Unplug them people

Watching the last broadcast of Austin City Limits from Studio 6A . . . when I came to Austin, ACL was barely a year old.  And now they’re moving to a new studio, which they’ve needed for years—parking around the University is impossible, the studio was never designed to do what it’s done, there’s not nearly enough seating (320 if you fill every seat the fire marshal will allow) and the building’s just plain old—41 years now.

• 7:05  I wonder what the new studio’s backdrop will look like; it’s gonna be a lot different from the 1984 skyline reflected in the current backdrop.  I hope the College of Communication is going to preserve/conserve the original, though that’ll be a challenge.  The old backdrop is nothing but half-inch plywood sheets drilled full of holes, painted and fairy lights sunk in it all over the place.
• 7:10:  The styling minimizes it, but Lyle’s starting to suffer from pattern baldness.
• 7:19:  John Hagen gets the first break in Townes’s “White Freightliner Blues.” 35 years, and John’s been there the whole time.
• 7:21:  “White Freightliner” has turned into a kind of guitar pull; a different band member gets each verse, and then a solo break afterward.
• 7:25:  Lyle invited all the crew to join the band onstage for the closer.  Producer Terry Lickona just gave the order:  “Y’all abandon yer posts!”
• 7:26:  I see so many faces onstage whom I know—crew I used to see every year at auction.  They’re still there after all this time; starting to sway back and forth slowly with the music now.
• 7:27:  The audience is standing and applauding in the middle of the song—I’m crying now; actually seeing the end hurts badly, more than I knew . . . .
• 7:28: “Go on home; it’s closing time.”  Yeah . . . .