Last weekend was the first of two, annually, for the Austin City Limits music festival in, you guessed it, Austin, TX.

And my, has ACL come a long way since its inception in 2002.

In ’02, the festival was only a 2-day event which drew in approximately 42,000 attendees. And a 1-day pass was $25.

In 2018, however, the festival is a full 3-day event that will cost you $255 and you’ll have to navigate your way through 75,000 fellow festival-goers.

This year, attendance seemed remarkably high. That’s to be expected when the main headliner has been freaking KNIGHTED by the Queen of England. Of course, I’m referencing Sir Paul McCartney.

75,000 people with their wristbands on checking into Zilker Park for three sequential days – it’s a scene. And the production company handles everything from security to food to drinks to information dispersion like a well-oiled machine. As is to be expected at this point, everything goes off without a hitch. The biggest X-factor after 17 years of this is the weather – which was agreeable.

The ever-expanding footprint of the festival brings with it more food, drink, merchandise, local artwork, corporate-sponsored “experiences”, and many, many other things on which you happily fork over your dollars.

Paul McCartney, Metallica, Travis Scott (who? – I don’t know. I’m a 35 year-old white guy), The National, Arctic Monkeys and Odesza were the big names this year.

The crowd for Sir Paul was seemingly never-ending. I saw the dude at Minute Maid Park several years ago and the crowd was nuts. But THIS… THIS was something else. And yet, you still had the people who had been sitting on their blanket since 11am and were pissed when an ocean of other folks were stepping on their real estate. Stand up, guys – you can’t see anything down there anyway.

ACL 19 kicks off on October 4, 2019! Here’s to a quickly-passing year!

– Elliott Soeder