Austin City Limits Music Festival

ACL Fest: Where the Streets Have No Name

Drenched In Blog: A Torn ACL

Drenched In Blog: Bob Dylan, Robert Earl Keen, Billy Joe Shaver, Wilco and My Morning Jacket Round Out the Weekend

This Just In: “Bodysnatchers” at the Woodlands

Has ACL Festival Jumped the Shark?

Austin City Limits Goes Grunge; Tickets On Sale Today

Just in time for tickets to go on sale - as in now - leaks have conveniently begun to spring in C3 Entertainment's carefully under wraps lineup for this year's Austin City Limits Music Festival, scheduled for October 2-4 in Zilker Park. (Don't worry, Longhorn fans: Unlike last year, that's UT's ... More >>

The Best of ACL Fest

Just in time for tickets to go on sale - as in now - leaks have conveniently begun to spring in C3 Entertainment's carefully under wraps lineup for this year's Austin City Limits Music Festival, scheduled for October 2-4 in Zilker Park. (Don't worry, Longhorn fans: Unlike last year, that's UT's ... More >>

The Octopus Project

Just in time for tickets to go on sale - as in now - leaks have conveniently begun to spring in C3 Entertainment's carefully under wraps lineup for this year's Austin City Limits Music Festival, scheduled for October 2-4 in Zilker Park. (Don't worry, Longhorn fans: Unlike last year, that's UT's ... More >>

Being There

The Sixth Annual Austin City Limits Festival feels like home...almost

Jones Family Singers

9 p.m. Saturday, April 22, at the Continental Club, 3700 Main, 713-529-9899

Playbill

9 p.m. Saturday, April 22, at the Continental Club, 3700 Main, 713-529-9899

Festivus Maximus

The Austin City Limits Music Festival's got a roster that won't quit

Weekend Video Roundup: Beastie Boys and Aerosmith

No, the Beastie Boys didn't play Houston over the weekend, and they won't be in the forseeable future either. No sooner had C3 Entertainment announced that the Boys would take the 8:15-9:30 p.m. spot on the Austin City Limits Music Festival's AMD stage Friday, October 2 - see the full schedule here ... More >>

Bayou Beat: Movie Night at the Mink, Scout Bar Beaumont Shut Down, Yeah Yeah Yeahs at ACL? and More

Seems the Mink has found an old movie projector and is planning to put it to good use this evening. After a couple of Charlie Chaplin shorts, the bar will screen the superb 2007 documentary Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten, and even provide free popcorn. "A makeout row can be provided on reque ... More >>

Bayou Beat: Method Man on His Pellet-Gun Aim, The Debut of HUSH, Local Bands Vying for ACL Spot, Thee Armada MySpace Finalist, etc.

Above, Method Man talks about his pellet-gun accuracy, which was a little off the night he allegedly shot Houstonian Mary Anderson, who is now suing him on several counts including assault. Besides playing House of Blues Friday with Redman and Ghostface, looks like Meth will spend some time in Hous ... More >>

Start the Guessing Now: Which Fun Fun Fun Fest Artists Will Also Play the Next Block Party?

​ Fun Fun Fun Fest, the scuzzier, noisier cousin to the Austin City Limits Music Festival, announced its lineup this afternoon. Held November 7 and 8 in Austin's Waterloo Park, FFFF is up to 91 artists this year, everyone from rappers the GZA, the Pharcyde and the Cool Kids to electronic/dance act ... More >>

ACL Fest Preview: School of Seven Bells and Prescott Curlywolf

Amanda MertenSchool of Seven Bells​For the next three weeks, Rocks Off will be bringing you two or three short previews a day of artists playing the Austin City Limits Music Festival in Zilker Park October 2-4. That's right, ACL is 17 days away - where is this year going? (Same place as all the ot ... More >>

ACL Fest Preview: Ben Sollee and !!!

With eight stages rumbling with musical noises for nearly 12 hours a day, it's hard to fully grab a hold of the Austin City Limits Music Festival without having one or two bands slipping through your hands. With the festival getting such ridiculously amazing talent each year on each stage, one must ... More >>

ACL Fest Preview: Five Outdoor Music Festivals That Could Have Gone a Lot Better

The 2009 Austin City Limits Festival kicks off Friday, and many of you are no doubt devising parking strategies and grappling with various permutations of 'How will I make it from the [a] set at [b] stage in time to catch [x]'s set at the [y] stage?' It's a serious dilemma, as ACL always puts toget ... More >>

ACL 2009: This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things

Photos by Mark C. Austin​From the Austin American-Statesman comes word that Zilker Park, which hosted the three-day Austin City Limits Music Festival this weekend, will have to remain closed until the end of the month. Why? Because ACL more or less destroyed the park. For the next 25 or so da ... More >>

ACL Aftermath, Part 1: Spearhead's "Electric Mudslide" and the Whole "Dillo Dirt" Situation

Mark C. Austin​ Night fell on the Austin City Limits Music Festival at Zilker Park this past Sunday under a full moon and over a sea of mud. (It wasn't strictly mud, but more on that in a bit.) Many in the crowd, especially those in the proximity of the Dell stage, responded the only logical way p ... More >>

Million-Dollar Mud

The 2009 Austin City Limits Music Festival became a quagmire everywhere but onstage.

Rocks Off's Picks for This Weekend's Fun Fun Fun Festival

You can think of this weekend's Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin as the indie, metal, and hip-hop little brother of the more staid Austin City Limits Music Festival. The fourth edition of the two-day event held in Waterloo Park in Austin starts tomorrow afternoon. Per our stated life path, Rocks Off will ... More >>

Aftermath: Fun Fun Fun Fest In Austin Day 1 - Death, Young Widows, Melt Banana, The Sword, Jesus Lizard

Photos by Marc Brubaker/ Click here for a slideshowDeath, reborn​This year's Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin was the exact thing Aftermath needed in the midst of his fall concert schedule, even though the last day was marred by mud and constant rain. But after last month's dillo-dirtied Austin City Lim ... More >>

Taking In the Freak Scene at Fun Fun Fun Fest

Photos by Craig Hlavaty​ While we go to festivals such as Fun Fun Fun Fest because we enjoy great music, we are also fans of the sorts of people who attend these events. We're people-watchers at heart, so we frequently engage in a bit of amateur sociological research in between sets. At South by ... More >>

It's Not Easy Being Green: How Venues And Festivals Handle All That Garbage

Marco TorresSold-out Jay-Z crowd = A lot of trash at Toyota Center.​ On any given night, 18,000 to 25,000 people fill the Toyota Center, whether to watch the Rockets play or to see Lady Gaga in full regalia. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the average American produces more than ... More >>

Acts We Think - OK, Hope - Are Playing ACL Fest This Year

​By this time Tuesday, we will all know who is playing the Austin City Limits Music Festival in October. Damn, it seems like we have speculating about the line-up since, well, we got the last of the "Dillo Dirt" out the middle of our toes after last year's muddy and rainy ACL weekend. Tuesday brig ... More >>

2010 ACL Line-Up Goes Live And (Early) By Surprise

The line-up for the 2010 Austin City Limits Music Festival went live at the fest's website at midnight this morning while the rest of the world was snoozing. Luckily we are up and stirring to bring it to you. No Pavement and no Soundgarden, but we do have the Strokes down. More commentary coming in ... More >>

ACL Fest Releases Schedule; Adds Black Lips, Silversun Pickups

black-lips.com via FlickrBrand-new ACL 2010 adds The Black Lips​The Austin City Limits Music Festival released the schedule grid for this year's gathering in Zilker Park Oct. 7-9. The festival also added several bands, including Atlanta garage-punks (and recovering exhibitionists) the Black Li ... More >>

Rocks Off Explains Austin City Limits' "Survival Guide"

Mark C. AustinOne day Austin City Limits will live down last year's "Dillo Dirt" debacle. That day is not today.​This year marks the fourth year that Craig's Hlist will be covering the Austin City Limits Music Festival for the Houston Press and Rocks Off. Each year we get more acclimated to th ... More >>

Live From The Austin City Limits Festival, Day 1

Brittanie SheyThe Ettes​Brittanie Shey: Things seem incredibly crowded, and hotter than Houston, if that's even possible. The dust is already flying. Some of us here braved the bro-crowd at the Black Keys (see jump) but some of us, seeing the mile of bodies wobbling before the stage, decided t ... More >>

ACL Day 3 Recap: Eagles, Norah Jones, Wayne Coyne's Diet

Ed. Note: Updated at 1:42 p.m. to include information on Don Henley's medical condition we received from Eagles manager Irving Azoff. Photos by Marco Torres​It's just a few hours after the Eagles left the stage at this year's Austin City Limits Festival, closing out the weekend. Rocks Off mad ... More >>

The Sword, Venomous Maximus, Black Congress, Omotai

Ed. Note: Updated at 1:42 p.m. to include information on Don Henley's medical condition we received from Eagles manager Irving Azoff. Photos by Marco Torres​It's just a few hours after the Eagles left the stage at this year's Austin City Limits Festival, closing out the weekend. Rocks Off mad ... More >>

Ally ASL Goes National Via ABC News, Yahoo!

​Rocks Off is a modest sort of music blog. We generally need both of our arms for typing, so we don't want to risk breaking one of them patting ourselves on the back. But once in a while, through hard work, dumb luck or (most often) some combination of the two, we push over the first domino in ... More >>

Music's Top 10 Most Fashionable Women Right Now

GroovehouseThe Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Karen O at the 2009 Austin City Limits Music Festival​Fashion, like songwriting and other artistic outlets, is a form of self-expression. It adds to one's aura; it speaks on her behalf. Yet fashion sometimes gets overlooked in music, and undeservedly so. Follow ... More >>

Stevie Wonder, Coldplay, And Kanye West Lead ACL 2011 Lineup

Marc BrubakerGoin' back to Zilker: Arcade Fire at The Woodlands, May 4​Moments ago, the Austin City Limits Music Festival announced its lineup for the 10th-anniversary weekend, scheduled for Sept. 16-18 in Zilker Park. Top names include Stevie Wonder, Coldplay, Kanye West, and Bright Eyes. P ... More >>

A Dream Austin City Limits Weekend For Houston

Craig HlavatyColdplay at The Woodlands, July 2009​Summer is creeping in, which means the fall concert calendars are filling up fast, and we should know which Austin City Limits Music Festival artists will book side dates in our area sooner rather than later. The standard disclaimer: Rocks Off ... More >>

Foster the People

Craig HlavatyColdplay at The Woodlands, July 2009​Summer is creeping in, which means the fall concert calendars are filling up fast, and we should know which Austin City Limits Music Festival artists will book side dates in our area sooner rather than later. The standard disclaimer: Rocks Off ... More >>

Fun Fun Fun Fest Leaking 2011 Lineup On Turntable.fm

​After leaking artists including Okkervil River, Odd Future, X and - most people believe - Slayer, Austin's Fun Fun Fun Fest has officially begun announcing its 2011 lineup via the brand-new file-sharing/social-media hybrid Turntable FM. Fun Fun Fun began streaming songs from this year's arti ... More >>

Five ACL '11 Bands That Could Headline In 2012

Jim BrickerSmith Westerns at Fitz in February​This Thursday night, Rocks Off leaves for the 2011 Austin City Limits Music Festival at Austin's Zilker Park. This year promises to be a hot one, from the killer temperatures, the constant wildfires just miles from the venue, and the mouth of Frida ... More >>

10 Great Pictures Of Johnny Cash

​Do you remember where you were when you found out that Johnny Cash passed away, on September 12, 2003? This member of Rocks Off was in our tiny S-10 pickup, delivering pizzas somewhere in Pearland, when one of the country stations he was flipping through delivered the news that the Man In Bla ... More >>

Texas Pop Festival Finally Getting Historical Marker

Mike PorterBathe, hippies, bathe!​Rocks Off can't do anything about the drought, but this weekend we will be breaking our own personal drought and returning to the Austin City Limits Music Festival after taking 2010 off. But long before ACL, there was another massive musical gathering in Texa ... More >>

BestFest Finalizes Lineup, Releases Schedule

​As much as Rocks Off has been talking about it, planning it, and writing about it these past two months or so, it doesn't seem possible that our first-ever Best of Houston® BestFest is only 10 short days away. By the time we finish coughing up all the dust from our trip to the no-smoking Aus ... More >>

No Smoking At ACL: Five Ways To Still Get Your Nic Fix

​That heavy sigh and occasional sniffles you heard on Monday was the Rocks Off team finding out the Austin Parks Department has banned smoking at the Austin City Limits Music Festival this weekend, for which we will all be leaving tomorrow evening. The team of smokers on this crew nearly canc ... More >>

10 Things We're Probably Doing At ACL This Year

villagevoice.comBjork at ACL '07, when part of her staging caught fire.​This is the Rocks Off team's (well, Craig Hlavaty and Chris Gray) fifth year covering the Austin City Limits Music Festival. The first year this smart guy wore black jeans and a black shirt to try to look cool, which made ... More >>

Five Can't-Miss Acts At ACL Fest This Year

Craig HlavatyWe're running this picture of My Morning Jacket's Jim James now because this will be the last we see of him all weekend.​For weeks after we skipped last year's Austin City Limits Music Festival to man the controls in Houston, Rocks Off found ourselves thinking, "Man, I wish I woul ... More >>

ACL: Arcade Fire, Big As The Great Outdoors

Photos by Jim Bricker​Check out all our ACL 2011 coverage, including our hottest crowd shots and slideshow from Sunday featuring Randy Newman, Arcade Fire and The Walkmen. Arcade Fire Bud Light Stage, Austin City Limits Music Festival, Zilker Park September 18, 2011 Sunday night in a serene ... More >>

Touch the Sky

The 2011 Austin City Limits Music Festival in exactly 12 paragraphs.

Skrillex

The 2011 Austin City Limits Music Festival in exactly 12 paragraphs.

Dax Riggs

The 2011 Austin City Limits Music Festival in exactly 12 paragraphs.