The Austin City Limits Music Festival was a world class and uniquely Austin experience. The sound and scheduling of the bands was flawless. The were some major clitches with ticket purchases at the gate and food availability throughout the first day due to a 33% greater turnout to the event than was expected — 40,000 people were there on Saturday. Since I bought my tickets in advance, showed up early. and ate a hearty meal before I arrived, I was relatively unaffected by these problems. My only personal complaint is that there was so much good music to choose from that for every performance I saw I had to consciously decide to miss one or more others. I guess that's a good problem to have.

The word is that there will be a 2nd Annual Austin City Limits Music Festival next year. Based on my experience at the first I can say I will go out of my way to attend the second. I also recommend that all you music lovers out there start planning, right now, to come to Austin next year — you won't regret it.

At my weblog, BookNotes, I have posted a slide show of the performances that I saw at the festival. Here's the first image and here's the index.