Ain't it fun to go back to work, ears ringing, feet swollen and shoved into dress shoes, eyes still pushing silt out of their corners like a diamond mine in Sierra Leone? Magical.
Let's have a quick rundown of the good, bad, and ugly from the first weekend, which can hopefully inform you (and me) for next weekend. We'll get to the music after some logistics discussions.
Transportation:
- Friday, I left my car at the office downtown and caught a ride to the Austin High bridge and walked in. That worked well. But then I walked all the way back at the end of the night. Google maps says this should be 3 miles, but I firmly believe it was actually 93. My dogs were barking.
- Sunday, I parked at the office again but walked the family over to Republic Park for the free bus shuttle. I don't know about other times, but going at 12:30 and coming back at 7:30 was amazing. Easy, air-conditioned, very little waiting. I worry what it would be like at 10 pm when the last show is done, but it worked very well for us.
Food:
- Sloppy Nachos from Salt Lick. Big pile of cheap tortilla chips covered in finely chopped brisket, queso, and jalapenos. Pretty good, but definitely messy. $12
- Pizza Rolls from Southside Flying Pizza. Fine. They were quick and easy to eat but a little doughy. I think they were $9?
- East Side Kings no longer sells the Poor Qui Buns and I'm very sad.
- Chicken tacos from East Side Kings. Winner. These things were amazing on Friday night. Can't remember a price.
Beer:
- Actually had the presence of mind to take a photo of the regular bar menu this year. Miller Lite (4.2%), Coors Original (5%), Sol (4.5%), Redd's Apple Ale (5%), Pilsner Urquell (4.4%), and Imperial (4.5%). So you're still better off just going with the Banquet beer. $9 a piece.
- They also have red, white, and pink wines - $9 for a tiny plastic cup or $29 for a carafe.
The Tunes:
- Big Thief was very good. Surprisingly rocking in comparison to what I had prepared my compadres for. The lead singer sounded so beautiful. Their drummer looks like Father John Misty.
- Gang of Youths was, if I'm being totally honest, not very good. You could barely understand anything the Jon Snow-looking lead singer said. The music itself was pleasantly rockin', but I should have wandered over to Bishop Briggs or something.
- Alvvays was amazing. Every song was just perfect, glittery pop rock. And they insulted Ted Cruz, randomly, in the middle of the set, saying that even though they were from Canada they were embarrassed by him.
- David Byrne. Holy smokes, David freaking Byrne. I snuck my way up pretty close to the stage for this one, and it was a visual and auditory spectacle. He had this cool silver chain stage backdrop that created a smaller stage on three sides, like grey chainmail. And he started the show sitting at a table, in an all grey suit (pants, jacket, shirt), holding a plastic brain and singing the chilled closer to his new album. By the next song, he has 12 total people out there on the stage, jamming and dancing and drumming. Great show - too short, I could have stayed for two hours.
- Greta Van Fleet. Yes. I know the world is likely tired of me talking about these dudes, but this show was a freaking jam. For the second song, they took "Highway Tune," that song up above, and turned it into a Pearl-Jam-esque ten minute jam session that sounded like it should have closed out the whole festival. These dudes look like high schoolers but stalked the stage and shredded like old pros. Totally awesome show.
- Brockhampton. Even though I was going to the late night show on Saturday, I just decided to give in and go do this. This is going to require multiple bullet points:
- So I skipped Khalid (but could kind of hear him from the stage next door, and was not impressed by what I could hear) and The National (the review from an old guy, who only saw them because he was waiting for McCartney, at church on Sunday morning was "all their songs sound the same, just a bored monotone, is that a popular band?") and Father John and Hozier.
- The crowd right in front of the stage was PACKED. Like uncomfortable. Like, I think I could have picked up my feet and remained suspended in the air.
- And I was the oldest guy there by 15 years once my buddy Joseph saved his own life and escaped.
- But the energy in that crowd was amazing. Like, their new album came out two weeks ago and somehow every kid there new every lyric and was ready to jump and bounce and fight for it. It was wild. Also, the energy on stage was cool - they jump and kick and dance around. Its all very exciting.
- The guys were good. Their beats are really very solid - I hadn't fully appreciated how cool their beats are until now and seeing them twice in the past three days. Their musical aesthetic is super weird, like shifting from introspective raps about being homosexual, to screaming angry raps, to stupid party raps, all the way over to full-on R&B singing.
- Sir Paul McCartney. Was so very good. He played an excellent set list of Beatles tunes and other bits, starting with "Hard Days Night," and also doing "Back in the USSR" and "Blackbird" and "Hey Jude" and "Something" and "Let It Be" and oh man, it was very very good. I will readily admit that his voice is not as good as it was back in the day. He gets thin on the high notes and warbles a little bit where he didn't used to struggle at all. But on the guitar, and on the piano, and in the majority of his vocals, he freaking rocked it out.
- Yungblud. Wow, welcome to f-bomb town, kids! This show was actually damn fun, he was manic and wild and very hyped up, but if he used less that 50 "fucks" I'd be shocked. And if he stuck his tongue out less than 300 times, I'd be shocked.
- Although, my 10 year old daughter looked up at me at one point and asked if he was lip syncing. And so I had to explain to her about backing tracks and what those are used for. To which she replied that it seemed like cheating, and I have to agree. If you're going to use a backing track, then you can't forget to sing along the whole time. This happened with Eminem a few years ago, where Yungblud would pull the mic down to strut or stick out his tongue, and yet we would still hear him "singing" the words.
- Also, I heard The Nude Party and Wilderado were amazing, but I missed them.
- Twin Shadow was awful. The speakers were louder for that than they were for McCartney, and it was just brutal to stand there and try to listen to it. We survived about three songs, with one kid holding fingers in her ears, before we went to get a snack.
- The wife and kids went to Elle King, and they sort of enjoyed it. I apparently wandered off just in time for some melt down action from the girls. Score!
- Injury Reserve was freaking ridiculous. I met up with my friend Cary and his 15 year old son there, and the show was pretty much just mosh pit after mosh pit, with two hundred or so 12 to 22 year olds jumping and slamming each other anytime the music got even slightly hype. The show was pretty good, but it was very distracting trying to brace myself for getting rammed by yet another shirtless kid grinning as he elbowed some girl in the side of the head. "All This Money" and "Oh Shit!!!" were very good.
- Janelle Monae is amazing. Her dancing, her vocals, her crazy costumes (including some very interesting vagina pants) were all fabulous. And she did the whole show, which had to be hot as all hell in those different jackets and costume pieces, with a smile on her face and never pausing. I loved that show.
- I had hoped to take my son to X Ambassadors here, as he was sagging and some rock would have been welcome for him, but the girls won out in wanting to be near their friends at the other stage.
- Also, while at that show, my wife wandered off to get popsicles for the kids, so I was talking to my buddy Noah and holding my youngest on my shoulders to let her see the stage (and not just look at the screen). The lady dancing around behind us leaned up to Noah after a bit and told him that our little girl was very cute. ;)
- We skipped the next hour of shows to wait for Camila Cabello. The show was, honestly, very bad. But, I loved the first half of it because my youngest had begged me to get her close for the show, and I got her about as close as I could go, which was probably 40 feet back from the stage. Poor kid, everywhere she looked was butt. While we waited for the show to start, about 45 minutes of standing in the mud and waiting, she just had her face directly in about 4 butts. As soon as the show started, I picked her up and held her to watch the first five songs, and she loved it. Singing along to two of the hits, raising her arms up when told, joining in with the screams for "make some noise!" That part was very cool. Then we extricated ourselves from that zone and found the rest of the group and sat for the rest of the show, which involved a lot of talking and generally bad music. ALSO, she called us Dallas three different times. I'm sure its hard to keep cities right in your head when on tour, but come on. The kids loved it, but that was not good music.
- Also, the crowd up front also hated the show. Well, hated is probably strong, but you could tell that everyone up there was just getting close to see Travis Scott later, not listen to Cabello squeak her way through that bad song about heroin and morphine.
Whew. For a weekend that I didn't even really go to the Fest, it sure looks like I really went hard on the Fest! The weirdest part about Sunday was that I didn't pregame at all - not even a beer with lunch and didn't have my first beer until the 3pm Injury Reserve show. Not a big deal, but certainly different than the normal move of a beer as soon as I walk in the gates.
Pumped for next weekend and the full experience. Have a good recovery week, Austin.
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