MadGods

GLO makes the girls GLOW.

If you care about  last weekends Austin City Limits Music Festival then you already know about the rain. You’re already familiar with the line ups, maybe even the inclusion of a little more diversity this year- Mos Def, John Legend, Raphael Saadiq. You already know that you can go here and here to find out about everything you missed either because you weren’t in Austin, or you weren’t at Zilker Park or you weren’t at the right place inside Zilker Park at the time you needed to be.

Just a simple briefing in case you have no knowledge of what I’m speaking on. ACL is the live music festival off shoot of the Austin City Limits television program. The TV show is the longest running music series in American history which makes me suspect it’s the longest in history period. And yeah, it’s in Austin. The festival itself takes over the entirety of Austin’s main park (Zilker) and has a whole bunch of stages and maybe about 50-100 thousand people present at any given moment over the course of 3 days.. It’s kind of a big deal if you like music.

MadGods likes music. MadGods doesn’t really care for giant festivals happening at the ass-end of summer in Texas, but through years of trial and error the folks who put on the ACL fest managed to come up with something I would be willing to leave the house for.

Aside from including a lot more acts that would appeal to the Gods and bringing back some faves like Thievery Corporation, ACL put our friends at Ghostland Observatory on as Saturday night headliners. That’s prime time! Knowing that would be the case Aaron from Ghostland reached out to us again for some of our newest gear to rock on stage. This time he even came by the office in person.

Here’s our intern Andrew being a major fan boy with Aaron at the office. He really is a big fan- he’s seen GLO like 5 times before- so this is maybe the best part of having anything to do with MadGods for Andrew.

We hooked Aaron up with a couple of Tee’s and chatted for awhile about things like family, not working on Mondays, lighting joints with lazer beams, Canadians hating  Texas and that type of thing. Then Aaron teleported away leaving nothing but the remnants of pixie dust and some boot prints on the ground.

At this point I wasn’t sure if I would be able to catch the shows they would be performing but later in the week Uncle Eddy rang me up with a guest pass to ACL, a tour bus to kick it on and some good folks to hang out with.  Given that Saturday was raining, which never happens during ACL, I felt like putting on the Gore-Tex and trudging about in mud pretending like I was in the Pacific Northwest. It was worth it.

Here are a series of pics of Ghostland Observatory performing at the ACL fest while wearing MadGods’ Unnecessary Evil shirt designed by SMUT.

These first couple of pics are from flickr but I liked them so i wanted to share them.

This is Joe P. The P stands for positivity and he and I trudged about to go find the stage GLO would be performing on. We did, and man, it was PACKED. I never got anywhere near the middle of the crowd.

GLO were well  into Victory Lap when we got there so the crowd was already solid. As a result, a lot of the show looked like this for me. Watching one of the 2 giant TV’s on either side of the stage. It made some interesting pics, tho.

This shot gives you some sense of scale. That’s the actual group under that puff of smoke in the center left part of the picture. In the upper right quadrant “Big Brother is Rocking You.”

So by this point Joe P. and I got separated and I decided to make use of my pass and went back stage. Here’s another shot for scale.

This is the 1/3 of the crowd who couldn’t get in front of the stage to watch the show.

Before coming back out to encore with Silvercity and Richman, GLO brought out the University of Texas marching band’s drum line to close out their set with The Band Marches On.

Actually, they brought out the drum line first and then the horn section.

Here’s what that looked like from the crowd.

Afterwards I hung out to meet up with Aaron for a bit. As you might expect from someone who channels circa 1972 Mick Jagger as a profession, you gotta wait out the ladies before you can speak to your boy.

Despite the rock and rollness that is GLO, these guys are truly grounded individuals. After giving some lovely young ladies a photo-op Aaron actually introduced me to his parents and wife. Really, really cool people.

Stopped by the merch booth and saw some BDIX and Ames Bros. prints as i walked out.

Outside the park  there were no taxi’s. WTF??? Sometimes Austin city really is on some country shit. So the walk began.

Anyway’s- what to do after hanging at ACL for a couple hours jamming to Ghostland Observatory, then walking a few miles smoking half a pack? At a certain point I found myself equal distance to my house and…

…the Back Alley Social where I drank some really nice Haitian Rum with none other than DJ Rich Medina…

…who would be celebrating his wifes birthday with her family and friends. This is how Asians celebrate birthdays, btw. You don’t blow out the candle you “become one” with it.

All of this courtesy, once again of TOUCHDOWN!!! Jeff  Strange seen here with our friend LaLa.

Jammin to a classic Rich Medina Dj Set accompanied by Martin on the flute. Nice and chill.

Of course, then you wake up and do it all again like Deja Vu.

Here’s Ghostland Observatory the very next night playing a sold out show at Stubb’s. This time Aaron is rocking our We’re Wolves tee, again by SMUT.

You know, some groups call themselves MAJOR LAZER and some groups live it.

Just like the night before, after the GLO show we walked around and found ourselves at the Toxic Avenger CD release party listening to another OG DJ…

…Frankie Chan.

Brazillian group Mixhell which features Sepultura drummer and founding member Igor Cavalera.

And oh yeah… DJ ORION, seen here hanging out with Richard Henry. Btw… DJ ORION DON’T WANT NO PROPS UNLESS THEY MAD, SON!!!! Mad props.