Austin City Limits Festival | Don’t Listen to the Naysayers
Exactly one month from today, the Austin City Limits festival will kickoff at Zilker Park here in Austin. This year’s lineup has gotten mixed reviews across the blogosphere, however I still maintain that this is an excellent lineup. You just have to get past some of the headliners.
Alison Krauss & Robert Plant. Really? I couldn’t be any less excited. Then there’s the Foo Fighters, who I would have been ecstatic about a decade ago. They’ve become a shining example of everything bad in the music industry today. The Foo Fighters are overplayed, overproduced and just generally overexposed. I might still go to the Foo Fighters set, if only in tribute to the band they used to be.
I’ll be reporting live from the press pits at ACL, including frequent Twitter updates throughout the festival. Over the next month, I’ll also be bringing you previews of the artists I’m most excited about at ACL’08. A rundown of those artists is below.
Friday Sept. 26th
- Dan Dyer
- What Made Milwaukee Famous
- Yeasayer
- Vampire Weekend
- Jakob Dylan & The Gold Mountain Rebels
- Del tha Funky Homosapien
- Jamie Lidell
- M. Ward
- Gogol Bordello
- Mates of State
- Hot Chip
- Slightly Stoopid
- Jenny Lewis
- N.E.R.D.
- The Mars Volta
- Manu Chao
Saturday Sept. 27th
- Langhorn Slim
- Fleet Foxes
- The Fratellis
- Bavu Blakes & the Extra Plairs
- Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings
- Band of Heathens
- CSS
- Eli “Paperboy” Reed & The True Loves
- Man Man
- Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears
- Erykah Badu
- Electric Touch
- MGMT
- Conor Oberst & The Mystic Valley Band
- Iron & Wine
- Beck
Sunday Sept 28th.
- Scott Biram
- The Kills
- Octopus Project
- Flyleaf
- Against Me!
- Stars
- Silversun Pickups
- Okkervil River
- Blues Traveler
- The Raconteurs
- White Denim
- Gnarls Barkley
- Tegan & Sara
- Band of Horses
3 Comments
It’s a safe bet that there were well over 5,000 Austinites enjoying Judas Priest and Motorhead in Selma on Sunday. Austin has the granola/hipster ACL fest as well as Fun Fun Fun. Draw a 75-mile radius around Austin and you’re looking at a sea of classic rock fans and metalheads who are pitifully under-served to outright ignored by the Austin music community and its venues’ roadshow calendars. It’s way past high time someone creates a proper hard rock and metal fest in the European model for the residents of Central Texas.
I’d venture to say that it’s not the Austin music community underserving fans of those genres.
From a business standpoint, it doesn’t make any sense for international bands like Judas Priest and Motorhead to play in Austin. We don’t have venues big enough to support the paychecks they require.
STILL NEED A 3-DAY PASS?
We’re giving students one last shot at a sold-out ACL Festival 3-day pass.
Wednesday, September 10th
10am – 2 pm (while supplies last)
Two locations:
WaMu Guadalupe Branch
2414 Guadalupe
WaMu Hancock Center Branch
1000 E. 41st Street
Join 101X at this location for a lunch remote at noon.
$135 Ticket Price – Cash Only
Limit 2 per person • Must show Student I.D.
Tell them Runner Dan sent you!