Austin City Limits

Face down on the cold concrete floor of a Texan Federal Penitentiary holding cell in between a snoring Mexican and a dyslexic Guatemalan. That was how I spent the night of my last visit to Texas two years ago. The result of a slight misunderstanding between Uncle Sam’s cabal of hyper-active Immigration officers at Houston’s George Bush International Airport and myself. If I recall correctly there was some confusion regarding my legal status which led to my two-day mini-break in this rustic desert Gaol. Homeland Security realised the error of their ways, apologised and we both went our separate ways. At least I had a funny story to tell my mates, which in turn led to continued barrages of ‘dropping the soap’ jokes. But this was not exactly the famed Texan hospitality I had been told about. I hoped that on this occasion I would encounter no such grief.

This time round my destination was Austin, Texas, to attend the tenth Austin City Limits music festival (ACL). Austin is an oasis of liberalism, cool and great music in a desert of whatever the opposite to those three words mentioned above are. The festival takes place in Zilker Park which overlooks downtown Austin and usually in heats that would melt the face off a Michael Jackson model doll. There were ongoing wildfires ablaze in the counties surrounding Austin where on the last count 1,600 houses had been lost in the fires. Therefore a festival wide ban had been placed on smoking, which seemed effective. I am not so sure if such a ban could be enforced at an Irish Festival. The Texans were a very well behaved festival crowd on the whole. Approaching downtown Austin I passed a giant billboard advertisement for a car dealership announcing that ‘The Lord drives a Ford’. This may be liberal Austin but it is still the capital of Texas, a state governed by presidential hopeful Rick Perry, who recently held a prayer meeting attended by 30,000 people who prayed to prevent the decline of America. Perry carries a laser-sighted pistol while jogging and last year shot dead a coyote while out for a run in the outskirts of Austin. God help us all if this ‘George Bush on steroids’ ever gets elected!

ACL takes place each September on the polar opposite side of our solar orbit to Austin’s better known South By Southwest (SXSW) which takes place each March in temperatures more suited to, oh I don’t know, let’s say humans. SXSW is an annual ten-day gathering of massive scope and influence in the worlds of music, film and multimedia which acts as a showcase and venue for networking for the best of the established and upcoming of each of these disciplines from all over the world. Careers are made and broken each year at SXSW. And it is spread out in venues all across the city in each and every bar or street corner or rooftop or any free inch that will permit a band to play. Austin is a city famed for its live music but during SXSW music oozes from each and every one of its city pores. You can fall from bar to bar from critically-acclaimed acts to acts that will be critically acclaimed next year. ACL on the other hand is Austin’s version of a normal everyday run of the mill festival. A load of people standing in a field for three days.

The line-up for ACL was not as good as it has been on previous years but there were definitely some acts to write home about.... which is what I am doing right now. Stevie Wonder, Arcade Fire, and Broken Social Scene to name but a few. On the Friday Wild Beasts enthralled the crowds with their unique blend of Hayden Thorpe’s falsetto with a richly creative pop rock. English voice-distorting pioneer Beardyman spun his human beatbox tunes. You have to have respect for any man who can weave entire electronic songs together with only the human mouth and a playback looping machine. But the highlight of the Friday was The Cold War Kids. Lead singer Nathan Willett warned the crowd from the start not to leave them to see any other bands on at the same time as themselves as they were the best. He was right, they were. They gave another wonderfully energetic performance. As the sun went down over Zilker Park, the two headlining acts took to their respective stages at either end of the park. Coldplay and Kanye West. I could not decide which I disliked more and so made my way to the centre of the park to see if I could block out both. I could not and so made my way to the city lights of Austin to test some of their famed food trailers which can be found throughout the city supplying the masses with cheap quality food.

Saturday morning. Irish bar. Hair of the dog. Ireland V Australia. Hooray!! Lazy journalism? Possibly, or maybe just word conservation. Highlights from the Saturday included Iron And Wine and Cut Copy. But the much-anticipated high point of the day was unquestionably Stevie Wonder. He surely is a master of entertainment. We were not disappointed. The smiling Wonder regaled us all with such classics as 'Superstition' and 'Living For The City'. Classic.

Early on the final day, my liver convened a meeting at which it enquired whether or not our relationship was something I wished to continue into the future. My response was that I regretted each and all of the actions I may have taken over the preceding number of days and I emphatically stated my intentions to reduce all alcohol intakes.

And so we eased on into the Sunday. Columbian electro tropical outfit Bomba Estereo played a blistering performance. Elbow were as always sublime if not a tad under-appreciated by an American crowd. Fleet Foxes and Broken Social Scene laid the mood carpet for all of our favorite Quebecois minstrels.

Arcade Fire were phenomenal. But then again when have Arcade Fire ever not been phenomenal? At this stage it’s beginning to get slightly annoying. All of their albums have been incredible. When are they going to release a bad album? That’s what I want to know. They spend their time prancing around the world with their enchanted piccolos singing, ‘Look at us, aren’t we magic!’ .......And weren’t they just. The perfect band to finish the festival with, leaving each and every one of us with a feeling of good fuzziwuzziness in our bones as we all trampled along the still baking road to downtown Austin to hunt for more musical movements and to break promises made to livers.