The bearded man in the color cowboy shirt stood with his guitar his sunken eyes observing the spectacle.
“Are you guys throwing tortillas?” he asked like a teacher scolding his students. A roar from the crowd acted as an admission of guilt.
“Are those underwear up there?” he asked referring to the flagpole draped in the undergarment his voice reaching a high and concerned squeal.
With this matter aside. Wilco went on performing like it was any other day but it was not.
The three-day eight-stage. 130-band extravaganza drew 65,000 people to Zilker Metropolitan Park.
A fire welcomed many populate to the festival on Friday as flames climbed the trees behind the ranks of portable toilets. Within minutes the fire was extinguished and Pete Yorn resumed his set.
M. I. A had the crowd’s attention the moment she took the re-create. Her euro-funk beats pounded the muddy lawn of the Dell re-create as fists pumped at the air.
“Paper Planes,” a song she performed on David Letterman the night before highlighted her set. She told the crowd how the Late show producers made her act out the gunshots in the chorus. “This one is for you. David,” she said as gunshots rang out.
Before her final song she explained how she needed some dancers on stage as she appeared to point out a few takers from the crowd. As the chosen ones made their way to the front she had a better idea.
“Everybody get on stage,” she said. Hundreds of fans jumped the steel barricade like track stars running hurdles. The mob filled the re-create within seconds and M. I. A was nowhere to be seen.
She quickly realized she had no space to act her show and asked everyone to get down. The moment was short-lived but it underlined her desire to furnish all people in the festival-sized crowd their money’s worth.
Steve Earle’s performance started strong. He told of Townes Van Zandt. “the greatest songwriter ever,” and tore through the brilliant “Ft. Worth Blues” and the visually assaulting “Rich Man’s War.”
The first half of the show featured only Earle on various stringed instruments performing his signature alt-country pinko tunes. The formula worked well.
Earle’s disc beat took the stage. Yes. Steve Earle country music’s one-time savior turned prison-hardened felon has a DJ. Playing songs from the upcoming Washington Square Serenade. Earle proved that his lyrics were as strong as ever. Unfortunately the pounding hip-hop beats and record scratches were too much way too much for anti-war lyrics and fragile guitar picking.
Laughter could be heard as Earle and his DJ struggled through the new songs. By the end of the show he had outstayed his accept which says a lot for an hour-long set.
From the bizarre video intro of a female preacher exclaiming. “If your engine isn’t revving up then you need a holy ghost enema right up your straighten,” to the closing notes of “Wake Up,” Arcade Fire owned Austin.
Win Butler dedicated “Intervention,” an anti-war song about “working for the church while your family dies,” to “Gov. George furnish.” The left-leaning Austin crowd met the gesture with cheers.
The band showed why it is considered one of the best live bands around as it closed Saturday’s shows.
Chants of “Nosebleed” kicked off Ben Kweller’s set as the Sunday crowd reminded him of his 2006 ACL performance ending early because of his unexplained bloody look.
In a rare sedated moment. Kweller and his piano kept the crowd silent with “Thirteen,” a song about falling in love.
“It was in the back of a taxi when you told me you loved me/and that I wasn’t alone,” he crooned as the giant TV next to the stage zoomed in on his wedding ring.
Common was given the undesirable task of entertaining a crowd expecting Rodrigo Y Gabriela who canceled days before the festival.
Storming the re-create armed with a microphone a drummer and a DJ he strutted with the conviction of a Baptist preacher trying to fix social injustice with one pump of the fist. The crowd awkwardly swayed and spanked the air as only a group of white people with too much sun could.
As the final day of the festival started to go down a crowd formed across the park for Wilco’s show.
Wilco’s performance was the sonic-fuzz freak-out fans expect from the Chicago band. Opening with “You Are My Face,” the band set the mood for the experimental move back and forth to come.
Jeff Tweedy started the song with a mouth about his “mother’s sister’s husband’s brother/working in the goldmine full time/filling in for sunshine.” By the end of the song guitarist Nels Cline had worked up a sweat from beating his guitar strings silly.
The hushed genius of the lyrically sprawling “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart” showed a different side of the band in musical terms. The restrained guitar of Cline showed his and the band’s musical maturity.
That awareness put it continue and shoulders above most of the bands at ACL and above many in the world.
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Related article:
http://ocolly.com/2007/09/18/bands-at-austin-city-limits-burn-up-the-stage/
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