Editor's Note: This article is the first a series about the 2018 Austin City Limits Music Festival. Visit the Daily Lobo website for the other parts of this series.
Now I know Texas is hot, but Friday, Oct. 12, the first day of weekend two of Austin City Limits (ACL), was a particularly uncomfortable day to say the least.
The entire day, Zilkner Park, where the festival is held, felt like drudging through a middle school locker room, in a climate so humid it should be criminal. Other than the weather causing my dry desert body to sweat like I’m one of the Bellagio Hotel fountains in Vegas, the whole experience of ACL day one was truly unforgettable.
This being my first large music festival outside of Albuquerque’s music and arts festivals such as Fiestas and SOMOS, I really had no idea what I was getting myself into. I quickly learned that most festival goers treat music fests like television.
If they don’t like what they see on one stage they just walk to the next and continue the cycle until an artist catches their attention. It’s an easy enough system to fall into, especially when most of the first wave performances are from out of country or they’re a small rock band just crawling out of their parent’s garage. I learned to just be weary of the many peoples flopped out bodies sprawled in shade like lined beached whales washed ashore.
In this motion of stage bouncing a particularly unique voice pulled me into a conveniently shade tent where Fatai, an Australian singer, was performing a rendition of “Do You Want To Build A Snowman?,” where instead of finishing the song she weaved in Drake’s “In My Feelings.”
She later sat down with me for a quick Q&A where we talked about everything from potential new music, to the challenges of performing at ACL, even discussing her time on the Australian version of The Voice.
Ravyn Lenae was next up after Fatai, she marked the first artist of the day to draw a sizable crowd. The Chicago rapper has had an extremely easy time making a name for herself, she released a handful of catchy singles before her “Crush” EP, and an exceptionally hard to shake hook off her hit “Sticky.”
After Ravyn, I was in the mood for another Chicago-native who goes by the name Noname, and no it’s not a joke and if you didn’t know that put down your breakfast burrito, your work (I promise it can wait, you’re already reading this) or whatever else and listen to her music, she’s one of the best rappers of this generation and deserves a bigger audience. Noname went through a number of songs off her album “Telefone” but spent a large portion flexing her new material from her latest album “Room 25.”
My one qualm with ACL on the first day was that they made me make one of the hardest choices in my life, do I see Brockhampton or do I see Hozier, the stress I was under seems almost illegal. I can’t tell you how very long this dilemma haunted me but I went with what I knew best which was Brockhampton, just like the old man I am.
It paid off, Brockhampton put on an amazing hour set that pulled from all of their discography including their new album “Iridescence.” There was a clear open wound, left by the absence of now let go member, Ameer Vann, especially visible on their “Saturation Trilogy” songs where they haphazardly skipped past his verses and on to whoever was next in the song after him.
As the armpit of a day closed, it was time for a living legend to take center stage, none other than the great Paul McCartney, who actually still sounds, looks and acts like he’s no older than 40. As he played through new solo music and hit an astonishingly large amount of original Beatle songs the sea of people grew larger and larger.
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The epoch of his performance was the explosive “Live and Let Die” which lit up the sky with fireworks and the crowd with layers of lights and lazers. I was aware of who was playing and his reputation but that did nothing to prepare me for the massive 31-song set that Paul carefully and artfully delivered to the ACL audience.
Leaving ACL day one smelling like sweat, smoke and beers, and being covered in three “pale person” layers of sun screen (for clarification that’s about one full inch of sunscreen, per cubic inch of skin) and having about five blisters, I have learned some valuable lessons and made lifelong memories I’m sure friends and family will hate to hear about over and over again.
As day two rolls closer, weather apps and the sky say there’s a high probability of rain, a new challenge I’ll have to face.
Colton Newman is the photo editor for the Daily Lobo. He can be contacted by email at photoeditor@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @Coltonperson.
