Dorks And Losers

Golden Gate Park hosts the Out­side Lands Music & Arts Fes­ti­val again this year, and the expe­ri­ence seems to be much bet­ter this time around for the now two-year event.

Being green is a very big theme for Out­side Lands, with pub­lic trans­porta­tion and zero waste being stressed for all of its festival-goers. Get­ting to the park is never so hard, it’s get­ting to the fes­ti­val entrances that is always stress­ful with a lack of signs still plagu­ing eager fans.

An unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cally hot San Fran­cisco day didn’t help things.

This of course pushed my sched­ule fur­ther out, which made me miss fes­ti­val open­ers Autolux and West Indian Girl. Artist and band names are dis­played on their respec­tive stages that help clar­ify things for the unin­formed and def­i­nitely those that need a con­stant reminder.

My first band of the fes­ti­val was Built To Spill that imme­di­ately began lay­ing into their set. Sur­pris­ingly, there were a lot of peo­ple out to see them play at a still rel­a­tively early 2:30 per­for­mance. Built to Spill played a lot of fan favorites, and even a cou­ple from their soon-to-be-released sev­enth full-length album There Is No Enemy.

Because of a slight over­lap, I trekked late to see San Francisco-native trio The Dodos. It was refresh­ing to see so much energy from a young band that seemed pretty stoked to be play­ing for a large home­town crowd.

Crowd­Fire Photo

Los Ange­les indie rock­ers Sil­ver­sun Pick­ups came next and didn’t hes­i­tate to please the audi­ence with their radio hits like “Lazy Eye” and “Well Thought Out Twin­kles.” I devel­oped a bet­ter appre­ci­a­tion for the band, now that I’ve finally have seen them per­form live with all of that energy. Brian Aubert was pretty ecsta­tic to be there, con­fess­ing his per­sonal love for Built To Spill.

I had to high­tail it again to arrive late for the Brooklyn-based quin­tet The National. From afar, the band has a pseudo-electronic dance sound even though doesn’t use any key­boards or synths reg­u­larly. It must have been the atmosphere.

Coin­ci­dently, all of the bands I ended up see­ing Fri­day were either Lands End (the main stage) or Sutro (the anchor stage for the Lind­ley Meadow area.

Long-time Cal­i­for­nia rock­ers Incubus (yes they’re still together) gave the crowd a refresher course of Incubus 101. Their brand of Cal­i­for­nia rock got me through high school, and the hour-long set (filled with hits such as “Drive,” “Love Hurts” (includ­ing a brief crowd takeover of the song), “Par­don Me,” and my per­sonal favorite “Mega­lo­ma­niac” brought back so many mem­o­ries from my adolescence.

Heineken Expe­ri­ence

We decided to rush the rest of the evening before grunge leg­ends Pearl Jam took the stage at 7:50. We casu­ally walked around the var­i­ous booths and tents to check out the fes­ti­val attrac­tions. It was nice to see peo­ple hav­ing fun at MLB’s Road Show (with both bat­ting and pitch­ing cages); the Out­side Lands salon, which had plenty of patrons wait­ing to get their hair styled and karaoke (I saw a guy who pretty much has his ren­di­tion and per­for­mance for Queen’s “Bohemian Rhap­sody” down cold); the Expe­ri­ence Cre­ated by Heineken (with rotat­ing DJs and a dance floor); and Toyota’s Spot tent that fea­tured a raf­fle and free ink tat­toos (I got a cool blueish updated design of the Toy­ota logo). Orga­niz­ers wanted to cre­ate a more well-rounded expe­ri­ence, but the music always seemed to be a more dom­i­nant aspect than the arts.

I caught a few min­utes of Thiev­ery Cor­po­ra­tion located at the other end of the fes­ti­val area. I’m still bummed the elec­tronic duo shared a sim­i­lar times­lot with Pearl Jam, but there were a sur­pris­ingly large num­ber of peo­ple watch­ing the D.C. boys.

Fes­ti­val sunset

Pearl Jam def­i­nitely was the day’s high­light. I decided to watch from the press tent (which thank­fully is now located near the main field and not miles behind it), and it was cool to see such an enor­mous crowd on hand. By this time, the sun is set­ting, and it was an awe­some feel­ing as Eddie Ved­der warns “don’t take the brown acid” before dark­ness fell on San Francisco.

Pearl Jam

Pearl Jam mixed up their music, bounc­ing between more pop­u­lar affairs like “Even Flow,” “Dis­si­dent,” “Cor­duroy,” and “Daugh­ter” and sim­ple extended jams. I didn’t see much in the way of can­dle­light, lighters, or cell phone back­lights dur­ing the bal­lads like “Black” or “Noth­ing­man,” but there was the well-received crowd ren­di­tion of “Bet­ter Man.”

There was no polit­i­cal mes­sage from Ved­der, although I think his cover of Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World” to end the show does count for some­thing. It must be noted that a delayed set of fire­works, how­ever, offi­cially ended the evening.

Fri­day was a great first day at Out­side Lands. There were mak­ings for a some­what filthy Sat­ur­day (i.e. dis­carded cig­a­rette buts, lit­ter) that makes me wish I hadn’t for­got­ten my Visa Sig­na­ture card so I could use Visa’s pri­vate bath­rooms and wish I remem­ber to bring a blan­ket to sit on.

Live web­casts and archived con­cert videos can be viewed at YouTube (already avail­able!). Why more con­certs and fes­ti­vals don’t uti­lize YouTube more is beyond me. In addi­tion to Autolux, Thiev­ery Cor­po­ra­tion and West Indian Girl, I wish I got to see Los Campesinos!, The Duke Spirit, Kinky, and of course Tom Jones. Fan pho­tos and fan videos can be viewed at Crowd­Fire.

*** Update ***

Appar­ently, I was mis­taken in a cou­ple of songs per­formed at Out­side Lands.

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