ACL Fest

[Kyle]

It's week two of Austin City Limits Festival and we have weekend passes. It's always a blast. Some shows were great-- Kendrick, Maggie Rogers, Emlyn (a little-known musician at her first festival, either as a performer or attendant), but Lil Yachty was hands down the best. Some shows were surprisingly bad. I'm looking at you Portugal The Man. It was hot as hell, but not unbearably so. But the whole point of this post was that when they were posted up at the Lil Yachty show, my son and his two friends were at the very front of the stage and got someone to take this selfie of him mid-show. That's him in the middle with the long blond curls and that's his friend with the black hair next to him. Epic picture. These guys had the greatest day of their lives.

[Phoebe]

Very cool! But was there an eclipse?? It would be good if like halfway during the festival they were all plunged into momentary darkness! As if it were planned.

[Kyle]

Very cool! But was there an eclipse?? It would be good if like halfway during the festival they were all plunged into momentary darkness! As if it were planned.

The eclipse was yesterday. It was a ring of fire eclipse, which meant it didn't get dark, but looked really surreal- like it was dusk, but at noon and the sun directly overhead. But the effect was subtle enough that it didn't show up in pictures.

[Kyle]

My wife and friend thought the eclipse looked really cool, but it didn't look any different to me. Weird:

[Kyle]

The highlight of Day 2 was definitely the eclipse- it was such an awesome, surreal, shared experience between hundreds of people. It was really cool to be there for it. The shows were pretty disappointing-- Mt. Joy was dull; Snooper, a punk bank in track suits I was excited for, had their sound mix off and you couldn't hear anything clearly except the lead guitar; Eddie Zuko was a forgettable rapper. An emo-pop group, Sincere Engineer was a pleasant surprise and while we were waiting for another act we heard a British singer, Jessie Ware, who put on an unexpectedly high-energy and entertaining show with a crazy performance that had a cover of Cher's "Believe"- but without the auto-tune and Ware absolutely nailed every part of it. Foo Fighters were pretty good, but I've never been wild about their music, so we left early.

But none of that matters. Because the greatest show I've seen since watching Misterwives/Twenty One Pilots happened yesterday. And I don't care that he has a cult. I don't care that he's a self-obsessed ass. I want to have Jared Leto's babies! The 30 Seconds to Mars show was fucking incredible. I only knew one song, and I didn't care. He worked the crowd, brought thirty people on stage at one point, dove directly into the middle of a throng of people off stage several times, and started the show by singing the first song sixty feet in the air on top of the stage before jumping down with a wire rig to the main stage. It blew me away. What a good show.

[Mike]

My wife and friend thought the eclipse looked really cool, but it didn't look any different to me. Weird:

Holy shit. I know it's not him, but that dude in the middle is a dead ringer for Larry Jones.

[Kyle]

Never heard of him.

[Phoebe]

OK I had to know what was good here so I googled and was given this:
https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=5 ... 6tZiw,st:0

He went all in on the jump and maybe people initially didn't know he was going to be bungeed up before landing? I was not familiar with this group and would not have guessed that Jared Leto fronted some type of Christian Country Rock outfit. Maybe that is a misimpression but it was based on the music? Well, I guess that is how he gets a cult.

[Kyle]

It was some kind of wire work, not bungee, which is what made it cooler. He just jumped off and slowed down just before he landed. It's not christian or country- it's firmly 2010s emo pop. I think christians hate him, and if they didn't before, they definitely did when he did the Jesus pose and jumped from the stage.