Sep 152005
 

The Wife, The Boy and I got babysitting for The Girl and headed out to the big Weezer and Foo Fighters Rawk show last night at Erwin Center. I blogged it at Metroblogging (it’s also in the Austin Metblog sidebar over there on the left) which links pictures (they allowed cameras). I’ll have some crappy digital camera video up tonight along with a picture of the week update with a photo from last night’s festivities. The Boy was definitely dragging on the way to school this morning. I warned one of his teachers who said she was jealous that he got to go and she didn’t. We’ll see what reports we get when The Wife picks him up later today.

I could see people commenting on The Boy’s presence at the show. Since we were on the floor, we had to hold him up so that he could see. My arms, legs and back are paying the price today. Luckily, Andy was there to hold him part of the time and The Wife pitched in as well. Weezer kept it pretty clean. Dave Grohl, on the other hand, had me wanting to cover The Boy’s ears a few times (Earmuffs!) even though he was already wearing ear plugs. Thankfully, I think most of the comments went straight over his head. I think he really liked the Weezer show. He’s a little more familiar with them and they went on first. By halfway through the Foo Fighters, you could see that he was getting tired and a little overloaded.

 Posted by on September 15, 2005 at 6:16 pm

ACL Festival 2005 draws ever closer

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Sep 152005
 

This is sure to be the first of many posts on the upcoming ACL Festival (aka The-Big-Annual-Austin-Music-Festival -Other-Than-SXSW) from myself and the other Austin Metbloggers. Our little group blog was born just after the festival last year, so this is our first chance to cover it as a group. Stay tuned for plenty more.

With a little more than a week to go until Austin City Limits Festival 2005, the ACL promotors are in full propaganda mode. I just got their latest e-mail which led me to an impressive aerial photo from last year’s festival on the same page as this year’s map. Is that Town Lake Entrance new this year? I don’t recall it being there last year.

You have the option this year of creating a custom schedule or downloading the whole schedule as a pdf or to your ipod. If you’re creating a custom schedule, they give you the option of doing so with or without registering, ostensibly to allow you to retrieve it later or share it with friends, but seeing as they have your e-mail address, I’m sure they won’t be able to resist using it for other purposes. I’d advise skipping the customization altogether though as “customizing” entails being able to check a box and highlight particular boxes on the schedule. The interface looked pretty crappy on both IE and Firefox and didn’t print out any better on my one attempt.

Lastly, the ACL site already does a passable job of this, but the Austinist points out that someone has taken the time to compile bios and mp3 links for every band in this year’s line-up.

 Posted by on September 15, 2005 at 4:50 pm
Sep 152005
 

weezlogo.jpgAndy and I along with my wife and son checked out the Foo Fighters/Weezer show tonight at the Frank Erwin Center. It was good for the rock. They allow cameras into the shows, so check out the ones that actually came out on my flickr page. We were a little late, so we only caught two or three songs of the opening band, Mae. Each headliner played about an hour and a half. Weezer rotated singers a few times with the drummer singing “Photograph” from the Green Album, while Rivers played drums. Rivers also appeared at the back of the floor halfway through the set for a solo version of “Island In The Sun”. They played a good mix of songs from all of the albums. I was glad they included “Why Bother?” from Pinkerton. They pulled somebody from the crowd to help with “Undone” and finished with “Surfwax America” and “Hash Pipe”. Let’s see what else? “Beverly Hills”, “Peace”, “Such a Pity” and “Perfect Situation” from Make Believe. They opened with “My Name is Jonas”. They showered the audience with confetti near the end of the show.

Foo Fighters followed after I took The Boy up to the mezzanine to get a Weezer shirt. The Foo opened with “In Your Honor”. They played “This is a Call”. We got a solo performance of “Everlong” from Dave Grohl. They covered “Born on a Bayou” as they did at the recent Katrina benefit concert. As with Weezer, we got a song where the frontman and the drummer switched places for “Cold Day in the Sun” from In Your Honor. We also got “All My Life”, “Breakout”, “The Last Song”, “Learn To Fly” and “Stacked Actors” where Grohl enters the audience for a little meet and greet. They ended with “Monkeywrench”.

Update: Andy’s photos from last night are here.

 Posted by on September 15, 2005 at 12:21 am