Anna Webber

Austin City Limits Music Festival quickly went from how it should have been (perfect weather, brand new grass, incredible talent), to the mean monsoon that stormed across Austin on October 3rd, 2009.

Day 2 marked the uncomfortable transformation to the worst swamp any of us had ever seen. When we think of ACL this year, we think of trench foot, water boarding, gangrene, and the muddy slip and slide that became Zilker Park’s brand new grassy acres. We think of drummers shrouded in plastic tarps, and expensive camera gear getting duped. Also to note, Zilker park is fertilized with some form of modified treated swamp water, so when people’s shoes got stuck in the mud and were sliding on their underbellies down the oozing sludge, they were also sliding through some form of human feces.

Day three, the rain subsided and the blue skies broke free, only the mud and resulting humidity was the only thing left providing any discomfort. People left, sure, but the amount of fans that stuck it through the muck was unbelievable. Highlights: Them Crooked Vultures, The Dead Weather, Pearl Jam, Heartless Bastards, Dr. Dog, Blitzen Trapper, Grizzly Bear, Phoenix, Bon Iver, Levon Helms Band. Not: John Legend, the B-52′s, The Dave Matthews Band, Girl Talk. The ratio of great bands to only mediocre or terrible did however, make all the pruny fingers and hours of God’s water boarding torture worth it.

At first when looking at the weather report, I thought the thunder and lightning warnings for the next seven days must have all been a ploy to keep the fragile ones away so C3 might save some money on and lawsuits on the health care tents, security, and cops… as it turned out, all those were clearly necessary.

The 5:00 happy hour in the media tent quickly turned into as much free booze as one wanted all day, with four bars specializing in either vodka, whiskey, tequila, or beer – when the rain started pouring, we got a bit of a pleaseantly modified happy hour.

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John Paule Jones ©Anna Webber 2009

Day 1, 12 pm

Day 2, 12 pm

In the photo trenches