ACL Festival 2016

The Banks and Steelz show is pretty good.

The ladyfriend caught most of Mumfords on the radio driving from the airport to her hotel last night. She wants to go next year. We'll see what happens.

Is she in Austin right now? For how long? She could always go this weekend or catch some of the shows going on around town during the week.

The Good: LCD Soundsystem
The Bad: The fucking sun
Skippable: NF

Band of Horses were awesome at the ACL Live taping last night. I'm going to skip them at the fest but only because i want to camp for Radiohead. If you're not camping for Radiohead then go see Band of Horses over Flume or M83. Also BoH is at Stubbs on Thursday. Speaking of camping for Radiohead, were there tons of people doing it? Would i be able to catch a few songs from one of those 7:00 acts while still getting a solid spot for Radiohead?

Or not going at all. 

The Good : Break Science , FLUME!! , Schoolboy Q

The REALLY, REALLY, REALLY Good : St.Paul & The Broken Bones ( 2nd best set of weekend), Radiohead, and KENDRICK( FIRE!!!!!)

The So Good if-you miss it- you are an idiot : LCD!!!!!!!!!!!!! (No words.....just go. As good as their performance at Lolla)


The Not-So Good : Fly Lo playing w/ the sun beating down on us ( his set is built for night...his LN show at Roo a few years back was WAY better)..

The sun (going to Barton Creek for a dip before Weekend 2 days....)

Verdict still out : Porter Robinson and his buddy's new shit........alright, but I was just killing time to get to LCD!!!!


The REALLY Bad : Crowds for Flume and Chainsmokers (absolute shit show...........more of a crowd at Chainsmokers than anywhere else....HORRIBLE!!)

Here's more details but Sunday only. I was at Utopiafest Fri and Sat which was fantastic (was given a VIP access by accident). I'll probably do the same thing next year.

-The sun was fucking brutal.  And the general temperature has DROPPED since a few weeks ago.  

-I wanted to hit up Lizzo but the drive to Utopia was 3 hours and I didn't get in until 2ish. I caught met up w some friends at Kacey Musgraves which isn't really my flavor but I enjoyed her Gnarls Barkly cover.
-Also caught NF, christian rapper, who just felt like some rebranded Eminem-Macklemore hybrid suited for a Power Rangers Soundtrack.
-Stopped by the Titos Tent for Break Science but there wasn't an inch of shade that was taken. While I like BS, it was too damn hot n early for any of that type of music.
-Then onto Nathaniel Rateliff who was great, although I didn't make it to hear SoB due to heat, hunger, need to piss. Literally, we stopped and sat in the shade of FLAGS it was so scorching (along with many others).
-Next we wandered to Miike Snow who I really enjoyed. His vocals have improved. The crowd was a bit douchey with a bro "mosh pit" forming and several full beers getting thrown at people.
-Luckily, the fan base of Miike Snow apparently have no idea who LCD Soundsystem is and it emptied massively letting me get pretty damn close for the closer. I also could hear Young The Giant pretty well from the Miller Light stage.
-Needless to say, LCD was pure magic. Production, sound clarity, crowd atmosphere was just fun and dancing. Ill be doing it again next Sunday, except catching Willie right before hand. 

Other stuff: Bathrooms were weird. If you're by the bathrooms between the food court and the Mainstage (Where mumford will be) there are set of bathrooms nobody was using. Literally, there was 4 massive lines for 2 sets of mens and womens bathrooms, then a little further to the left was a completely open area with no wait. I assume people just didn't realize there were more. Also, at one point, the ladies line was so bad that they all just piled in the mens area. So theres that.

Getting in and out was easy. Not a long wait at the gate and they barely checked my bags. Could easily sneak a flask in there.
I only ate a P Terrys Burger Stand because it was cheap n fast, but there were plenty of good eats.
Craft Beer tent was a nice place to campout for shade and snag something different to drink.
The new layout seems to have made the park less cluttered traffic wise. There's still random shit, flags, all over the place but I recall getting completed traffic jammed between this massive crowd for Fitz back in 2012.

Ill try to hit up more next Sunday since Ill be fresh.  I was up til 430 AM and fell asleep outside my friends tent, which was actually quite nice.  

I wasn't there last year, but I imagine it was comparable. My friend and I were feeling pretty rough.

I posted up in the shade for Local Natives and half of Mike Snow. The fest is super, easy to navigate and simple to grab prime real estate - granted I only traveled back and forth from Cirrus/Honda. I was more impressed by the hoards of families at the event. I'll probably be back.

I don't know a whole lot of it, but if you're going to be wandering, the shows before 3 that I know of would be:

Friday
Asleep at the Wheel is kind of old roadhousey Texas Blues-Country. They've been around probably since the 1980s

Some people like Bad Suns and The Wombats

I've seen Raury a couple of times including his festival debut. He's not bad. He's a young African-America Singer-Songwriter-Rapper.

I don't like The Front Bottoms, but a lot of people dug their Coachella set. I'm not one of them.

Saturday:

Nothing But Thieves - I may go wander by them at Voodoo. Nothing special, but it's probably worth a 10-15 minute pass by

Joey Purp - Chicago rapper. He's pretty young, but some of his songs are pretty good.

Sunday:
Lizzo - Black chick rapper that mixes in some humor to her shows. cmack and Krisplettuce I believe are fans.

Brent Dennin is that red haired guy with the nerd glasses that was on a ton of lineups this year. I'm not a fan, but his live band is okay. Folk-pop/Indie-pop

Domo Genesis is a rapper with Odd Future

Wild Belle is sort of a rock band out of the Midwest that I think are composed primarily of a brother and sister or husband/wife team that plays with a live band

Ra Ra Riot is an alternative band from Upstate NY.

I know it's not much.

Oh man I didn't think about this - they do have him on that sunset stage. That's a pretty dumb decision. Saw his set at Day for Night last year, and I can't imagine that with the sun glaring directly onto the stage. 

I really want to camp out all day for Radiohead too, but after the Voodoo schedule released, now I'm wanting to run over and catch Die Antwoord beforehand (since they're up against Tool in NOLA). I dig FlyLo a lot, but haven't seen the South African aliens yet. 

For those that were there for Radiohead, how early did you show up for the stage and how did the crowd capacity adjust throughout the wait?

I have to admit, I find it kinda funny at the complaints of the heat. Because it was SIGNIFICANTLY cooler this weekend than it has been. All weekend I kept thinking to myself "wow, it's really nice out. I hope it's like this for me next weekend." It was like 85° all weekend with little humidity compared to high 90's with like 90% humidity the week before.


Also, I was thinking the same thing about FlyLo's set. His stage show is very much meant as a night time thing. Not sure how it'd translate to daytime.


Still deciding on what to do for Radiohead. Camp out or will I be able to get a good spot if I go to a set beforehand? ACL can be hit or miss with crowds thinning out.

I have seen a few of those but appreciate the summary. I'll give them all a listen on the plane and add to my schedule accordingly.