Although I will be more than happy partying with you all for a 5th straight year, and catching 3 days of great fun & live shows in Zilker Park... a piece of me feels like the promoters, the organizers, and the sponsers missed out on a great opportunity to capitalize on a growing movement that could have put ACL 2007 on the list of "festival's you NEVER should have missed."

I will be happy with whatever line-up we get to see, and I will be more than happy with the hard earned money I spent to get there, but I would love it if this festival pushed the envelope on the anti-war sentiments and went balls-out to get out spoken musicians/artists such as Pearl Jam, Neil Young, Dixie Chicks, Rage Against the Machine, etc etc that believe in their convictions as to the current political situation. Personally, i'm not even a big fan of a lot of the aforementioned bands. I understand that this opinion won't be accepted or appreciated by everyone, and I greatly respect that. But as a person that has friends and family still fighting bravely over-sea's and as a person that lost a cousin in Afghanistan, what greater stage than Geroge Bush's back yard does a promoter have to bring to the table to set another unprecidented concert festival in a decidely liberal town, such as Austin Texas?

Again, I respect everyone for taking the time to read this and I respect everyone's right to speach, I don't say this as an anti-war hippie. Instead, I say this as someone who's a pacifist at heart.

Peace
Orson

Orson.. i enjoyed your post. There is always a time and place for the festival you envision, and Austin is defiantely a contender for the locale.

However, I don't think ACL Fest organizers should pre-sell tickets and then switch the mission of the festival to be that of a political rally. Lots of us enjoy the 3 days away from the daily strugle of work and politics. I'm looking forward to lone-star and barton springs and letting my brain take the weekend off.

However, if someone does decide to throw a political rally / concert - I'd be happy to read the mission and then decide if my dollars should support it.

Please know this is not a response of haste - I have full admiration for your friends and family bravely serving their country. I hope for their safe return as quickly as possible.

Peace returned

Bear with me here, because I'm about to make an analogy:

I went to a Christian High School. And like all Christian high schools, there was always a concern among the faculty leadership as to the spiritual direction of a given class that was considered "troubled." The solution that was always struck upon, time after time, was to approach the socially popular guys in the grade and see if they couldn't undergo some revival and become spiritual leaders. Of course, those guys would turn things around at first, but eventually, they would slip right back into trappings of being popular and partying in high school and doing generally Un-Christian leaderish thing. All the while, there were actual spiritual leaders in the grade who weren't given the time of day.

That is to say, just cause you look up to rock stars cause they write good tunes, doesn't mean they should be AT ALL spearheading political movements. Generally speaking, they're wealthy men and women of privilege who are good at entertaining other people. And mostly they'd end up damaging your cause more than helping it. Look to the 60s and 70s if you need any further proof of that...

dudezer47, I think you are wrong. These people who are singing songs for the most part are just like you and me. The only difference is that these people have written songs that connect with people , and believe you me, people are hard to connect with. Sure they are wealthy musicians, but that does not mean that they do not care deeply about that social and political problems of the world just as much as you or I do.

Also, the musicians in the 1960's did help change our country in some sense. Maybe not politically, but certainly culturally. And I believe truly from the bottom of my heart of hearts that beatles helped slip the words love and peace into our collective conscience, in a way no one had ever done before. And the world is a better place for it.

So cheers to Politricks post. But it's really too bad Joe Strummer isn't alive.

Thank you so much for the non-hostile responses; that's all I wanted to read in regards to my own rant. I didnt mean it to come across as "musicians need to get on a pedestal and preach their own opinions to us for 3 days." I apologize if you took it that way. All I meant was that the setting, the large majority of the populations opinions, and the timing of this festival are all insanely coincidental for such a message to be sent; at a time where the larger majority of our congress represented the larger majority of the public opinion and wanted to put the bloodshed to rest, yet it was trumped by one person and his blind administration. Im not pro-war nor am I anti-war... i'm simply against the act of agression and against military show of strength ("Shock & Awe"), and I sincerely apologize to those that are offended by that.

wow, i never thought of this so profoundly but you bring up a pretty good point. I think the difference in Woodstock 69 and any other festivals there-after is that currently we dont have a military draft. Politricks, i respect what you say and your freedom to say it and im sure a ton of people (including myself) agree with you. The only problem I see is that perhaps (and I could be out of line here) today people arent "forced" to take up arms and join the military - its on a "volunteer" basis. The point to be argued though, is did our brave men/women and your friends and family volunteer to be subjected to a war in unjustified reasoning? Shit, who am I to even say anything, I just want to see our boys & girls come home safe and that we get a great fucking 3 days of live music... while remembering those that cant be here with us to enjoy the festival

I'm not really offended. I just think it's misguided to turn a festival into a political statement. I think music should be the emphasis and if politics comes into the artist's vision, cool. If not, that's also cool. Politics for the sake of politics sometimes trumps good music.

So I want ACL to get the best possible acts period. Not the best possible acts that happen to have political significance.

quote:

if someone does decide to throw a political rally / concert - I'd be happy to read the mission and then decide if my dollars should support it.

Agreed. ACL shouldn't take money and then have the collected dollars support a political movement the purchaser may not agree with or may not want to be involved with.

I'm all for a political statement making loud noise via a mainstream music festival - anything to get a message you support out there. However, you can't.. sorry, shouldn't collect money up front and then tell people what message you as ACL will use the festival to support... at least without letting me know up front your going to pick a political message to support that is TBD!

check out www.bushretires.com. austin IS going to be a venue for this type of event--the Bush Retirement Party. there are some big name activist musicians in the area, hope some of them sign on...