DON'T SAVE THE DATE
After tagging its concert dates for 2003-04 at the Majestic Theater, the San Antonio Symphony, which cancelled its upcoming performance season due to financial crises, recently announced that it will release most of them back into the wild - reserving some dates in the spring for potential "special concerts."
"This is the responsible thing to do - giving the City the opportunity to make the Majestic available for other events on those dates," explained Symphony Executive Director Steven Brosvik in a press release. The organization is hopeful that it will overcome its financial straits and offer regular programming for the 2004-05 season
The citizens of San Antonio hope that the Majestic Theater will use these newly released dates for the greater good - and not feature two nights of Ottmar Liebert.
AUSTIN CITY UNLIMITED
Ah, organization. The lines were short, the beer was cheap and tasty, and there were plenty of portable potties for everyone. And, if you avoided the whole mess with the shuttle by parking in the adjacent neighborhoods, it could be said that this year's Austin City Limits Music Festival was perfect. The crowd was friendly and disparate: The Dwight Yoakam yokums mingled amongst the straw hat-wearing college crowd, and pot-smoking kids threaded their way past the families staked out with folding lawn chairs and blankets to the throngs at the front of the stage. Al Green pumped up the crowd with geriatic gyrating, his red red rose beating a steady rhythm against his white-suited crotch. Lucinda Williams, joking that she had done too much acid, forgot a portion of her last song, lamenting to the crowd that nothing in her life ever went right. The Polyphonic Spree, for those who "didn't make it to church" that day, set off a round of spirtual singalongs for a crowd of lovers. Spoon drew out their performance of "Paper Tiger," their pop song mutating into an experimental set with reverb and stacatto lyrics. And in perhaps the best gambit of the evening, Yo La Tengo let their CD do the playing as Georgia Hubley and James McNew did a syncronized dance in honor of 'Sync. Exactly how does one dance to drone rock? Really slowly, with a lot of irony. •
