It's Only Rock n Roll

yesterday morning i fought the urge to sleep in and went back up to the UT campus for a once a week tour of the Austin City Limits studio. ACL is a TV series of live concerts done for PBS and is nearly as old as i am. Coldplay, Norah Jones, The White Stripes, Franz Ferdinand, KT Tunstall, The Pixies, Leonard Cohen, James Blunt and Crowded House are just some of the artists who have played ACL. i know of it because New West records has started to release some of the shows on DVD. the tour was pretty much just a look at the stage, which is tiny. it doesn't look that way on TV especially when there's a large band up there. the background is a depiction of Austin's skyline at night. it's a little old so doesn't look exactly like the skyline does now. it does make it seem like the concerts are staged outdoors. as well as getting our pics taken on stage we got to ride in the 'talent elevator' and look at some of the official photographer's photos. because I am a Ryan Adams fan the tour guide told me about his appearance. she said he must've been going through a bad period because between songs he was having real issues with his tuning and then at the end of the show he smashed his guitar up on stage. she said it was pretty scary. they edited all those bits out.

that night I went to see Man Carter, consisting of Andrew (from the motel) Gary (from Heybale) and Spyder (the drummer). they played a bar called Black & Tan. it was a bit of an odd venue for their kind of music but Spyder's day job involves work there so he got them the gig. they played 6 songs, with Andrew standing out front for about half of them due to feedback problems. they were pretty good though. i spent ages talking to Spyder's girlfriend Lori who is also a big Alejandro fan. Man Carter were followed by a band called Sicks Pack who played everything from ragtime to blues to funk to metal and at times sounded very much like Tom Waits.