Austin City Limits More

91 degrees and more pure Texas sun did not keep us away from a full day of music--everyone from the Fleet Foxes to Beck. Fleet Foxes drew a big early crowd and won us over with spot on harmonies that I might have only expected from their recordings. They were pretty funny too joking about Plant/Krauss headlining and asking ‘who’s Alison Krauss?’ or explaining the long breaks between songs by saying ‘we’re not a festival band, maybe next year we’ll be better at this’.

Jose Gonzalez was next, again huge crowd for some of the most intimate music. I was psyched to catch Austin rapper, Bavu Blakes, who got our attention by coming on stage in a Obama mask and closed his excellent set with an unexpected cover of Bad Moon Rising. Friends from Nashville were raving about Black and White Years but I missed them to get the complete Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings experience. Basically we danced our bodies silly for an hour.

We also saw a bit of Scottish band The Fratellis and CSS who I really want to see again. More global sounds with a Senegal trio of brothers who sang like Simon and Garfunkel with a very Knopfler sounding guitar--beautiful, worldly stuff. Then a great Cuban band reminded me once again I really *can’t* dance. And there was still free beer backstage at Wamu so that was good.

Erykah Badu was next on the big stage and managed to get pretty close up. I’ve always been a fan. Great songs, great band, great singer (but really bad hair). She stood up with some political statements too--Obama, racism, humanity-it was great to hear someone saying something. Then it was Conor Oberst, Iron and Wine, and Beck! That’s a great day of music.