Outside Lands Music Festival
Friday, August 22rd through Sunday, August 24th in Golden Gate Park

For much of my life, music festivals have been, quite literally, my favorite thing in the entire world, and I mean any and all, from the teeny local fests to massive undertakings like Coachella and Bonnaroo. But it was with skeptical eyes that I embarked upon a weekend of Outside Lands. As I sit here Monday morning, desperately in need of more coffee and trying to collect my thoughts and decipher the few hastily scribbled notes I jotted down over the past three days, I can say, for sure, that I had a good time. Other than that, I’m still trying to make some sense of everything that went down. Was it successful overall? Six stages? Nearly 300 dollar tickets? Ugly chain link fences and 150,000 total people wreaking havoc on Golden Gate Park? No parking and that pervasive August fog surprising many ill-prepared people? Did production company Another Planet Entertainment, who is fast becoming the bigwig promoter of the Bay Area, just want to stake their ultimate claim as the biggest concert-throwers in Northern California? I think if the scale of this monstrosity was reigned in (four stages and affordable tickets would be a good place to start), it could indeed become a very manageable and special thing. As is, the festival’s redeeming qualities and caliber of the bands are enough so that I, above all, am very happy to have attended the inaugural year. Just more than a little tired today.

Friday was the big night. The Radiohead night. The night that was for many people the only one they set out to see, as it was the lone Bay appearance this year by who is probably the biggest and most relevant band in the world right now. But there were also other really great acts playing, too. Beck, Black Keys, Manu Chau, Cold War Kids, Howlin’ Rain, Felice Brothers, and on and on. After watching a great set by Manu Chao, I chose to leave and head to Beck, one of a handful of artists I had an interest in here that I hadn’t seen before. But by the time I got a beer, hit the bathroom line, and made my way over there, there was a migration of tens of thousands of people towards the massive main stage. So I got over there, couldn’t really hear and certainly couldn’t see Beck, fought for about 10 minutes to extract something from his set, and then headed back to Radiohead. I couldn’t even remotely get back to my earlier spot so I watched from pretty far back, and they sounded really, really awesome as a blanket of fog permeated the polo fields and the moody lighting and incredible video show bathed a sea of rapt listeners in cool blues and reds. The sound cut out—completely—twice, for oh, I’d say, at least 30 seconds or so. A confused and somewhat uproarious crowd was none too pleased about it, and the band was allegedly peeved enough that they fled the park before their last notes were barely laid to rest. Upon the end of their set, upwards of 60,000 people tried to exit the park at once, but since hundreds of music fans had earlier torn down the fences to break into the grounds (how does that make you feel, those who paid $100 for their ticket?), it made departing a little less bottlenecked than it would have if everyone was expected to stream out of the few small openings provided.

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