Austin City Limits Music Festival 2007 (Day 3)

Heading into the final day, we decided to try to get there some time before Ben Kweller, who we had missed at the festival last year. Probably because it was Sunday, the shuttle over to Zilker Park was much faster than on Friday. We got there early, so we were lucky to see a good chunk of The National's set. Maybe a little too predictable by 2007 with the late 70s-early80s new wave thing. I get a lot of Echo & the Bunnymen. I had heard a few songs before the festival, and was surprised at how good they sounded live. Crowd was into it. Things were off to a positive start.

Ben Kweller rocked. He sounded into it, and his backing band was bouncy. He threw in a joke about there still being dry blood on his keyboard (he apparently got a nosebleed during his set last year). I wish I had stayed through his set, but we decided to leave a little early to see Marley #2, Ziggy Marley play at the festival's special kids' stage, dubbed Austin Kiddie Limits. The scene was cute -- it is pretty amazing how many people bring their kids. Over at "AKL" there are lots of appropriate activities, like learning how to play electric guitar or to deejay, or just get your hair dyed bright green. Ziggy had a fun time playing before the young crowd, and the adults there were all doing whatever they could to make sure the kids ruled the good spots in the crowd.


Ziggy and Beezie play for the young hipsters (top). Kids breakin' at AKL (bottom).

After a quick bite, we joined the massive crowd watching Common. He led the crowd through a range of his past and present hits, and threw in a few lines from hip hop favorites from the late 80s forward. Despite a small stream of early departures who headed to other stages for good spots to see Bloc Party or Lucinda Williams, the size and enthusiasm of the crowd should tell the festival planners something about the viability of true hip hop at ACL. Maybe we'll get a bit more diversity next year?

We caught Bloc Party next. I liked their set, and Kele (lead singer) is fun with the crowd, but I think their appearance at 2005's festival was more impressive. They did have more going for them at the time -- new sound, shorter set, playing after dark, smaller stage. They were good, but last time they were better.

We tried to go see some of Preservation Hall Jazz Band, who played in the tent. It was a madhouse there, and you couldn't really even move around, let alone get a good spot to listen or see. So we went on toward where Wilco was going to play and heard some of Regina Spektor's set, which we both thought was boring.

We'd seen Wilco half a dozen times before, but they always sound different. This time was a suprising mix of well-played material from their latest album and some of their straight-up rockers from the oldest parts of their catalog. They threw in "Casino Queen" from their first album, A.M., and "I Got You" from follow-up Being There, which we had not heard from them since the first show we went to three or four years ago. It was a good thing they rocked, because that turned out to be about all we had left in us. We stayed for a tiny bit of Ghostland Observatory's odd set, then decided to forego the old, croaky version of Bob Dylan and instead clean up and enjoy a cold beer and decent meal in friendly company at Moonshine Grill.


Wilco on the big screen

So that was it for ACL 2007, our third trip. Was there a highlight? Maybe not. But the music was uniformly good or better, and there were lots of little surprises that you only get when you're in that type of setting. Final verdict? Let's just say we already bought our earlybird three day passes for ACL 2008. Shamefully addicted.