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This morning C3 Entertainment unveiled the lineup for the 2008 Austin City Limits Festival, scheduled for September 26-28 in Austin's Zilker Park, and it's looking more than ever like Coachella on the Colorado. The first name on the card is... Foo Fighters. Seriously. That means everyone hoping for Radiohead at the end of the Zilker rainbow will have to pony up for Lollapalooza or pay through the nose for next month's long-sold-out Houston and Dallas shows. Coachella, meanwhile, got Jack Johnson, so I guess we dodged a bullet there. But they also got Kraftwerk.

ACL's other above-the-fold names are, once again, either former chart-toppers gone niche artists (Robert Plant & Allison Krauss, David Byrne, John Fogerty); more recent alt-rock heavyweights (Raconteurs, Mars Volta, Against Me!); favorites of both Pitchfork's hipsterati (Vampire Weekend, Duffy, Hot Chip) and their bearded bong-ripping cousins (Band of Horses, Black Keys, Iron & Wine); R&B ringers (Erykah Badu, Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings); boot-scooting Lone Star flag-wavers (Eli Young Band, Robert Earl Keen, Kevin Fowler); acts too pricey for iFest (Manu Chao; Gnarls Barkley); Austin A-listers (Roky Erickson; Alejandro Escovedo; Okkervil River); or inexplicable festival perennials who must have some damn good dirt on the producers (G. Love & Special Sauce, Asleep at the Wheel).

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My face is returning to its usual sun-deprived hue, and my legs have finally begun to forgive me, meaning ACL is over for another year. Thank God. My review of What It All Means (Maybe) comes out in this week’s paper, but this is the fun stuff: random things I wrote down while trying not to pass out. Here we go…

FRIDAY

A friend told me he heard Vangelis’ “Chariots of Fire” theme over the PA as he was walking to Zilker Park. ACL has always had a high opinion of itself, but this is a new one.

Best lyric of the day: “I can’t do the things I used to because I feel old,” Heartless Bastards. No shit.

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What am I doing here? I haven’t written a concert review in eight years, since I walked out on the Old Gray Lady. Why did I volunteer to spend all day moving, standing and sitting under the hot sun, waiting for Bob Dylan? I sometimes jokingly tell people that I am in recovery from being a music critic, a way of life in which one’s own opinion can serve as an intoxicant. If so, I guess I fell off the wagon

And in that spirit, I made a vow to try to see as many acts that I’d never seen before – and in some cases, never heard of – rather than sticking with the known quantities. Not counting Dylan (reviewed elsewhere), I caught parts of 24 sets. What’s cool about the ACL festival is that you have quintessentially Texas/Americana acts like Robert Earl Keen and Lucinda Williams at one end of the park, and modern rock favorites Ben Kweller, Bloc Party and My Morning Jacket at the other end, and both play to huge crowds. That’s Austin for you. The other thing that’s Austin for you is that the crowd, while very diverse in terms of age, was overwhelmingly white. I couldn’t help but wonder what the Starbucks-endorsed, college-rated rapper Common must have thought when he looked out at the sea of pale faces in front of him. “Cha-ching!” maybe?

Here are some comments on those sets where I stayed long enough to venture an opinion.

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The artwork for Bob Dylan’s album The Basement Tapes, recorded in 1967 but not officially released until 1975, features Dylan and the members of The Band playing in a basement surrounded by circus entertainers – belly dancers, fire-eaters, midgets, etc. Just as the album’s music found Dylan rejecting The Voice of a Generation mantle that had been bestowed upon him in favor of an older and more elemental approach, so did the art work symbolize the beginning of a new phase of Dylan’s career – that of the traveling entertainer, the minstrel, the road-show trooper.

Dylan is now nearing 2000 performances on the never-ending tour that supposedly began in 1988. But it is hard to imagine that he’s played to many crowds larger than the one that awaited him Sunday night at the Austin City Limits festival. As the other stages shut down – Wilco, the Decemberists, Ziggy Marley – everyone from high school kids with their cell phones to grandparents with their lawn chairs flocked toward the far end of Zilker Park where Dylan was set to perform.

Driving over that morning, I listened to classic Dylan and recent Dylan to prepare myself for what has become of his voice. The young Dylan was a master of pre-rap rhythm and hillbilly melodic nuance with punk attitude to burn – a truly great rock and roll singer. The old Dylan croaks along like a frog bumping his ass on the ground, which makes it all the remarkable that he is still releasing cool and essential albums like last year’s Modern Times.

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The last day of Austin City Limits Festival, we began to see the sun’s toll on the mass of the great unwashed. Lots of three-day old beards, starving children running naked in puddles, hippies eating barbeque out of desperation. Humanity was holding on by a very expensive and thirsty string by five o’clock yesterday afternoon.

No fires Sunday. Just a lot more oldsters coming to see Dylan. I saw a few Zimmy tats, too. From what I could tell, most people started camping out in the morning when the gates opened. DeVotchKa wasn’t magical as I thought they would be. It was a very jerky and constricted set. Robert Earl Keen served the Texas Country crowd with a smile. I got watch Billy Joe Shaver hanging out in the media tent, doing a radio interview. He only shot like six of us.

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"That guy right there, the one with the pink hat... No, the one holding a frisbee... Green sunglasses... Yep, that's him..."

Hey, AT&T, thanks for sponsoring more than one stage. But maybe next time your money would be better spent making sure people aren't cursing your name when their cell phones don't work anywhere near Zilker Park.

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Wrong festival. Wrong year. Wrong glasses. Wrong drugs. Wrong parenting. Wrong planet.......

Former Houston Oilers Al Del Greco and Bucky Richardson were seen on the grounds, apologizing for the 1992 season. Still kicked ‘em in the balls though.

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I heard from a photographer buddy that the first aid tent was running out of band-aids. Why? Because so many of these buffoons decided to wear brand new shoes to an outdoor festival. When it’s one hundred degrees out and my testicles are sweating, I couldn't care less what my shoes look like.

Speaking of photographers, those guys are a seriously weird crew. All nice guys, but some of them in the media tent have a crypt-keeper, Igor vibe. If you sit too close to their cameras, they get all cranked up and look like they are about to cry. Look, pal. Even if I wanted to steal your camera, I wouldn’t even know how to turn it on. And at that, those things are sometimes as big as toddlers.

On Saturday, a buddy from Vegas and I milled around to catch as much music as we could. Back Door Slam still shocks the shit out of me, seeing that they like are all 18 years old and jam like a Double Trouble. Butch Walker and the Let's-Go-Out-Tonites play jangly power pop that is sweet as the Amy’s Ice Cream that goes for twenty dollars a cone just a few feet away. This is the super producer's side band when he’s tracking Avril Lavigne and the All-American Rejects. At one point, Butch told us to “treat it like it’s a rock concert from 1977.” And he damn near succeeded.

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I wanna take this time out to thank all the pretty young ladies who have graced us with their scantily-clad skinalicious exploits during this sweltering weekend. You women are truly the linchpin to this weekend. For every bikini-top, Jackie-O sunglasses, terry-cloth shorted Jezebel; I salute you and your Texas breeding.

Somewhere Daniel Johnston is smoking cigarettes and watching cartoons, while this banner sits in the middle of a festival filled with thousands of sweaty drunk dudes. Three cheers for irony.

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Yesterday saw fires, three of them. One saw porta-potties and cars set ablaze by a propane tank. A speaker at the Bjork show started flaming. Then, my pants got on fire from all the friction. It was hot out here as Scarlett Johansson in The Island. (Seriously, have you seen that jazz?) Tight black jeans were not a good choice. I swear by the end of the weekend, I will own stock in Gold Bond Medicated Powder. I’m walking like a swishy cowboy.

In the mid-afternoon, Peter Bjorn and John went on to a packed crowd, opening with a sitar-laden version of “Young Folks.” They even trotted out a Buzzcocks cover.

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Someone got the bright idea to pair Paolo Nutini and Ray Benson from Asleep at the Wheel for an artist panel in the media lounge. They ask Paolo what it’s like to tour in Texas, and so he goes off on this weird patronizing reply in his lady-killing Scotch-Italian accent. All the older women in the tent start gushing like he’s frickin’ Leif Garrett. Then the question gets asked to Benson, and he starts laying down a good ol’ boy anecdote, comparing touring to fishing. It was juxtaposition at its grisliest.

“No, I agree. Monster was our attempt at late-period grunge cred. But you gotta admit, Automatic for the People was the shit, yo,” said Michael Stipe as he talked to an uninterested IT guy from Round Rock.

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Speaking of fires at ACL Fest, one of the speakers on the AT&T Stage started flaming up during Björk’s set last night. “I thought they were telling us to exit because the show was over,” says a pretty little birdie who was hanging out side stage near the speaker. “It was unclear whether the band was leaving for the encore or because of the fire.” The band did come back on for “Declare Independence.”

Björk’s performance, by the way, was awesome, and that’s coming from someone who’s not the biggest fan of theatrical Icelandic pop.

More peaceful anarchy: During MIA’s set, backup singer Cherry called for someone, anyone, in the crowd to bring her up some weed. The first few rows bum-rushed the stage, filling it with hippie dudes and bikinied ladies. MIA kept right on doing her thing, surrounded by the mob, like it was the end of an episode of SNL or something. Doesn’t look like Cherry ever got her weed. – Keith Plocek

Mark C. Austin

Turns out that fire yesterday at ACL Fest injured four people, two critically. -- Keith Plocek

The Dallas Observer’s music blog DC-9 at Night is reporting a massive fire at the ACL Fest. Seems a couple of propane tanks exploded near one of the makeshift taverns in Zilker Park. According to this report in Austin 360.com, two people are critically injured, and multiple others have been taken to Brackenridge Hospital with second and third-degree burns.

The music continued at 3:10, 40 minutes after the blast. – John Nova Lomax

As I head out the door to Austin, I’m reminded of ACL Fest 2003, back when the world was young and people actually gave a shit about the Polyphonic Spree.

I was living in Houston at the time, writing for the paper version of Houstoned, and I’d come across this bad-ass, bright red Halliburton T-shirt at Value Village. Of course I bought the sucker and began pimping it around town, getting the knowing nods that come with sporting an ironic T-shirt. (O, Urban Outfitters, if only you could bottle the feeling.)

Everyone got the joke, although I admit, when I threw on the T and a pig nose for Halloween, people couldn’t quite figure out what I was going for. Sure, it was a little oblique, but here's a hint.

And then came ACL Fest 2003. The perfect time to pimp the Halliburton shirt. Or not, as I soon learned, when people started yelling out stuff like, “Yeah, like they need those no-bid contracts,” as I walked around Zilker Park.

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