Sunny blue skies, exceptional live music and good friends make up the recipe for almost a perfect weekend.  This past weekend was the Austin City Limits Festival and had all the ingredients for this recipe.  It’s held in Zilker Park, in downtown Austin over 3 days on 8 stages and hosts over 130 bands.  Yes, it’s the festival associated with the Austin City Limits studio performances on PBS.  Many bands here at the festival tape at the KUT studio at the University of Texas over the course of the weekend, before coming over to rock the crowd of 70,000.

Austin City Limits Festival 2009The weather couldn’t have been more perfect on Friday, with blue skies and sunshine.  Saturday brought us steady rain that could not dampen the spirits of concertgoers.  We prepared for more rain on Sunday, but were met instead by sunshine and humidity.  The mud rose up from the earth on Sunday to celebrate with us as well, which bore witness to many interesting Woodstock-esque moments.

Friday’s highlights included:
Avett Brothers – one of my favorite bands made a lot of new fans with their passionate performance.  Their punk roots showed in an explosive live performance of their Rick Ruben-produced new album, "I and Love and You."  Avett Brothers
Phoenix – incredibly fun show that won over the largest crowd they’d ever played before.  Their amazingly catchy songs are even better live.  These guys are becoming one of my new favorite bands.
Thievery Corporation - which was so much fun that my brother and I cannot decide whether David Byrne sat in with them or not. And we love David Byrne so much we recently watched him lecture on the trends of bicycling in cities from a city planning perspective. 
Eddie Vetter sitting in with Kings of Leon – which brought some grit to their radio-friendly performance.  The crowd knew the words to every song by heart, which becomes frustrating when 70,000 have all drunk cheap beer all day.

Saturday’s highlights:
!!! – Nic Offer is a gregarious stage presence who I will now go see anywhere, anytime.  Nic Offer of !!!
Bon Iver – performing their last show after several years of touring the same heart-wrenching album
Levon Helms – a living legend who’s bouncing back from his fight with cancer
Them Crooked Vultures – dirty rock supergroup consisting of John Paul Jones, Dave Grohl and Josh Homme
Dave Matthews Band covering Talking Heads’ “Burning Down the House”

Sunday’s highlights:
The Dead Weather – Jack White’s new supergroup
Ben Harper and Relentless 7 – Ben Harper?  I’m there.
Pearl Jam – who completely justified their top billing with their powerful performance (check out PBS on Nov. 21st for their inspiring related performance in the ACL studio)
Ben Harper sitting in with Pearl Jam after Eddie Vetter told the crowd that he and Ben had been up till 8:30AM that morning “getting it all figured out”
Perry Farrell sitting in with Pearl Jam to perform the Jane’s Addiction standard, “Coming Down the Mountain”

I’m an avid live music fan.  It’s one of the reasons I live here in Austin.  Music floats so thick in the air that it saturates every corner of this city.   Having the opportunity to see this many amazing bands, and get introduced to many new sounds, was such a blessing.  I danced around, smiled and laughed till it hurt. 

Happy Concertgoers
So it was almost a perfect weekend?  What were we missing?  Well, considering one of my other great loves is a decent beer, you probably all saw this coming...

ACL is one of the top music festivals in the US, ranked up there with Lollapollooza, Coachella, Bonnaroo.  Top local restaurants from Austin provided excellent food in stalls.  Yet the beer selection this weekend was abysmal.  Our choices were
Bud, Bud Light, Heineken, Lone Star and Tecate

The Lone Star and Tecate ran out first every day.  You could get 24 oz cans of either for $8 and that was the best deal offered.  Why was decent beer overlooked?  Plenty of people would have paid a little more to have something that tasted better.  One could look to the food vendors for proof of the audience's discerning tastes.

While walking from the B-52’s crowd-pleasing performance of "Rock Lobster" toPorto-John line: the result of too many weak beers check out the Heartless Bastards, I stumbled across a Beer Garden tucked along a side of the festival.  Hallelujah!  Unfortunately, the diverse selection of beers offered in this ACL Beer Garden was Heineken Light.  And that was it.  I stumbled away, angry at the false advertising and stomped in the thick mud.  Luckily the Heartless Bastards understood my sad plight and tried to help me forget the weak sauce I was sipping upon with some dirty blues.

Poor Decisions: another result of too many bad beersSeveral of my friends filled Camelbaks with tasty Belgians to bring into the festival; others tried to slip some Fat Tires into hiding within the rungs of collapsible chairs in a bag. Many of these ruses did not make it through security.  I had a friend that planned to sneak some Shiner Bock into the festival using a fake and hollow “pregnant stomach.”  Not sure if that shenanigan happened, but it goes to show the lengths people went to in order to get a decent beer.

I planned to use this column to toast the wonder of beer, to celebrate the beauty of beer.  Unfortunately, this is the second column I’ve written where I’ve found myself a decent beer away from a perfect time.  Here’s hope that people start “getting it” and decent beers become available at all great events. 

Raise your glass to the day when the almost perfect weekend becomes completely perfect, when we can have our festival and enjoy a decent tasting beer as well!

Cheers!

T