There was plenty of dancing, singing and clapping along. Whenever a band interacted with the audience for their participation, they always got a unanimously enthusiastic response.

Zilker Park, Austin, Texas

At first I was a bit hesitant to make the trek down to Texas for a three-day outside music festival featuring a few famous headliners and about 130 bands that I was not all too familiar with; now I want to go back every year! Like a lot of us, I grew up watching Austin City Limits whenever I could. It was always a rarity to have a great live music show like that on public TV where you could catch some of the finest musical acts of the day. One show that has always stood out in my mind was the first really big break for the now legendary guitar hero Eric Johnson. That is the ethics that ACL has stood for in my mind: helping to break ground for up-and-coming musicians to be exposed to a much wider audience, right alongside of delivering the endearing music of established artists already revered by the public. This festival was an amazing success in the same spirit.

The Setting | The festival was held in Zilker Park, which is just across the river from downtown Austin. It is close enough that you could walk to it from the 6th Street, the entertainment district with all the clubs and music venues, but far enough, that you really wouldn't want to in the heat. That's right, in spite of it being the last weekend in September, Austin was still sporting 90-degree days and beautiful sunny summer weather, a nice retreat from the quickly cooling north. The city did an amazing job of working with the festival hand in hand to make the whole event flow as smoothly as possible for residents and tourists alike. The organization that went into moving the people to and from the venue was truly impressive. You have to picture that there was an average of 65,000 people in attendance on each of the three days. There was no onsite parking, so you had to walk, bike, take a taxi or ride the shuttle buses provided by the city. It was so unusual to see the number of bikes that were locked up on the parking lot lined with racks, a truly surreal scene to have thousands of bikes clustered together like something you would expect to see in Beijing.

It is hard to describe the mass of humanity that filled the park. At the end of the day, an endless sea of people formed a line as far as you could see to grab a taxi or to get on the shuttle busses back to downtown to continue the party. The police orchestrated a constant circulation of public transportation that moved the crowds in and out much faster than you would have thought possible. After standing at the end of a line that looked like it might take hours, I was surprised to find that I was on a bus and back in town within half an hour. I've spent much longer than that waiting to get my car out of the parking lot here at Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre time and time again.

Every aspect of providing adequate amounts of beverages, food and facilities was also handled well. There were food vendors from a dozen or so local restaurants providing a wide variety of yummy, healthy and reasonably priced eats of every kind. Not least of all is that there were bountiful amounts of Heineken about. There was also a small market area for some vendors to sell clothing, trinkets and artwork, including one booth proudly displaying wares affixed with the city's self adopted catch phrase "Keep Austin Weird." A merchandise tent and full record store was also set up so that you could purchase music and memorabilia from the plethora of bands playing at the festival.

The Scene | It was so refreshing to see so many freaky people out and about. Everybody there seemed to have some sort of self expression going on; there wasn't any of the bland conformist look you get so much at concerts here in the Midwest. The crowd was incredibly diverse in age, race and style. The musical acts were equally as varied, from classic rock to country, hip-hop to gospel, metal to world music, R&B to bluegrass, electronica to blues, and indie to modern rock. That is the essence of the importance of the ACL festival: exposing fans to a broader range of music and creating a forum for bands to be heard by an audience that they might not be able to reach through traditional mediums.

ACL had a total of eight stages going, so there were always four bands playing at any given time. At opposite ends of the park they had two main stages that would each alternate; then there were four smaller stages in the middle of the park rotating music. Each stage tended to have similar types of music on it throughout the day, so if you wanted, you could just plant yourself in front of one of them and hear bands of complimentary styles. Most people had chairs and blankets along with some kind of sun shade device, in hat or umbrella form. Across the sea of people were flags hoisted on makeshift flagpoles almost like a scene out of Braveheart where each clan had its own crest hoisted on the battle field. That's right, people literally letting their freak flags fly. Actually, just a really pragmatic way of finding your group of friends in a field filled with fans.

Everyone there seemed to be upbeat and energized, true music fans. The people from Austin whom I spoke to were all friendly, helpful and proud of their town. The crowd acted with a lot of respect toward each other in terms of personal space, belongings and individuality. There was a strong police and security presence, but they seemed more concerned with the general safety than sticking their nose into your good time. There was plenty of dancing, singing and clapping along. Whenever a band interacted with the audience for their participation, they always got a unanimously enthusiastic response. That, in turn, kept the bands pumped; every act there was on their A-game for sure.