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September 17, 2004
Shiny Happy People
Somebody tell me where the party at!
Someone tell me where the party at!
Right here!
Somebody tell me where the party at!
Someone tell me where the party at!
Right here!
Now, jump, jump, come on, jump jump jump jump...
First day of the ACL fest was today. I rode the Triumph down so that I could skip the whole shuttle bus routine (riding in shorts...I am SO bad). Caught up with Mike and Dale and John from Vignette, and watched Neko Case during the hottest part of the afternoon. I love Neko Case. Not her music...well, I love her music too, but I mean I love her. I want to bear her children.
After Neko, I found my old buddy Kristi at the Austin Kiddie Limits tent and we watched Trout Fishing In America do the absolute funniest kids music show I've ever seen. We hung out with some other Rice alums, watched a little of Broken Social Scene, then hit the food booths.
If there is one thing that the festival has made drastic improvements on every year, it's the food. The first year there were horrendous lines for basically the same old festival crap you'd get at Eeyore's or the Old Pecan Street festival. Sausage wraps, some average BBQ, roasted corn, turkey legs.
Last year was an improvment with lots of quality local food.
But now...the surprise of the day was that the mighty Prejean's of Lafayette was there. And there was no line for them, because people in Austin aren't hip enough to have heard of them. Only Louisiana natives and Jazz Fest die hards were sucking up their food. We'd walk right by the long line for Waterloo Ice House and not have any wait at all for Prejean's quail & andouille gumbo, crawfish enchiladas, and crab & crawfish stuffed mushrooms. Damn, it was good.
After dinner and a quick pee, we were going to walk back and watch Toots & the Maytals and then Franz Ferdinand. But I noticed that the Rebirth Brass Band was about to start in the gospel tent, and I tried to explain to Kristi how cool they were, but I could tell she wasn't buying it. "You mean they're like jazz?" She agreed to go check out a few songs and then we'd leave.
Ha!
Now she's in the Cult of the Rebirth.
If you've never seen a New Orleans brass band, you cannot comprehend the true meaning of The Funk. Seven horn players, two drummers. Maceo's horns, hardcore P-Funk beats, New Orleans street musician soul, hip-hop muthafuckin' attitude. This is the funkiest music on the planet and YES I have seen Maceo a half-dozen times and YES I have been to the Mothership both with AND without Bootsy and YES I have seen James Brown in a small blues club in Houston and YES I am saying that none of those compare to a hot summer night in a gospel tent crammed in tight in a horde of sweaty dancing mayhem listening to Rebirth.
Earlier in the day, Kristi and I had been debating whether shiny was good. Shiny as in hot tattooed chick at the gym who's been on the Stairmaster for an hour. Shiny as in shirtless skater dude in the park. Yeah, OK, we're talking about sweaty. But not just sweaty. A certain kind of sexy sweaty that we couldn't describe as anything other than shiny. And we had decided that, yes, shiny was good.
Well, there were a lot of shiny people dancing to Rebirth tonight. Shiny, smiling, happy people bumping butts with total strangers. Not many people know about the New Orleans brass band thing, but those who know and GET it are like people in a cult. The church of the organic brass butt funk. There is nothing like it.
Kristi is in the church now. I couldn't drag her out til Rebirth was done. She's been reborn. She's hooked.
After that, we checked out Franz Ferdinand. I had to see them, first, because the program mentioned them in the same breath as Jesus & Mary Chain, and second, because they were from Glasgow, and I knew my Orkut buddy Kat (who lives there) would kill me if I had a chance to see one of her local bands and decided to pass. They were very cool in a jerky tense early 80's post-post-punk kind of way...choppy like Echo & the Bunnymen or Teardrop Explodes or Joy Division, but without the doom and gloom. And they closed out with a couple of songs that would have sat well with Eno's Roxy Music. Fucking rocked.
It was also packed, considering it was only the first day. Tomorrow will be unbelievable. The Franz Ferdinand show was more crowded than even Wilco was last year, and they weren't even on one of the main stages. We bugged out early after that; I gave Kristi a lift to her car on the Triumph (not even a helmet for me! I am SO going to biker safety fascist hell for this.)
And get this: completely and utterly sober. I discovered, to my delight, that I can dance without being drunk off my ass. Who knew? Who fucking knew? And why didn't they tell me years ago?
I'm gonna go soak my feet and turn in.
More tomorrow.
Posted by ray at September 17, 2004 11:07 PM | Permalink
Categories: [austin | food | music | new orleans | sobriety ]
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