Ok now that my old man rant is over, it's on to the best, worst, and unnecessary moments of ACL.
Friday
The Best Moment
This one is easy as it clearly belongs to Outkast and their so fresh and so clean performance which had everybody dancing and losing their minds that night. Both Big Boi and Andre 3000 looked to be having fun as they came out on fire with Bombs Over Baghdad and ATLiens, immediately letting everyone know that they were far from falling off after a thirteen year absence from the stage together. It's hard to beat two hip hop legends walking around and rhyming in a giant digital cube when they have the giant booties of beautiful black women twirking in the background. Well I just assumed they were beautiful, I never got around to seeing their faces. Also 3000 was his usual weird self rocking a Make Love Like War T-shirt while wearing a weird black jumper and blonde wig on his head. The fact that I got to hear Roses and International Player live was worth the price of admission alone.
The Worst Moment
This goes to Chvrches and their ridiculous name spelling as well as the stupid backwards sevens on their keyboards and beat machines. Because I chose to see them I was stuck on the side of the festival where 70% of its attendees were, so I also had to see Sam Smith (who was actually pretty good) and missed the majority of St. Vincent's awesome set! I came to see rock stars, not some scrubs stand around and press random buttons on a machine with a look on their face as if they are doing something really awesome. After only seeing 15 minutes of St. Vincent I was reminded that ACL actually allowed weird and talented people to play distorted guitar on stage and dammit I liked it!
The Unnecessary Moment
This belongs to the people rolling out the double wide baby strollers. It's bad enough that grandpa is out there sitting in the back in his lawn chair but at least he's not hitting my shins with his 20 foot wide baby stroller that's carrying two kids who got in for free and are eating all of my tasty Torchy's Tacos! They're kids, get them some damn Gummy Bears and a baby sitter and leave me to slowly kill myself with cholesterol and cheap beer in peace.
Saturday
The Best Moment
This goes to Interpol and their rocking 50 minute set. Both their sound and their performance were flawless as they knew exactly what the festival crowd wanted to hear, the hits. They only played three songs off of their amazing new release and mainly stuck to their first two albums which featured favorites like Narc and Say Hello to the Angels. They needed no light show as their stage presence and casual coolness kept you glued to the stage as you were dancing your tail off. The best moment happened when this girl came up to me and told me that she had cried three times during the first half of their set. We're getting married next week.
The Worst Moment
I have to say that I love Lana Del Rey's recorded stuff but man it's REALLY boring live. She is definitely easy on the eyes and her oddball behavior almost makes you expect to see her randomly shank one of her bandmates on stage but after about 20 minutes of hearing her croon, it basically turns into listening to a Sounds of the Orca cd. You remember those sleep aid albums that were really popular a few years back? Well I think she heard one too many as a teenager and a light bulb went off in her head. "Hey! I can make money using this style!" The best part was seeing all of the women freak out over her performance while the boyfriends or dates they dragged with them to the stage all had the "I better be getting laid tonight for this" look on their face. Still love you Lana, just ignore the fact that I'm getting married to the Interpol fan and hit me up sometime.
The Unnecessary Moment
I should make this Chi'lantro's Kimchi Fries and the fact that they made me queasy but I am going to give this moment to bad batch of Molly that was apparently going around Saturday night. You could tell all weekend that half of the festival was tripping or rolling on something but Saturday literally had me fearing for people's lives. After an amazing Major Lazer set which had one the biggest dance parties I've ever seen at ACL, I saw dozens of kids and adults all passed out on the ground in the chalk outlined dead body pose and none of them appeared to be breathing. I had to go up to each one of them just to be sure that they were alive. The good news is that were all in fact still alive, the bad news is that each one of them sounded like the wounded Ewok at the end of Return of the Jedi when I tapped them to see if they were ok.
Sunday
The Best Moment
I missed Pearl Jam that night to see Interpol's incredible and game changing set at Stubb's but I heard that PJ closed out it out like a true festival headliner should. But before I left, I was at their stage and what I predicted would happen actually did. All of the old fogies were camping out early while the kids were heading on over to dance to Calvin Harris. The Great Divide happen right before my very eyes and I couldn't contain my laughter. What was great is that my buddy is such a PJ freak that he went out and bought a traveling pee cup so that he wouldn't have to lose his spot near the stage. Yes, you just read that. It's a paper device that you put in your pocket and when you pee in it, it turns your pee into a gel. It was both the grossest and most awesome thing I had seen in quite some time.
The Worst Moment
This belongs to the frat family. My buddy's girlfriend rejected the portable pee cup and decided that it was a better idea to go use an actual restroom. Well on her way back she had bought two beers, one for her and one for her boyfriend. But this ridiculous looking frat boy made her give him one of the beers in order to get by him so she could return to us. Needless to say this almost led to an all out brawl just an hour before PJ's set, especially when his frat boy brother and retired frat boy dad came to his aid. In the end I diffused the situation and we did get her beer back but we should have thrown some pee gel in their face just to let them know what time it was.
The Unnecessary Moment
I know that this moment happened on Saturday but I think it sums up our culture right now. Its the fact that literally 90% of the festival was there to see Iggy Azalea's performance. We got there about 5 minutes into her set and we couldn't get within 500 yards of the stage. I don't know if its the fact that so many people actually like her terrible music, the fact that I shamefully like two of her songs and wanted to dance to them live, or the fact that I was just happy that I could eventually get close enough to the stage to see her outstanding ass; but whatever the reason, we are all going to hell for being stupid stupid people. Get her a bigger stage ACL and please require that people take a music theory class before being allowed to attend the festival next year.
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