Dr. Dog: a favorite of Welsh Girl's, I believe they were added later to fill some of the scheduling holes. And, of course, since they were fairly early and Welsh Girl doesn't do getting out of bed so well (and don't even try to refute it, woman!), we got there late. But we still caught some of their set. They're not a bad band. I don't mind getting dragged to their performances...

Paulo Nutini: We ended up here after wandering around the ACL Kiddie Limits (if you have kids of the youngish age, check out the Sippy Cups). This guy is supposed to be this amazing musician and songwriter. If you share that opinion, you also probably think that Dave Matthews was the greatest thing to happen to music since Huey Lewis and the News. Boring, insipid, not even picture worthy. The only thing I will say in his defense is that we decided to stop and sit before the show and the sun was beating down like a Hammer of the Gods. This may have had and effect on my mood at the time, but not enough to make me rethink the opinion.

Stephen Marley: We only caught a little of him. I am now convinced that Bob Marley is some kind of immortal who fakes his death every so often and passes himself off as one of his own kids. We left this one early because, well, when you've heard one reggae song, you've kinda heard them all.

We ended up taking a break at this point. We left the park for a few hours, went home, got some rest and then went back. There were a couple acts in the interim we would have liked to have seen, but we didn't know any of them well enough to suffer discomfort for...

Indigo Girls: Really, really fucking good. That and I caught some cute young lesbos making out during the show. Even better...

But we had to leave this one early to catch...

The Arcade Fire: We caught them before 2 ACLs back. I wanted to catch them but they were kinda early and we got there halfway through their set (refer back to Welsh Girl and getting out of bed). They were awesome then and they're even more awesome now. Unfortunately, I got nothing but shit for pictures...

Since we had to leave Indigo Girls midshow to join the maddening crowd heading to this stage, we ended up in a shitty position so far back from the stage it hurt. Hell, we weren't inside the sound booth. And it was the perfect example of why we try to get close for shows. All the way back here, it was some energy, but these people weren't music fans. They were here because they'd heard of the band and wanted to say they'd seen them. To the left, we had this group of guys who were more interested in taking pictures of themselves with beer in strange positions. In front of them was a gaggle of girls who apparently were texting every detail of the show to someone who wasn't there. In front of me was this older guy (early 50's) and his wife (early to mid 40s). She was totally into it, but he was obviously there only because she was there and spent half his time looking back at the crowd. Hell, because of all this stuff going on around me, I had trouble watching the show. If you're up close, everyone and everything is focused on the band and the music. Back here, it's like that Japanese flash game where you have to guide the rocket but the screen keeps moving on you and distractions keep jumping out and all that crap. But I don't blame them. If that's what they want to do, more power to them. They bought their ticket and what they do with their experience is their business. I blame ACL.

<rant>

Who the hell is scheduling these shows? Seriously?!?!? I mean, I can understand scheduling shows that are different genres to overlap one another thinking that they're not going to have the same fan base. But some of these overlaps are ignorant! You don't overlap a well known band with a long history and a large and varied fanbase with another well known band that is incredibly popular has a large varied fan base! Bjork and The Killers? Indigo Girls and Arcade Fire? And the White Stripes, had they appeared, would have overlapped a shared hour with the Arcade Fire. Those are almost the same fucking fanbases? Who the fuck dreamed this shit up?!?!?! They need to be shot! I know you can't have everything, but damn! ACL has really dropped the ball this year. All I know is that next year better be a whole hell of a lot better.

</rant>

And that's all I have to say about that. Time to roll Welsh Girl out of bed (it's now noon) to catch a 3:30 show. Day 3 awaits! And stay tuned tomorrow for a special announcement!!!