A Manly Guide to this Year’s Austin City Limits Festival
We don’t like to write much about the “other” festivals in Texas, seeing as they are rendered insignificant in the shadow of the great Texas Testosterone Festival, but we’re excited for this year’s Austin City Limits Festival despite ourselves. Seeing as The Texas Testosterone Festival had no live music, and ACL is barely manly, we figure it’s safe to make some recommendations for those looking for a weekend of great music that won’t wuss them out.
Friday, October 2
We’ll be arriving late, picking up the kid from school, so we’ll miss Asleep at the Wheel but hope to luck out enough to make it to see
3:30-4:30 The Walkmen at Xbox 360 Stage “The Rat”
4:30-5:30 Coheed and Cambria at Livestrong Stage “The Suffering”
6:30-7:30 Thievery Corporation at Livestrong Stage “The Richest Man in Babylon”
By then, the kid will certainly be ready to go home. But if not, Andrew Bird and Kings of Leon might wussify the day too much but will beat out the other options. Note: our friends over at Rushmonkeys.com also recommend Dr. Dog and Milkshake.
Saturday, October 3
We’re going to spend the early afternoon in the Austin Kiddie Limits area watching Quinn Sullivan and Secret Agent 23 Skidoo while dreaming of how great Coheed and Cambria were the day before and then will venture into the masses to check out
3:00-4:00 Grizzly Bear at Dell Stage “While You Wait For the Others” (slightly wussy)
4:00-5:00 Flogging Molly at AMD Stage “Drunken Lullabies” (not wussy at all)
5:00-6:00 …And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead at Xbox 360 Stage “Relative Ways”
5:30-6:30 Eek-A-Mouse at WFC Stage “Black Cowboy”
By then, the kid will be ready to go home and we’ll find it easy to resist the temptation to check out The Decemberists because, although great, they are wussies and Ghostland Observatory is absolutely atrocious.
Sunday, October 4
Austin City Limits will be Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears’ coming out party. Gentlemen, they’re gritty, raucous soul with a horn section Tom Jones should be jealous of. The manly breakout of 2009 will be the first set you check out on Sunday.
12:30-1:15 Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears at AMD Stage “Sugarfoot”
1:20-2:00 David Garza at Austin Ventures Stage “D’yer Mak’er”
2:00-3:00 Clutch at Livestrong Stage “Escape From the Prison Planet” (further evidence Sunday is the best of the three days of the ACL Festival, they may be more deserving of an ACL stage than anyone short of Coheed and Cambria.)
3:30-4:00 Paul Green School of Rock at Austin Kiddie Limits “Black Dog”
4:45-5:30 Brett Dennen at Austin Ventures Stage “Make You Crazy”
6:00-7:00 Ben Harper and Relentless 7 at AMD Stage “Under Pressure”
And keep in mind, for those bands that are wusses, at least the chicks in the crowd will be hot. So… there’s that.
Tickets to The Festival make the Best Father’s Day Present
June 15, 2009 by Garp
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We’ve done the research and the evidence is overwhelming… the best Father’s Day present possible is tickets to The Texas Testosterone Festival. Tickets go on sale Father’s Day - this Sunday, June 21.
Buy tickets online by clicking here and show the printed receipt to Dad - if he doesn’t begin weeping with joy we’ll be shocked. If he does, pull out the camera and record it. We’ll put it on the website. We have the technology, and we have the popcorn.
Pack of Wolves and Lair of the Minotaur at Red 7
OK, so the greatest death metal band in Austin has to be Pack of Wolves. Their live shows give the “chills up the spine” that goes with great live music. On Friday, June 19 at Red 7 (that’s Red River and 7th St., if you didn’t get that) Pack of Wolves will share the stage with Chicago’s Lair of the Minotaur, recently on the rise as one of the most vital bands on the world-wide metal scene today. Because ‘The Wolf’ rocks and they have cannibal chicks AND spartans in their music video.
You’ll have to miss No Control Radio on 101.5 FM that night to catch the show but we think even Chuck would forgive you for the miss. Just tune in every other Friday night, wuss.
The Texas Testosterone proudly endorses Pack of Wolves and grants Lair of the Minotaur honorary Texan status. At least until they get the hell out of the state again.
Pack of Wolves
Lair of the Minotaur
Bryson Turner is the Funniest Person in Austin
The Funniest Person in Austin contest has been going on for a few weeks now at the Capital City Comedy Club. It all came to a head Monday evening as Bryson Turner wins the 2009 Funniest Person in Austin contest.
Second Place is Ruby Collins and third Andy Ritchie. Here are videos of their routines from the second round.
Bryson Turner
Ruby Collins
Andy Ritchie
Napalm Death Comes to Austin this Sunday
The wife recently said “I refuse to listen to any band with the word ‘Napalm’ in their name. Or ‘Death’ for that matter.”
Her loss. We’ll be seeking out the mosh pit on Sunday at Emo’s for the return of British Heavy Metal legends Napalm Death. There can be little doubt that after Black Sabbath there has been few bands as influential to Heavy Metal than Napalm Death. Their classic album ‘Scum’ is over 20 years old now (cough) and still reigns as one of the finest albums ever to contain a song less than 3 seconds long.
Napalm Death have kept time standing still over nearly thirty years but it has been a long time since they’ve last been to Austin. If you only went to one metal show last year it should have been a pilgrimage to see the Napalm Death-offshoot Carcass. If you only go to one metal show this year it damn well better be Napalm Death themselves. Kataklysm, Toxic Holocaust, Coliseum, Trap Them, Cattle Decapitation, Rose Funeral, Woe of Tyrants, and Swine Horde, all possessing names the wife doesn’t approve of, will be playing on the two stages inside Emo’s.
Here’s a video of stuff blowing up to get you pumped for the concert.
Mess With Texas Festival Messes With SXSW
The Austin Decider site reports this year’s Mess With Texas festival is happening at Waterloo Park on Saturday March 21 right in the heart of what is usually SXSW. The Free All-Ages All-Day Multiple-Stages Fest is a miniature Austin City Limits with cooler bands in cooler weather, if you know who they are. Unlike SXSW, you don’t have to spend money to find out whether you like them or not.
We took the kid last year and he laughed his 3 year old butt off during Monotonix’s dust-covered, trashcan-wearing, tree-climbing performance. The Israeli punk band is like molotov-cocktail from an energy drink bottle. Remember when you couldn’t imagine the Rolling Stones playing live when they get old? And then you couldn’t imagine KISS playing live when they get old? Well, really. Monotonix can’t do this when they get old.
Heavy Metal isn’t Good for You
The British Medical Journal reports head-banging isn’t good for you, and the increased beats-per-minute increases the trauma to the brain. The best part is two researchers got paid to figure that out.
“They found an increasing risk of neck injury starting at a tempo of 130 beats per minute. After compiling a list of 11 top head-banging songs from a focus group of musicians, the researchers found the average tempo to be 146 beats per minute.”
We suggest Carcass, whose material generally flies around the 300 to 400 beats per minute range. What happened to the good, old-fashioned, super-healthy mosh pit, anyway?
Being out-of-touch has now become painfully obvious
Online blog Do512 has posted a fairly extensive list of confirmed and rumored performers for this year’s SXSW Music Festival. Further cementing our need to avoid publishing anything close to a Top 10 Albums list for 2008 is the fact that we have looked at the list… and don’t recognize anyone.
Well, except for Matthew Dear. That dude’s electronica is cool. And cool is a word we’re sure none of the kids in any of the other bands on the list ever use anymore.
If you’re interested to read a bunch of band names solely for the curiosity of what band names nowadays look like, please click here. We think the writing was on the wall last year when we only got excited for Daryl Hall (of Hall & Oates), Hanson, Blue Rodeo, Dolly Parton, and no one else. Well, we did get excited for the day parties with the free beer and barbecue. Have no idea what crap bands were playing in the background.
Our humble requests for SXSW 2009 are the following:
Owen Beverly (who would have album of the year and Honorary Texan status if we could actually identify 10 albums we purchased this year)
Paul Stanley of KISS (Tell him he can do an art show for his paintings. He’ll show.)
Dead Milkmen (we’re sad we missed them at Fun Fun Fun Fest)
Gwar versus Austin; Gwar wins
Decider has a great review of Gwar’s recent “concert” at La Zona Rosa up. Someone over there is a big Gwar fan. Cheers, man.
Brings back memories of returning home from a Gwar show being refused service at a Denny’s covered in fake blood and other man-made liquids. That is, we were covered in fake blood, not the Denny’s.
