Photo by Jim Bricker

The Alabama Shakes' Brittany Howard

As we round out the end of the week, all of the festival hangovers from the full-blown fuckery at FPSF have subsided and we're all a bit less foggy, it's time to look back at the festival in a slightly different light. Let's put aside the rants about overpriced water and gripe about something way more important -- let's talk about chicks, man.

I suppose I should clarify. As a chick, I will not be griping about the chicks at the festival, or their choice of attire, or any of the other random catty topic I'd normally be touching upon. What I'm talking about in this here blog post is how blatantly obvious it is that most festivals snub female artists, even as they book them into their lineups on a more regular basis.

Good luck finding more than a scant few female musicians headlining this year's major music festivals. Bjork is at Bonnaroo, making her the only girl to headline the festival over its four days. ACL has not thrown a single female headliner into its mix this year, and Coachella didn't buy into the idea of girls being able to hang with the big boys either. In fact, the desert fest only had an abysmal ten percent of female-fronted acts across its entire lineup, because, well, cool.

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Photo by Marco Torres

Didn't the guy on the left used to play football around here?

"I like the red douchebag tanks."

"I know this song!" -- at the beginning of Paul Wall's "Smile For Me Daddy"

"Fuck your fuckin' water!" -- a testy exchange in the Fancy Pants tent

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Photo by Jim Bricker

A little lost, Kim?

Know Your City
During Matt & Kim, Kim had the crowd in her pocket... until she accidentally called them "Dallas." She immediately recognized her terrible faux pas and recovered by telling a story about how once she was having sex with Matt and called him by the wrong name. She said that afterwards "things got weird," so she encouraged the crowd to get as "weird" as they could so we could all relive it together. Crisis averted. SELENA DIERINGER

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Photo by Marc Brubaker

Wille D and Scarface, minus Bushwick Bill

UPDATED (Monday, 2:05 p.m.). Regarding the bottled-water situation and prices, with comments from FPSF director Omar Afra. See "Water Rights" on Page 2.

Geto Boys Get an "Incomplete"
The absolute and definitive one goddamn thing I was truly looking forward to seeing at this year's festival was a reunited Geto Boys unleash their fury in the shadow of the downtown skyline. Regardless of the circumstances of Bushwick Bill's absence, and despite a still-tremendous effort by Willie D and Scarface, my biggest "must-see" quickly turned into my biggest disappointment and heartbreak of the year. Here's hoping it doesn't take another ten years before we see all three rappers perform together in Houston once again. MARCO TORRES

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Photo by Groovehouse

Cat Power

Cat Power/Social Distortion
Cat Power has such a spotty live reputation that she's hard to pass up, epecially at a music festival. We all want to see the implosion when it happens. However, she once pleased me greatly (and made me somewhat of a fan) at one ACL Fest around the time her R&B-heavy The Greatest album came out (2006), but after that I sort of lost touch. But instead of a meltdown, Sunday she followed Mavis Staples -- no easy feat there -- with a challenging, haunting set of piano-heavy orchestral pop that started out a little unfocused but sharpened considerably and rocked harder the longer it went on.

It reminded me of Sinead O'Connor a little, which is a big plus in my book. I can only assume most of the songs were from last year's Sun album, which I have not heard, but her set certainly made me want to go listen to it, perhaps even buy it. For her (or anyone), I'd say that's a success.

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Photo by Jim Bricker

Alabama Shakes
I went into this expecting to enjoy the set by Alabama Shakes, but I didn't realize how it was going to set the tone for the rest of my day. I arrived under the overbearing sun, and struggled to catch glimpses of Japandroids. Festival frustrations threatened to make a bad scene.

But then patches of grass opened, seats were taken and the Shakes took the stage. Lead singer Brittany Howard has just a unique command over her audience; you will not be let down. It was quite possibly the mellowest vibe to be found in all of Eleanor Tinsley Park. It ranked up there with Iggy-induced Beatlemania and Jenny Lewis's boobs. APRIL BREM PATRICK

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Photo courtesy of Press Junkie PR/Nacional Records

Rocks Off: What is worst song in the world, and why?

Julio Briceño (lead singer): It is hard to name just one because most of the time,what may seem to be the worst song for some people, is the best song for other people because it gets really famous. Lately, I could mention Gangnam Style. It doesn't say anything, and the front guy is not sexy at all but... It's a HUGE hit!

RO: What is the best lyric in the world? Please include title and artist.

JB: For me it could be either "Imagine" by John Lennon or "What a Wonderful World" performed by Louis Armstrong.

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This weekend's Free Press Summer Fest at Eleanor Tinsley Park is officially (way) sold out, so our readers who don't have passes at this point are sadly now forced to test their skills at the "secondary market." For those of you who are already in, this week Rocks Off will be bringing you our staff recommendations for acts you might consider checking out while you're there. Today we turn our attention to artists who hail from Houston and the surrounding hinterlands -- including Austin. (Note: planets correspond to FPSF stage names.)

Photo courtesy of American Fangs

American Fangs

SATURDAY

American Fangs
Beginning a month-long tour in support of your debut, full-length album at Fitzgerald's and ending it at FPSF sounds like a distant dream for a Houston-born band, but that's exactly what American Fangs are doing. Having survived a run-in with a self-declared vampire in Wisconsin, this hook-heavy punk act will be back in town Saturday, no doubt climbing rafters, surfing on the hands of their fans and causing all sorts of ruckus. (1:30 p.m. Saturday, Neptune) MATTHEW KEEVER

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Photos by Marco Torres

Pachanga Fest Latino Music Festival
Feat. Los Lobos, Celso Piña, Intocable, 3BallMTY, y más
Fiesta Gardens, Austin
May 10 & 11, 2013

Since 2008, the annual, family-friendly Pachanga Fest Latino Music Festival has showcased the vibrant blend of Latino-created music and art and its impact on American culture. That includes rock, alternative, Tejano, mariachi, cumbia, salsa, electronic, funk, hip-hop, and their many blends and mash-ups. A portion of the proceeds benefited FuturoFund, a collective effort to engage the Austin community through philanthropy and leadership.

My journey to this year's festival was long and wet. What normally takes a bit over two hours took almost four due to traffic and a string of strong thunderstorms that blew over Texas that day. The show was postponed for about an hour on Friday night due to the heavy rains, which made for an interesting and very fun dance party under the covered pavilion near the main stage as the show continued with a strong performance by DJ trio 3BallMTY.

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Photo by Marco Torres

ACL at sunset, 2010

UPDATED (Thursday, 2:50 p.m.) to reflect the Houston-area roots of a few ACL performers this year, as pointed out by reader comments. We stand by our original point, though.

As most of our readers no doubt know by now, the Austin City Limits Music Festival announced its 2013 lineup at the stroke of midnight Tuesday. This fall will mark ACL's twelfth edition in Zilker Park on the shores of Town Lake, and its first expanding to two identical weekends: October 4-6 and 11-13.

Rewind:

Depeche Mode, The Cure, Kings of Leon, Phoenix, Lionel Richie Head 2013 ACL Fest Lineup

Looking over this year's lineup, what leaps out first about the headliners is that, perhaps for the first time, the festival seems to consider thirty- and fortysomethings as the absolute upper range of its audience. This year's "heritage acts," what few there really are, all arrived on the scene in the late '70s or early '80s -- Depeche Mode, The Cure, Lionel Richie -- compared to the baby-boomer icons of ACLs past: Al Green, Neil Young, Van Morrison, Stevie Wonder, Bob Dylan.

The other thing that stood out is that, once again, the lineup is utterly lacking in any representation by artists from a most active if not outright thriving music scene barely 150 miles to ACL's east, aka us.

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