Foo Fighters
Hometown: Seattle, Washington
http://www.foofighters.com
Monday, September 29th, 2008
KLRU Studio(Austin, Texas)

'Cause I've got a golden ticket
I've got a golden chance to make my way
And with a golden ticket, it's a golden day
- Grandpa Joe and Charlie - Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory

I must admit that when I greedily ripped open the envelope and saw the hint of gold the lyrics above immediately popped into my head. How après peau that the tickets were a rich golden hue. Though they were free they were the toughest ACL Fest tickets to get because EVERYBODY that could called in favors, pulled strings, or resorted to blackmail to get into this one. I am not talking about the Foo Fighters ripping it up in front of 80,000 sweaty festival goers in the park on Sunday night, this article is about their Austin City Limits television show performance the night afterwards down at the KLRU studios on the U.T. campus.

With seating limited to only 350 people, those lucky few with the golden tickets began lining up hours before the appointed 7:00 pm gate. Across the plaza another line formed for the "seats available" backup line, each hoping and praying that an offcourse UT shuttle bus would wipe out the golden ticket holders so they could gain entry.

Once the doors opened, ticket holders were ushered into the foyer and then up the elevator 10 at a time. With a quiet "wshhhh" the doors opened to an oasis, chilled to the right temperature and filled with KLRU volunteers handing out free beer and programs. Moving into the darkened studio one immediately sees the familiar Austin City Limits background of the city's skyline, and tonight there would be no chairs on the floor. Though bleachers surrounded the floor and afforded excellent sightlines no matter where you were, there would be no sitting there either once the Foo Fighters took the stage.

I grabbed an open space on the second level of the bleachers and found myself next to Frank Hendrix, owner of Emo's at 6th and Red River. Looking across the bleachers I caught sight of Gary Miller of the Austin Chronicle and soon Raoul Hernandez, the Chronicle's music editor appeared in the stream of people coming in. I saw a lot of familiar faces in the crowd, many of them local music industry types. Once all the ticket holders made it in and the last call came, a select lucky few from the "seats available" line were allowed in, but not very many.

Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters at ACL Fest 2008

Soon the stage darkened and the shows longtime producer, Terry Lickona, stepped onstage to welcome us, remind us not to take pictures, and then he welcomed the band as they took the stage behind him. A heavily bearded Dave Grohl stepped to the mic, talked about the honor of being invited to play, seeing all the photos of the great artists that had played before him, and then found an opening to rib Lickona about his afro in the 70's.

The band lit into the first song, "Times Like These", immediately triggering cheers from the audience and we were off.. The sound was unbelievably clean, crisp, and tight, the lights in the studio rivaling any major tour or venue I have ever seen. The only things missing were the smoke and the fire, and the bands performance provided plenty of that. Every song they played just popped, and they played a lot, 17 songs by my count, exluding the bizarre yet fantastic guitar break into the "Hocus Pocus" riff by the early 70's band Focus, stopping just short of the yodeling (I was a little disappointed he didn't give the yodeling thing a shot).

Dave was all over the stage, in the audience, at one point coming all the way out and standing in the bleachers, playing his guitar less than 10 feet away from me. He joked with the band members, talked to people in the audience, even gave a guitar pick to someone in front that asked, much to the bemusement of his roadie who immediately ran out and replaced it on his mic stand.

After covering most of their hits, a few new songs, some fan favorites, and the old standard "Young Man's Blues" the set seemed to end much too quickly. What seemed like 30 minutes was in fact 1:45 minutes.
Heading out the door I made sure I saved my stub as I was sure this was in fact my lucky ticket.

The Foo Fighters Austin City Limits show performance is scheduled to air on January 17th 2009 on your local PBS station. Other performers that stopped by KLRU to record a session while they were in town for ACL Fest include Gnarls Barkley(1/24/09), Manu Chao (1/31/09), Erykah Badu (11/22/08), and The Swell Season
(2/14/09). Thanks go out to Austin City Limits for inviting us out for the taping. Maybe they'll do it again sometime. And thanks to Gary at The Chronicle and Mark over at the Gibson showroom for helping figure out the name of the Focus song.

Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters at ACL Fest 2008

Austin City Limits Taping Set List

Times Like These
Cheer Up, Boys (Your Make Up Is Running)
Learn To Fly
Young Man's Blues
Long Road To Ruin
Let it Die
Stacked Actors
Skin And Bones
Marigold
My Hero
Cold Day In The Sun
But, Honestly
Everlong
Monkey Wrench
All My Life
Aurora
The Pretender

Lucky Foo Fighters ticket holders lined up to enter the KLRU studio

Paul Leary and Gibby Haynes of the Butthole Surfers - more photos photo by Jeff Barringer - Staff Photographer

Butthole Surfers
Hometown: San Antonio, Texas
http://www.buttholesurfers.com
Butthole Surfers Concert Photos
Saturday, September 27th, 2008
Stubb's BarBQ(Austin, Texas)
Also: Fuckemos, The Kills

The infamous Gibby Haynes and the Butthole Surfers returned to the Austin stage after a long absence and despite predictions no one died during the performance, though polls heavily favored Gibby.

Long known for their live antics like packing a shotgun onstage or playing with matches and lighter fluid in a club with limited fire exits, Saturdays performance at Stubb's was rather calm by comparison, though the crowd surfers almost overwhelmed the barrier more than once, despite the triple security in the pit. It could be that time has finally tempered the band, it could be the miles, but it certainly hasn't tempered their ability to attract controversy, and Gibby and crew aren't ready to retire out to Sun City and start voting Republican just yet.

Although the Surfers and I had crossed path's many, many times in the early 80's during Austin's heyday as the state's punk rock mecca, I only actually saw them perform once back in "The Day". That show was probably in 81 or 82 down at the old Club Foot on 4th Street, next to the bus station. Club Foot was a split evel club in the warehouse district whose interior walls were covered in sheet metal, and though the acoustics did nothing to enhance the performance, neither did a lot of the bands they booked.

Gibby Haynes of the Butthole Surfers - more photos photo by Jeff Barringer - Staff Photographer

At that show an early version of the Surfers opened for Austin's Big Boys, and my memory of the performance was that they were looking for a sound and were as yet a long way off. Still, the band had a certain stage presence, and that presence could be summed up in one word - revolting.

The band had discovered early that the performance is the performance, rather than the music. You didn't have to be good musically to attract an audience, you just had to have a performance that they wanted to watch. And in Austin in the late 70's and early 80's the best way to do that as a punk band was to be shocking, to push the envelopes of taste and propriety, and challenge the social and politcal morays of the establishment. The Hun's did it by kissing a police officer at Rauls, getting arrested, and almost starting a riot, which made Austin an early "scene". Gibby Haynes did it at that show by wearing a bright red T-Shirt that depicted a gay cowboy sporting a massive erection while stumbling about the stage abusing himself with a loaded staple gun. Their is something about a bleeding man with an erection shirt screaming profanity at you through a P.A. that sticks in your mind. I certainly remembered them, and when I later heard of GG Allin, I thought GG stole their act.

Though I missed the rest of their performances in the 80's and 90's, the band actually managed to learn how to play their instruments and wrap their stage show in some interesting and culturally relevant songs, and they turned out to be actually quite good musically. In 1981, not so much. Still I followed the band, bought all their records, followed them in the press, and watched as their legend grew.

Paul Leary of the Butthole Surfers - more photos photo by Jeff Barringer - Staff Photographer

The Surfers lived up to their legend status Saturday night at their sold out performance. Old punks from "back in the day", young punks and metalheads there to see and surf, even the press were out in droves to catch the show, and I don't think anyone walked away disappointed. Covering songs from throughout their catalog, the pit area was a war zone as the masses continually battled with security and threatened to flow over the barrier. Gibby was up to his usual antics, appearing initially in a T- Shirt with "Fuck The Man" crudely painted on it, he soon peeled it off to reveal another shirt equally rendered with "Van Palin Sux/Hockey Cunt" which raised a roar from the crowd. Still not satisfied with his sartorial accoutrements he stripped off that shirt a few minutes later revealing a shirt blotted with just the word "Urine". The Surfers set lasted exactly 1 hour and 34 minutes, beating the midnight curfew by a slender 1 minute.

The band sounded great and I look forward to seeing them tour and record again.

Opening the show were the Fuckemos, an Austin institution for over 20 years, playing the Stubb's stage for the very first time. To describe their sound and their songs, imagine a 3 minute dry belch set to metal and punk guitar work. These guys might have pioneered the whole cookie monster vocal thing, but they never seemed to break big because of the limits imposed by the bands name.

The Kills were the second band on the bill and I was impressed by their music and their stage presence. Kind of like a more melodic and harmonic White Stripes, this duo wasn't quite weird enough for the scene that night but I really enjoyed their set and their sound. With a sound thats stripped down to bare bones, they had a raw energy that made it tough to turn away. Oh, and if anyone finds The Kill's tour bus, let them know. They appear to have mis-placed it en route back to Los Angeles.

Thanks to everyone at Stubb's, C3, ACL, and The Butthole Surfers for inviting us out.