What do you do when you're swamped at work and just back from a three day music festival? Milk last weekend for all its worth. Pictured above is my photo on the home page of AOL's music site Spinner. Pretty Awesome. You can check out my ACL photos on Spinner here. My photos are slides 2-50. Many thanks to the fine folk over at AOL/Spinner for letting me represent them at the festival. The other big story at ACL was "the fire." My photos of the fire were used on Spinner and Pitchfork. Flickr picked up one of the photos on their Explore page and it's gotten over 800 views and been favorited 32 times since Saturday. Sweet! Semi-related: One band I wish I could have seen at ACL was Underworld. Looks like the NYC show was awesome.

Like woah. I survived Austin City Limits Festival 2007 and all you get for it is this crappy post.

Biding my time at the Austin aeropuerto before heading off to Dallas and ultimately BWI. I had a pretty awesome time here in Austin, although I was running around doing festival related things so much I didn't get the chance to eat as much BBQ as I wanted.

Quick thoughts:
My Morning Jacket fucking OWNED! They were amazing. The only group all weekend that seemed like they could play even bigger venues than ACL. Probably the set of the weekend. So so good. Also earning props: Bloc Party (got so many good photos of them I could run a new one every day for a year and you wouldn't get sick of them), Arctic Monkeys and the aforementioned LCD and M.I.A.

Wilco was a snoozefest. I ended up shooting them and running over to catch MMJ and I have to say, after (only) seeing three songs I don't see what the big deal was. Tweedy looked like he'd rather have been anywhere else on the planet. MMJ meanwhile were decked out in beach gear and gave their set a luau feel. They had girls standing on stage holding coconuts and some random guy wandering around stage with a metal detector like he was at the beach. Have some fun with it! Wilco's big thing was Tweedy wore a cowboy hat for the first song. Pffffft. Also snore inducing: Andrew Bird (who drew an absolutely HUUUUGE crowd on Saturday) and The Decemberists (Say it with me now - OVER-RATED).

Blue October... Without a doubt the Worst. Band. On. The. Planet.

The Arcade Fire played in the dark. - Literally. I (along with the rest of the photogs that pretty much had a battle royal to be one of the 32 people "lucky" enough to get photo pit access during the AF's set) was SO PISSED. The Black Cat had better lighting than the AF's set. Meanwhile, you could see and hear Muse all the way across the park. I backed the wrong horse here, no doubt.

Surprisingly Good: Common (he covered "Award Tour!") and Crowded House (mostly heard new stuff but didn't stick around that long).

Indifferent towards: Bjork (played a strangely paced set and I really don't like her new stuff) and Bob Dylan (played "Tangled Up In Blue" right off the bat and then all new stuff after that. His voice was in rough shape at the start of the set but got better). Plus, I was so happy not to have to take any more photos by the time Dylan came on (we weren't allowed to shoot him) I think Morrissey would have had a hard time keeping my attention at that point. Also, The National. They were wonderful but I've seen them play that set four times in the last two ro three months.

All in all, I had a wonderful trip. Austin (and ACL Fest) is best! The beer is cheap and the music and good food is plentiful. I would come back in a second. Although probably not for SXSW.

Special thanks to Dan for letting me crash on his couch all weekend and to Frank Chromewaves for the hotel and internet access. Hopefully Frank is still talking to me as of tomorrow since I spent most of the weekend telling him his favorite bands suck. I'm such a dick.

Also, big ups to all the Hot Freaks bloggers. They put on two great nights of after parties at two awesome clubs.

Photos should be up on AOL/Spinner at some point today. Make sure you check them out!

**UPDATE** Waiting on my connection in Dallas...Here are the photos at AOL/Spinner.

Still numb from last night. I'm afraid to go on the interwebs. I just can't look at Greg Oden's mug right now.

The optimist in me says the Celtics will still be pretty good next year, Al Jeff is a 20-10 guy now, PP is still PP, Rajon Rondo will get the keys to the car and maybe, just maybe, Gerald Green will start to get it. Add in someone like Corey Brewer or Brandon Wright and we'll improve quite a bit. But then the pessimist in me keeps crying out "FOR FUCK'S SAKE! This is what happens when you put all your eggs in one basket!" over and over again. Well, if nothing else draft time should be full of suspense for Celtics Nation. Do we keep the pick or trade it? How will Atlanta screw up this year? Will we be able to capitalize?

I'm really, really glad I went out last night. It was much better for me than sitting at home and stewing over this all night. Many thanks to Ms. Smith for expertly talking me down off the ledge as the night wore on.

Due to the draft debacle I missed Le Loup's set. Let's just assume they were awesome and move on. I did see The Rosebuds, and they were pretty great. Very peppy and full of energy and every song had some sort of "la la la," "oh oh oh," or "yeah yeah yeah." Right up my alley! They just started their tour, so be sure to check them out when they roll through your hood. Here's a taste of their musical stylings:

[MP3] The Rosebuds | Bluebird

OK, now you're just piling on.

You too. Argh! Make it stop!

Reasons Not To Sign With The Major Labels.

William Orbit brought electronica into the mainstream and gave Madonna back her cool. Now he's ditching the synths altogether in favour of an orchestra.

Talk about coincidence...Late (and I mean late) in the day on Friday I was handed two tickets to Saturday's Spoon show in Baltimore. Saturday was also my blog birthday (for lack of a better term). In my first ever blog post I mentioned that I hoped to find out why Spoon isn't the biggest band in the world, so that made for a pleasant surprise when their area show fell on the same day.

Seriously though, it's not like it takes much to get me excited about seeing one of my favorite bands. I've been a fan since Series of Sneaks . We used to have a promo copy of that album at the office and I listened to it constantly, just to hear the "Ma ma ma, Ma ma ma, Ma ma ma" in "Car Radio." Best. "30 Gallon Tank" is easily one of my 10 favorite songs evah. I could go on...

The last time I saw Spoon was at the Pitchfork Festival last year, which I'm sure most people would agree wasn't their best hour. They just seemed out of sorts and under-rehearsed, and I'm not saying that just because I'm still bitter that they didn't play "Chicago at Night." Saturday's show, however, was completely different. They sounded tight and wowed the crowd as they worked their way through a set mostly filled with material from their last two albums and a smattering of songs from the upcoming Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga. The only old stuff they played was "Fitted Shirt," "I Could See The Dude," and "Anything You Want." The last song in particular was a real treat. I heart Girls Can Tell.

That was also my first ever trip to Sonar in Baltimore, which is a nice enough place but I'm not sure if I'll be going back anytime soon. There are four big columns in the middle of the room, and that, coupled with a seemingly impenetrable line of tall people running through the middle of the venue made seeing anything pretty much impossible. And I have no idea who was doing the lights at the show, but they were obviously a noob. The show was basically lit by four spotlights mounted in the middle of the room, which is like going to see one of your favorite artists and having them lit by four high powered flashlights. The stage had all sorts of lights on it, and they were all working for the opener The Oranges Band (who weren't half bad), but they couldn't figure it out for the headliners. That was terribly frustrating because I thought the lighting set up was going to lead to some nice shots. Alas, we're stuck with the B & W shots above. I don't feel bad complaining about the lighting though, because Britt complained about it all through the show (as well he should have). Still, all in all a great show. I even bought a shirt!

Here are some live Spoon tracks to get you as excited as I was in Saturday:
[MP3] Spoon | The Two2 Sides of Monsieur Valentine (live)
[MP3] Spoon | The Way We Get By (Live on WERS)

Lastly: I'm trying out a new slideshow app I found online. What do you think? Better than me posting one or two pics and directing you to Flickr? Worse? Thoughts?

I still don't like the CD, but they're pretty good live. More over at DCist.

I got home real late and haven't really had a chance to go through all of my photos, but a few are up on Flickr. More will be added as I have time to get through them.

**UPDATE** here's a slideshow I'm testing out: