Dorks And Losers

San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park hosted the First Annual Out­side Lands Music & Arts Fes­ti­val to much applause and yearn­ing. With so much avail­able open space, it’s hard to imag­ine that there hasn’t been a music fes­ti­val that has rocked the park past sunset.

Saturday’s fes­tiv­i­ties began at 1:00pm, and fea­tured SF’s lovely cloudy weather.

Abi­gail Wash­burn & The Spar­row Quar­tet Fea­tur­ing Béla Fleck

I wasn’t too thrilled about see­ing any of the open­ing acts, but I’m glad I decided to see ban­joist Abi­gail Wash­burn along­side the Spar­row Quar­tet, with spe­cial guest acclaimed fid­dler Béla Fleck. The group had just come back from play­ing in Bei­jing for the Sum­mer Olympics, and they were really jazzed about play­ing in Golden Gate Park.

The group’s blue­grass music really matched well with the fes­ti­val and its early easy-going atti­tude. The crowd was quite large, which sur­prised the group who were expect­ing a much smaller audi­ence for the Sutro stage. But they didn’t dis­ap­point, espe­cially with the Chi­nese folk songs they played like “Kand­ing Qingge” which Wash­burn cited as a favorite overseas.

They also played “A Fuller Wine” that she wrote after lis­ten­ing to Puc­cini Opera and Woody Guthrie back-to-back. The finale “Strange Things That Hap­pen Every­day” was the group’s attempt at break­ing the festival’s har­mony with a dose of “death, doom, and destruction.”

Ever­est

Los Angeles-band Ever­est was the next band I saw at the Pre­sidio stage, and with the thirty min­utes they were allot­ted played almost straight through with nary a word. Their mel­low indie rock went well, with “Rebel In The Roses” being a stand-out performance.

Deven­dra Banhart

Eas­ily the best per­for­mance of the fes­ti­val, indie rocker Deven­dra Ban­hart did well to match the festival’s vibe with its brand of laid-back rock. The crowd was ecsta­tic with the cover of Mungo Jerry’s “In The Summertime.”

Ban­hart had so much energy, com­plain­ing that since he was from San Fran­cisco he couldn’t get away with his crazy danc­ing. He danced any­way, but not with the robot that he mused about being one of his main moves. They hit the right chord of mel­lower affair like “Samba Vex­il­lo­graph­ica” with more body-moving tracks like “Long Haired Child” very well. The set was slightly shorter than adver­tised because the band really wanted to see Liars perform.

Sean Hayes

New York-native and cur­rent SF-resident Sean Hayes proved the per­fect reflec­tion of Out­side Lands. “Alabama Chicken” was cer­tainly his more amus­ing tracks, which Hayes described as what hap­pens when you meet an Alabama chicken in Birmingham.”

I’m more used to Hayes’ more solo mate­r­ial, so it was a lit­tle weird to see him with a full band. One result was a more reg­gae tone to the oth­er­wise up-tempo pseudo-blues number.

M. Ward

I only allot­ted twenty min­utes for Ore­gon­ian M. Ward so I could get a good spot to see over­lap­ping Nel­lie McKay. Like the ear­lier Hayes, I thought Ward would go a more solo route, but he also was accom­pa­nied with a full band, includ­ing two drum­mers. I guess I’m not too big a fan of his if that’s his nor­mal band.

“Post-War” was a stand­out per­for­mance, but unfor­tu­nately I had to exit his Sutro stage area which was unbe­liev­ably crowded (no doubt because Regina Spek­tor was sched­uled to play after).

Nel­lie McKay

My pre­vi­ous deci­sion to skip out of M. Ward early proved dis­as­trous. Lupe Fiasco ran over­time at the nearby Twin Peaks stage which would have drowned out Nel­lie McKay’s more inti­mate Pan­han­dle stage per­for­mance. Unfor­tu­nately the offi­cial rea­son wasn’t offi­cially announced and twenty min­utes would pass before McKay finally walked onto the stage.

Unlike other per­form­ers, McKay was delight­fully ani­mated and talk­a­tive, even impro­vis­ing a few of songs with polit­i­cal and cur­rent event tid­bits as in her satir­i­cal “David,” “Sari,” and “The Dog Song.” At one point the SF weather became slightly uncom­fort­able for McKay who had to rush for a jacket, prompt­ing an audi­ence “aww” to which McKay replied “Cause I’m a bad motherf*cker!”

I guess I didn’t real­ize how polit­i­cal McKay was until almost every other song was given a brief com­men­tary about the country’s cur­rent state, which leaned toward a more left sen­si­bil­ity. Although she teased the audi­ence with what seemed to be a defense for John McCain until it was appar­ent she wasn’t defend­ing him: “It’s not that McCain is too old (repeats)… it’s that his poli­cies are f*cked up!” The crowd laughed and enjoyed the extra twenty min­utes that McKay took back for start­ing late.

Regina Spek­tor

In spend­ing twenty more min­utes see­ing McKay, I wasn’t able to rush to see Regina Spek­tor on time. I men­tioned that lots of peo­ple were gath­ered to see M. Ward, and in fact there were tons more peo­ple to see Spek­tor play.

I wasn’t able to get a good posi­tion, and I really didn’t feel like weav­ing through peo­ple to get closer, but I was close enough to hear her well but far enough that I couldn’t see her. I caught a few pre–Begin To Hope songs, but then I left and headed toward the Crowd­Fire tent which was tele­vis­ing that par­tic­u­lar per­for­mance. I left and then heard a large applause, which only meant that Spek­tor was singing “Fidelity.”

Two Gal­lants

San Fran­cisco duo Two Gal­lants was a dif­fer­ent band that I was used to see­ing at the fes­ti­val with their blend of emo, indie, and quasi-punk music. “Despite What You’ve Been Told” and “The Hand That Held Me Down” were very good songs.

Matt Nathanson

Singer-songwriter Matt Nathanson was enjoy­ably talk­a­tive too. There were undoubtably more females than males in the crowd, and it prob­a­bly had some­thing to do with Nathanson’s good looks (I’m assuming…).

His big hit “Come On Get Higher” was a huge crowd favorite. Being from SF, Nathanson was thrilled to be able to play and only spend ten min­utes to get home. He remarked that the fes­ti­val had an amaz­ing renais­sance fair feel with quips about horse-drawn car­riages and ref­er­ences to his band mates as lieges.

He sang a song I think is called “Princess” that he wrote as a rip-off to Rick Springfield’s “Jessie’s Girl.” He admit­ted it, even paus­ing from the song to actu­ally cover and ask for audi­ence par­tic­i­pa­tion in “Jessie’s Girl.” There was also a song about the Kar­dashian fam­ily and their real­ity tele­vi­sion show, which Nathanson com­mented as a show about “rich peo­ple doing stu­pid sh*t.”

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers

I man­aged to get a bet­ter spot for Tom Petty & The Heart­break­ers at the main Land’s End stage. I was sur­rounded by many die-hard Petty fans who couldn’t stop say­ing how much fun this fes­ti­val was (which it was).

Petty and the band rocked the audi­ence with “Free Falling” and the crowd-roaring favorite “Mary Jane’s Last Dance.” Petty men­tioned the band’s inten­tion to cram as much music into the set before the cur­few law set in.

I was already get­ting sick of the cig­a­rette and pot smoke blown in my face that when a tech­ni­cal mal­func­tion delayed the per­for­mance for five min­utes, I decided I had enough. Unfor­tu­nately for me that was only about a quar­ter or a third of the set, with the lone bright spot hav­ing a traffic-free exit from the fes­ti­val grounds. I’ll have to check back at AT&T’s Blue Room for a video­cast of the entire con­cert soon.

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