many heated online discussions about movies and how much of a bastard Jude is) threw some water on me at one point. You know, he had a water bottle, he squeezed it, the water went on my arm. But the thing was. The water felt like burning. You'd think that water would be a good thing to put on your skin in the hot hot sun, right? But if that water's ALSO been in the hot hot sun, it burns you. Which means the water was probably at about 105 degrees. Yowsa.

So, the weather was hot, which made it feel like something of a survivalist scenario. All of the bands (many of which were from England) commented upon the fucking hotness of it all...I think their attitude toward Texans either improved or disimproved significantly...either we're tough bastards, or we're dumb bastards, for living in a land that gets up to 107 in the fall.

But, otherwise, the music was generally great and the atmosphere good and fun and Texas/hippie/hipster-ish. What follows is a list of all the bands I saw (in order of appearance:

Friday:
Mates of State: Highly indie dude and chick. Drums and keyboard only. Vocals sounded familiar, as did the pleasantly simple dink dink dink of the keys. Good enough, I suppose.

Lucinda Williams: started slow, and we had to leave early to get seats for spoon, so we didn't get the full effect. Pretty, but this was the beginning of realizing that slow music + heat = not so practical.

Spoon: Supposedly the new local Gods of indie. I think I liked them better than Mates of State. Can't remember a tune, or an ecstatic emotion from listening. This is when I started making the joke about how indie-bands only know how to strum down on their guitars (they really do do it about 80 percent of the time). I wish I knew more music theory, because there is that ever-present dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun in indie songs, even if there's no git-box involved.

John Prine: He's old. We sort of rested for this one. Played 'flag decal' and 'angel from Montgomery,' but the sun was still up. Slow music doesn't work in the sun. You can't get that nice soft shiver up your spine when the air is boiling.

Lyle Lovett (and his large band): Very good music, though you could tell he was used to playing longer sets. He took forever to introduce his band (shoulda played 'that's right you're not from Texas' instead of telling us which of his band members had trucks. ooooh. who cares). But there's no denying Lyle's ugly face, worse hair, smooth twangless voice, and the mix of gospel country swing jazz and folk. It was a night that ended extremely well...I got a free beer, offered to me (I think) from someone in the VIP section because I was dancing so Brettishly. Also got 'thanked' by some old women behind us who, I think, spent the show watching me and Jude dance instead of watching Lyle look ugly.

The Black Crowes (heard as we were exiting the venue...Too Hard to Handle. Yes!!!)

Saturday:
Martin Sexton: Caught the middle of his set. Arrived late, and wanted to leave early for the Robert Randolph show. Again, single person on stage with guitar, even someone with as beautiful a voice and as energetic a stage presence as Martin, doesn't work well in a hot festival unless it's rock rock rockin'.
Robert Randolph and the Family Band: Pure awesomeness. Robert Randolph's a black dude who plays the electric slide steel guitar...he had a Ton of energy, constantly smiling and rocking out and laughing. The music was a mixture of soul and blues in a fast-paced nearly-jam-band style. The band'd follow one riff or one chorus for a Long time, but they had the energy and solo-improvisation to make the sparks keep on flyin'. Perhaps best of all, Robert would change places with his drummer, bassists, and guitarist (and they would take over where he left off...) The drummer turned into the bassist turned into the guitarist turned into the steel guitarist turned into the drummer again. I did a lot of dancing. Pure fun.
The Walkmen: Least impressive Indie band of the night.
Widespread Panic: I danced a lot.
Oasis: By far the most 'rock star' of any band that played. Knowing that the Gallagher boys are jackasses, we expected them to make sarcastic comments and to refrain from playing well-known songs...thankfully, they only did the former...Liam bitched about how a building in the distance that looked like an owl was freaking him out and about how there were fucking cockroaches in his hotel room, and he sarcastically introduced a song as 'another one you don't know.' Noel dedicated 'Wonderwall' to 'All the ugly girls.' When Noel was singing, he had the microphone higher than most people would, so that his head was bent backward. He was wearing a hoody and overlarge glasses...when not singing, he'd either leave the stage, stand stoically with his hand behind his back, or hold his tambourine (which he always carried but never played) in his mouth. But when you hear Don't Look Back in Anger or Champagne Supernova live, you can't help but be happy...

Sunday:
Rilo Kiley: only saw part of their set. Don't remember much.

The Kaiser Chiefs: probably my favorite 'normal' indie band of the show. A Lot of fun energy, and the British lead singer was constantly making jokes, but not in a degrading sort of way.
The Arcade Fire: Big Indie band with accordion players, violinists, cellists, etc. A unique and large sound undercut by a speaker that was out for the first half of the set. Last two songs were awesome, and they played Bowie's 'Five Years.'

The Decemberists: During this set I was at my most exhausted...the hottest, longest day so far, and I'd had a beer. So I spent most of it laying on my back. But, still, they had enough energy so that my feet were tapping even in my supine position. The lead singer's weirdly-accented, strangely nasal voice isn't a put-on as I thought I might be...it's natural...And I dig the european-folk influences. Still, though, they have the dun dun dun of indie-ness, which isn't Bad, just interesting that 'indie' rock has such a formula to it.

Wilco - Still tired, and Wilco's set wasn't very energetic, for the most part. But I really think I like their stuff...a good mix of acoustic chillness and rock and roll. But they needed more rock for the sunburnt, dehydrated audience...at This festival, even with the great Austin audience, the bands needed to be Creating the energy, not begging for it.

Coldplay - The Final show of the festival. Brian's Notre Dame friends were rabid anti-Coldplay-ites (Jude and Matt...they are Soooo Indie, man...but I don't know if we can trust them. Jude liked Mission Impossible two, and Matt's last name is Nania. Mania. Nania. Coincidence? No.), so there was a bit of a push-pull between my actually enjoying the show and then mockingly enjoying the show to appease and joke with them. Coldplay makes a big, unobtrusive, easy-to-listen-to sound with simple, touching, juvenile lyrics. I Really don't see much of a difference between them and most Indie bands, except they upstrum a lot more, and play a bit more slowly, and they tend toward sentimentality instead of quirk...But the reason that Coldplay is so huge is because they're well-produced and have a charismatic lead-singer, and both are things that came through during their performance. Great sound, clean but not passionless playing, and Mr. Paltrow was able to interact with and joke with the massive audience to an impressive level, making what should've been a completely impersonal show at least somewhat personal. He did a lot of tricks to get us there (changing song lyrics to reference the heat, the great audience, other musicians at the festival...climbing up on the scaffolding...) but, with a band like Coldplay, it's better to do that than to take oneself too seriously. So, I'll probably never see Coldplay again, and it was pretty fun to see them when I did. still hear too much of them on the radio, though...

Besides the music, nothing too important happened at ACL. I averaged two beers per day, with a cup or two of sweet tea. My body was completely wrecked from the experience...being in my fat, out-of-shape condition, standing and dancing in the sun for three days wears on you in ways you wouldn't believe. I did, of course, fall in love...there were Sooo many beautiful people wandering around the show, but there was one girl especially...a tall thin brown-haired beauty behind the counter at the Kenichi's restaurant stand. It's really really really weird to me that I can see, like, 100 "9's" or "8.7's" or "10's" over the course of one weekend, but only one takes my breath away in that certain way. I wouldn't say that she was more attractive than the other beautiful women that I saw over that weekend...but there was something about her that caused that strange pleasant gnawing in my stomachliverheart. A shame how rare a thing it is for me. *sigh sigh sigh*. Anyway, of course, I didn't approach her (I was dehydratedly standing around, waiting for my friend to get food from another vendor)...I did, however, actually go Back to the stand the following night to see if she were there. She wasn't. Her really hot blonde co-worker was still there...but I didn't care. So Strange how that works out. Maybe it was just because she was wearing a simple baseball cap. I Love girls in hats.


Well, if Brian ever reads this thing he's going to get mad at me because he told me that if I was going to get insomniatic about myself tonight I should write part of the treatment for our lil' movie. Well, sorry Brian. A Brett's gotta do what a Brett's gotta do.

And, on that Bob-Dole-ishly third-person note, I shall bid thee anonymous non-existent recipients of this posting adieu.