ACL-yeah
I worked security this weekend at ACL Festival, which was hellish up until today. I was assigned to guard the back gate of some stage where the only band I cared about was Band of Horses, who I wouldn't be able to see since I was in the back. I was stewing in my own sweaty juices at the thought of having to stand around on hot concrete for 12 hours guarding a back gate, but then some guy at another stage decided he wanted to switch over to my stage. I glanced at the band lineup at the stage he was coming from and decided that any position at that stage had to be better than where I was.
And lo, the rock gods smiled upon me.
My new assignment involved guarding the sound booth at a stage with more indie acts. In other words, the crowd was docile and other than asking a few people to remove their lawn chairs from the "pit" area, I did nothing but sit in the shade. On top of that, during shows I stood on the raised platform under the sound tent. I had a view over the audience's head AND was in the acoustically best spot. It completely made up for the previous two days of standing around in the heat with no rewards.
The bands I saw were:
Sybris - Previously unknown (to me) indie act from Chi-town. They were pretty cool. Upbeat, lots of indie licks, and the lead singer was cute as anything.
The Kills - Previously unknown (to me) electro-indie-rock act from London. They were great. They're like an even more minimal White Stripes with female vocals and super crunchy drum machine samples.
Stars - Dancetastic, yet instrumentally complex electro-indie-pop from Montreal. I love these guys. Saw them in Tallasassy years ago, and I was glad to see they still rock. The songs off of their older album Set Yourself on Fire still seemed to be the best, but said songs are so great I couldn't possibly hold that against them.
Okkervil River - Knew of these local folks, but hadn't heard them, which was a mistake on my part! Folksy indie rock. The sad news is their lead singer is supposedly defecting to another band. The good news is they're touring now, so you can see them before that happens!
(And now, a rant)
Tegan and Sara - No link for them, because they are bad. I mean, real bad. I had no opinion of them previous to this, having only heard one song, but their entire set was utterly devoid of any kind of catchy music. Not one cool guitar riff, interesting chord progressions or keyboard melody (they didn't so much play the keyboard as occasionally plink out sequences of four or five notes). Their version of harmonizing involves screeching over the other's inane, repetitive lyrics. They were giving the performance their all, and their between song banter was really funny and charming, but there just wasn't anything there to listen to besides that. The music was just really simplistic and dull.
Their backing band was also smirking through the whole set. This realization led to me wondering through a lot of their set whether they were being ironic by backing up far inferior musicians, or they knew they were getting paid well to slum it, or were trying to forget that they were backing a couple of flannel-wearing hipsters with emo sideswoop femmullets. Ugh!
I don't usually speak negatively about artists, but I just had to get that off my chest.
And lo, the rock gods smiled upon me.
My new assignment involved guarding the sound booth at a stage with more indie acts. In other words, the crowd was docile and other than asking a few people to remove their lawn chairs from the "pit" area, I did nothing but sit in the shade. On top of that, during shows I stood on the raised platform under the sound tent. I had a view over the audience's head AND was in the acoustically best spot. It completely made up for the previous two days of standing around in the heat with no rewards.
The bands I saw were:
Sybris - Previously unknown (to me) indie act from Chi-town. They were pretty cool. Upbeat, lots of indie licks, and the lead singer was cute as anything.
The Kills - Previously unknown (to me) electro-indie-rock act from London. They were great. They're like an even more minimal White Stripes with female vocals and super crunchy drum machine samples.
Stars - Dancetastic, yet instrumentally complex electro-indie-pop from Montreal. I love these guys. Saw them in Tallasassy years ago, and I was glad to see they still rock. The songs off of their older album Set Yourself on Fire still seemed to be the best, but said songs are so great I couldn't possibly hold that against them.
Okkervil River - Knew of these local folks, but hadn't heard them, which was a mistake on my part! Folksy indie rock. The sad news is their lead singer is supposedly defecting to another band. The good news is they're touring now, so you can see them before that happens!
(And now, a rant)
Tegan and Sara - No link for them, because they are bad. I mean, real bad. I had no opinion of them previous to this, having only heard one song, but their entire set was utterly devoid of any kind of catchy music. Not one cool guitar riff, interesting chord progressions or keyboard melody (they didn't so much play the keyboard as occasionally plink out sequences of four or five notes). Their version of harmonizing involves screeching over the other's inane, repetitive lyrics. They were giving the performance their all, and their between song banter was really funny and charming, but there just wasn't anything there to listen to besides that. The music was just really simplistic and dull.
Their backing band was also smirking through the whole set. This realization led to me wondering through a lot of their set whether they were being ironic by backing up far inferior musicians, or they knew they were getting paid well to slum it, or were trying to forget that they were backing a couple of flannel-wearing hipsters with emo sideswoop femmullets. Ugh!
I don't usually speak negatively about artists, but I just had to get that off my chest.