Austin City Limits & Limitations

ZILKER PARK—Despite the rumblings of disappointment about this year's lineup, 2011's ACL Festival proved to be one of the best for me.  Maybe the biggest reason this year felt better than previous years was the strength of the headliners – Coldplay, Kanye West, Stevie Wonder, and Arcade Fire – none of whom I've ever seen perform live before.  They are all huge performers accustomed to the big stage, with everyone but Stevie all over recent pop charts.  

 Stevie, one of the truly greats of all time, performed in one of only a few performances over the past few years.  And almost no one disappointed – the Arcade Fire show was particularly epic!  In front of an enormous crowd for the last and only show Sunday evening, my early departure was thwarted again and again by absolutely beautiful music that perfectly complimented the right amount of stage effects – Arcade Fire sounded so good live, much better than their recordings.  

Smart festival goers also split their time wisely between Coldplay and Kanye who performed at same times on Friday night, and again, both were truly great – the highlight of the Coldplay show was when balloons ascended over a majority of the crowd, while Kanye put on a big dance party, with a highlight being his performance of Runaway, one that mirrored his MTV performance, where he dressed in a red suit that sharply contrasted an all white background, and a ballerina twirling around.  

The lone major disappointment came from sound issues with Stevie's concert.  Sitting closer than I did for the Kanye show, I and roughly half to two-thirds of a huge crowd were not able to hear much of what looked and sounded like an amazing show – it was so sad we couldn't really celebrate the moment when Stevie laid on his back on the floor jamming to his piano guitar!  Frustrated, many people began shouting "Turn it Up" but to no avail – the My Morning Jacket show, which you could hear equally with Stevie's show, was the direct beneficiary of technical difficulties, although huge numbers still remained to mostly to watch Stevie's performance.  Other notable performances – Cut Copy had a very large crowd dancing, Dale Earnhardt Jr Jr sounded amazing and was very well attended in an early, very hot Sunday performance, Empire of the Sun was a decadent, flamboyant dance party worth seeing again just for the effects and costumes, and the extremely popular Foster the People was too popular, causing traffic issues when there were so many fans, you actually couldn't walk around the concert.  

An interestingly new addition to the festival this year seemed to be a two large TV screens in a tent that allowed the large number of Longhorn fans the ability to attend the Festival and watch their beloved football team.  The food was also great – staples like Maudie's, Stubbs, Salt Lick, and Torchy’s were there, along with a whole host of newcomers, like Lucy's Fried Chicken (Olivia's) and Odd Farm to Duck Trailer, who's pork belly slider absolutely stole the "food" show!   We'll see you next year, when the festival returns back to its regular and much cooler October timeslot for 2012. 

-Paul Kim