ACL (Austin City Limits)

I (Leigh) just returned home from Austin a few minutes ago. . . Mike and I went to see the Austin City Limits shows in the heat and dust of Zilker Park...[note the dust in the above photo, not to be mistaken for snow]. Below is the list of bands I saw, with photos (from the ACL website) and links to YouTube clips (mostly from ACL and horrible quality, but give a good idea of the sound, feel, and look of the music). . . This was a phenomenal 3-days and an unbelievably well-organized music festival.

The daily schedules:
FRIDAY:
the festival opened with the Star Wars theme
- ben cyllus - 1st band to open the festival
- dan dyer
- the steps - local band that won a spot in the festival.
- rodney crowell - surprisingly funny and political singer-songwriter
- yeasayer - unusual and fun
- vampire weekend - a bit sophomoric and they look like little preppy kids, but a good band:
- louis xiv - unmemorable
- gogol bordello - a riot, high energy, and phenomenal
- david byrne - choreographed dancing, tight band, expectedly professional
- g. love & special sauce - fun funky shtuff
- manu chao - incredible mix of classical Spanish guitar, heavy metal, and reggae.
SATURDAY:
- langhorne slim - great singer-songwriter
- old 97's - better than i expected, but glad to see them here and not on their own
- the fratellis - generic
- sharon jones and the dap-kings - the dap-kings are powerful and fun, sharon is a show-off, but the act is a good one, albeit retro motown/r&b.
- man man - outrageous, even moreso than gogol - imagine 5 x 1-man bands all playing together
- erykah badu - okay, too many pregnant pauses and not due to the fact that she's actually 'with child'
- mgmt (go Wes '05!) - a young band like vampire - fun dancy tunes and also yes-like/artrock stuff
- mason jennings
- beck - a great tight band, but he doesn't seem to have much fun (similar to byrne, he seems to be worried about the cohesiveness of the performance?)

SUNDAY:
- sybris
- the m's - good
- abigail washburn & the sparrow quartet w/ bela fleck - fabulous foursome - great banjo work and interesting songs from China to Kentucky.
- the kills- 2 person band - both sing and play guitar to synthetic drum beats. VV was very hungover and almost cried herself off the stage at one point. nevertheless, they are a fun, unusual punk sound with proper whiny punkster attitudes.
- neko case - mellow beautiful songs
- the heartless bastards - a great band, would be great fun in a local bar
- the raconteurs - unreal. one of the best performances at ACL.
- foo fighters - closed the festival. generic loud rock - not that impressive. grohl wasted a lot of his time slot talking nonsense.

In addition to seeing some great music, we had a little time to catch up with Lexa, Susannah and Christopher, Andre and Meghal and Avi, and Stephanie and Brent. Wahoo!

a good NYTimes review of the weekend: click
local blog reviews of individual acts: click

Some recent happenings...

We have been a little swamped with the beginning of school and the usual overload of research... So we've squeezed in a little non-work...

More hummingbirds at the feeder (a small obsession of late):

We registered the 'new' catamaran and trailer, and installed a hitch on the car. Here are some pictures of the 'ran:
On Friday, exhausted from a long week, we decided to 'picnic' and watch the sunset at the second highest point in Davis - the dyke next to I-80. [The highest point is the dump.]
This beauty welcomed us at our front door all week:We didn't take any photos, but on Saturday, Kate and Ted brought us to some great vineyards just a few miles South of Sacramento including Bogle and the Old Sugar Mill. On Sunday, we went for a walk in the Yolo Causeway where the ducks are starting to return for the Fall/Winter and there are great caterpillars, giant grasshoppers, and fabulous herons.

backyard

this weekend, we had a nice harvest...


...and several Anna's hummingbirds visited our backyard:

another year...another moving day

As we mentioned last year, August 31st is moving day in Davis. All renters' leases end on August 31st and all leases begin on September 1st. Each year we "happen upon" some goodies. Or, as Andrew says, we "go shopping."

Yesterday, as I was biking to work, less than two blocks from our house I found this with a FREE sign taped to it. . .

With Lake Berryessa within 25miles of our place, who could possibly resist? It has replaced the car in our driveway. We are giving it a trial period of a few months and will reconsider its position in our lives after New Years.

Mono Basin

This weekend was our annual trip to the Mono Basin where there are volcanic craters, an inland sea, beautiful valleys, creek trout fishing, and great hiking.

We arrived late on Friday night to a beautiful moon over the mountains:
...and incredible views of the Milky Way:
We camped at our favorite campground in Lundy Canyon. Then, we hiked up to Gibbs Lake and fished for beautiful golden trout.
At night, we watched the sunset over Mono Lake and then had dinner with our friends Bartshe and Kelly in Lee Vining, the town associated with Mono Lake.


On Sunday, we explored an area we'd never visited before - the lakes above an old, abandoned mining town called Bennettville...


Andrew spent some time fishing for brook trout for dinner, while I soaked up the mountain air, fished a little, and played with the camera and the frogs. . .
We enjoyed a view of Mount Dana for most of our walk:
This is an example of the a medium-sized brook trout found in the creeks and lakes of the area. This is smaller than most that we took, but believe it or not, the 7-9 inch brookies taste much better than the larger ones :
...one of the creeks we walked along and fished in:

some nice tree roots and branches:

Thes are photos of a tiny frog species we saw near the creek. We found light-colored and darker-colored frogs, but we think they are the same species? There were thousands of these 1/2" frogs:

We ate our brookies near Mono Lake and watched the sun set from South Tufa:



On our last day, we traipsed up Lundy Canyon. We saw tons of unidentified birds, which we labeled SSB's, for "sparrow-sized birds".