The freshly manicured grass in Zilker Park was a bright Technicolor green as the Friday afternoon crowd streamed in with their folding chairs and Camelbaks for the first day of the annual Austin City Limits festival.
The lush lawn--replacing the barren dustbowl found here in previous years--made this first music festival in history when more people were talking about the plantable type of grass than the smokeable kind.
The weekend got off to an excellent start, since the rain predicted by the local forecasters never materialized. On this eighty-five degree afternoon, the only thing more prevalent than sunshine was the number of bands with beards.
The opening day’s schedule was stacked with rootsy throwback artists like Philly psychedelics Dr. Dog and Oregon’s flannel-wrapped Blitzen Trapper, who both borrow their inspiration and their outfits from Buffalo Springfield and Bob Dylan.
The afternoon of Americana continued with North Carolina’s Avett Brothers, a foursome that features actual brothers Seth and Scott Avett so it’s not just a clever name. After Scott secured a red bandanna around his forehead, the A-Bros tore into their banjo and acoustic guitar with abandon.
Scott’s singing style is less about precision and more about raw, larynx-shredding passion, illustrated by his vocal aerobics on “Shame” and “Paranoia in B Major”. Other highlights were the title song from their just-released I and Love and You and the haunting “Murder in the City” which featured a kickass cello solo, possibly first time that phrase has ever been used.
It just took French dance rockers Phoenix ten years and four albums to be declared an overnight sensation and they stacked their mid-afternoon set with songs from their entire discography. There were endless rows of white people dancing awkwardly during “Consolation Prizes” and “Long Distance Call”, both from 2006’s It’s Never Been Like That.
“Thank you so much for coming so many to see us,” crushworthy singer Thomas Mars said. “This is the biggest crowd we’ve ever played to! Thank you, thank you, thank you!” It did seem like everyone wearing a festival wristband was standing in front of the AMD Stage for their uptempo hour long set and I saw a lot of brand new Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix t-shirts in the Stubbs BBQ line later.
After the sun set, the acts got harder and the bands got louder. “Look at that fuckin’ moon,” guitarist Josh Homme said shortly after taking the stage with Them Crooked Vultures. This two-month old band has only a handful of shows under its studded leather belt, but the word supergroup isn’t strong enough to describe them. Even super-fuckin’-group doesn’t do them justice, since in addition to vocals from Queens of the Stone Age frontman Homme, they also have Dave Grohl (Nirvana, Foo Fighters) on drums, and playing bass is John Paul Jones from a little band called Led Zeppelin.
Read that sentence again. Queens of the Stone Age. Nirvana. Zep. It’s like the t-shirt department at Hot Topic formed a band and decided to rock the flesh off your face in the process. Describing their sound is like writing ad copy for power tools: It’s hard. It’s precise. And it has the potential to cause bodily injury.
They blasted their way through new songs “Scumbag Blues” and “Mind Eraser”, both which were like a swift kick to the central nervous system. Their sound draws heavily from the riff-heavy rock of Queens of the Stone Age but--unsurprisingly--when Jones took to the keyboard, they spiraled into some Zep-style blues.
After soiling myself over seeing John Paul Jones, I was overwhelmed all over again by Dave Grohl behind the drum kit, powering the entire set in a frenzied tangle of blurred sticks and whipping hair.
The final band of the night was Kings of Leon and the brothers-and-cousin Followill did not disappoint. They opened with a muscular version of “Crawl” and had several thousand backup singers for “Be Somebody”, countless glowing iPhones taking countless shitty pictures during the choruses.
Their set veered back to 2004’s Aha Shake Heartbreak for “Taper Jean Girl”, “Four Kicks” and the “Bucket” before fast forwarding for jawdropping versions of “Knocked Up” and “Use Somebody” from last fall’s Only By The Night.
I was shouting my own interpretation of “Use Somebody” when the guy behind me somehow dropped his still-smoldering cigarette down the back of my pants. After frantically pawing at my own ass, I extinguished my skin and decided that maybe this was my cue to head to the car.
This was the Wrong Decision.
As I was pulling a handful of “Have You Discovered Jesus and/or The Vegan Lifestyle” brochures off my rental’s windshield, Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder was picking up a pair of tambourines and providing lead vocals for “Slow Night, So Long”.
There’s, of course, poor quality YouTube video of the song, but it’s still good enough to make missing it sting worse than my freshly scabbed back.
The Saturday schedule features indie darlings Grizzly Bear and The Decemberists before tonight’s headliner the Dave Matthews Band. I don’t care if I’m stabbed, incinerated or mauled by a panther... I’m not leaving early again.