music and friends

y'all, i have been very bad about not writing in the past few weeks. but i have a lot of great excuses.

first we went to austin, for the austin city limits festival, a yearly tradition for the past four years. the festival always falls around our anniversary (in fact, the first year, it actually fell on our very first wedding anniversary!), so it's a bit of a celebration for us too.

then, on the way to the austin airport, cnn called and asked me to go vegas the next day, to help them cover the OJ Simpson arraignment. which i had to say yes to of course!

so the next day, i jumped in a cab, went back to the LA airport (where i had been not 12 hours prior), and flew to vegas. went to bed around 9p, woke up at 1a the next day, produced liveshots at the OJ circus until about 10am, had some lunch and then jumped back on a plane to LA.

however, on the way to the vegas airport, sweet cnn called again, and asked whether i wanted to produce a guest liveshot in claremont, ca (about an hour to two hours away depending on traffic), the next morning at 3am. i was kinda delirious at that point, said yes, got on the plane, got home, had some dinner and went to bed. woke up at 1am and hit the road.

so yeah - busy! blessedly so, but busy nonetheless.

i'll post about OJ tomorrow. For today, a little taste of Austin. We saw more than 10 bands, including:
- Bjork (excellent light show and wins the "what the heck does that gizmo do?" award. Also, her speaker CAUGHT ON FIRE. Oh, and of course, best stage makeup. We forgot our camera that day though, ugh!)

- MIA (my favorite show I think, despite the fact that all the South Asians at ACL came to watch this show. Ugh, I HATE being a stereotype. That aside, MIA tore it up! At the end, she asked the audience to rush the stage, much to the security guard's chagrin. She seemed especially aggro because she had appeared on David Letterman the previous night, and the show had asked her to take the gunshot sound effects out of her song. Galangalangalang!)

- Arcade Fire (energetic, seemed to be having fun themselves, encouraged an entire crowd of thousands to wail at the top of their voices)

- My Morning Jacket (my vote for "best show" although to understand why you'll have to see photos)

- Heartless Bastards, Andrew Bird, Common, Bloc Party, Ghostland Observatory, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, St. Vincent, Blonde Redhead, Spoon, and of course Bob Dylan who sounded like he'sd taking a page from Tom Waits' book these days; so gravelly. I also think it's interesting that there were no close-ups on his face on the jumbotron. Hmmm, methinks someone's face has seen a knife recently.

UGH! Blogger won't let me post photos at the mo' so i'll post them tomorrow. Glad to be back my friends!

-x-
aarti