Tomorrow, Sunday, September 23rd is Free Museum Day. Museums all over Austin will have free admission and will have activities for the whole family. We went last year, walking down Congress and hitting the Austin Museum of Art, Mexic-Arte and the Austin Children’s Museum. It’s also a great opportunity to check out the Blanton, Harry Ransom Center and LBJ Library on the UT campus.
Since soccer season started on Saturday, we arrived at Zilker Park in the late afternoon to the sounds of Blue October and Stephen Marley. After grabbing food, we parked ourselves between the AMD and AT&T Blue Room stages. Andrew Bird was a decent discovery while we waited for Arctic Monkeys. I can’t say the same about Clap Your Hands And Say Yeah, who followed Andrew Bird. As others have noted, the singer’s voice took on an annoying quality in the sound mix. Arctic Monkeys gave a good performance, but nothing that blew me away. I wasn’t close enough to see, but I suspect the large white lights behind them were borrowed from Arcade Fire’s stage decorations. The family and I parted ways for Arcade Fire since they didn’t want to miss any of Muse. I stayed to watch what I consider the best performance of the festival of the acts that I saw. Arcade Fire mixed great visuals with an amazing performance. I’d heard a few of their songs, two of which they played (“Black Mirror” and “No Cars Go”). The red lighting and kinescope-like images added well to the mood of the performance. It was often difficult to count the number of band members on stage, but the average seemed to be around 10. One guy pointlessly pounded the crap out of a cymbal for an entire song that none of us could hear, but poor sound at the AMD stage was a problem throughout the festival. I was impressed by multi-instrumentalist, Régine Chassagne, who played drums, accordian, and pipe organ among other things. I left Arcade Fire in time to catch Muse’s last few songs. They stepped into the headliner slot after The White Stripes canceled and they did an admirable job. I’m not a big fan of theirs from what I heard on the radio, but they impressed me Saturday night.
Sunday was our only full day at the festival. We arrived at noon to catch Fionn Regan at the Austin Ventures stage. His song, “Put a Penny in the Slot”, was an iTunes free download several weeks ago and I liked it enough to check him out. He put on a good show, but I found myself being distracted by the cacophony that Yo La Tengo was putting out from the AMD stage. This was the first of two times that I wished I could be two places at once on Sunday. After Fionn Regan, we relaxed at the “beach”, had lunch and let the kids run amok at Austin Kiddie Limits.
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Austinist and the Statesman have got many more feet on the ground and they don’t have kids, so go there for the full coverage. Here’s my bullet point take:
This is the sixth year that my mother has had to share her birthday with that favorite GOP talking point. I wonder if she’ll ever get it back. I’m not going to post much because I think I covered it pretty well last year.
Six years later and we’re still dealing with poor decisions made in the wake of the attack. Osama Bin Laden is still releasing videos. Here’s a proper remembrance from Tony Pierce. DailyKos has a proper interpretation of Petraeus’s testimony yesterday (anybody surprised by the timing?). And the Rep for my old ‘hood in Queens tries to get to the point. Of course, his original question never gets answered.
[tags]9/11, anniversary, remembrance, tonypierce, dailykos, crooksandliars[/tags]