Outside Lands Day 1 – Lands End Stage

Ahhh, it’s good to be back boys and girls. I had a lovely trip to San Francisco that involved waaay too much food and hanging out with some of the coolest folks I’ve ever met! Of course, I also managed to attend the first Outside Lands Festival in Golden Gate Park. How was it? In a word – intense.

Day 1 of the festival involved taking an extremely packed Muni down to the park. When I say packed, I mean packed. The bus driver was skipping stops and I was literally standing in the front doorway where the Phoenix bus drivers scream at you to either find a seat or get off. After nearly falling out the door several times, we finally arrived and made the trek inside.

After entering the gates, the first stage we came upon was the Twin Peaks stage in Speedway Meadow (pictured below). This stage played host to Black Mountain and The Black Keys on Friday.

Then, after entering a windmill-framed gate, we came upon most of the vendor tents. There were a number of local shops, as well as a Virgin Megastore, plus attractions by Dell and Microsoft (more on those later). This was also the location of Eco Lands, as a big part of Outside Lands was the festival being Green. This area also contained the small Panhandle Stage.

Ahhh, but let’s face it – Friday was about headliners Radiohead, period. It was the only day of the festival to sell out, with some sources claiming over 60,000 attendees. All I know is it was nuckin’ futz as they say, and you had to claim your territory in front of the Lands End stage quickly and assertively.

The first band to take the stage were Steel Pulse. For those of you unfamiliar with the band, they are one of England’s oldest roots reggae outfits, having formed in 1975 in Burmingham. They put on a pretty rockin’ show, and the crowd was certainly into it. In fact, the instant the band took the stage I swear a thousand spliffs lit all at once, because I had an instant contact high.

[You'll have to excuse the pictures, Day 1 was so packed I was never able to get terribly close to any of the bands, and any time I had a decent shot someone shoved into me! :)]

After Steel Pulse came Manu Chao, who I’d been told by many was an amazing life performance. I’ll have to be honest – my friends and I were not really feeling it. He was enthusiastic, sure, and they played capably, but it was just a sort of latin-flavoured ska for the most part that my friend and I had difficulty differentiating as seperate songs. I will say the crowd that gathered was very happy though, with many people around us shouting the lyrics and cheering in support. So maybe I just need to listen to the records and see him in a different setting. I dunno, I may just not be on board the Manu Chao train. There was this great guy in the crowd though, climbing on someone’s shoulders and waving a flag. That guy was absolutely loving it.

Ahhh and of course then came Radiohead. After a massive push that nearly crushed us all, we settled in our final resting place for the big headliners of the night. There was a tremendous light show to accompany the boys on stage that you just don’t get a good sense of in these pictures, but it was really something else to see in person.

The band had absolute and total command of the stage right from the start. There were a few hiccups with sound that threw the crowd off for a bit (the brownout for ‘All I Need’ was definitely a very, very bad thing), but they quickly rebounded for one of the best live shows I’ve ever seen. They plowed through a wide variety in their back catalogue, as well as a healthy dose from In Rainbows. ‘Karma Police’, ‘Fake Plastic Trees’, ‘There There’, ‘Reckoner’, ‘Talk Show Host’, ‘Exit Music (For A Film)’ and ‘Just’ were all standouts in the set. Thom sat at the piano for ‘You and Whose Army?’ and cracked us all up with some rarely seen light-hearted antics with the incredibly close-up camera. In fact, I’d say that given his dire reputation, Thom Yorke was downright giddy for a considerable portion of the performance. He didn’t speak often, but when he did it was funny and warm. The band closed out with ‘Everything In Its Right Place’, with the lights actually spelling out the lyrics in the end.

So the verdict? I’d say Day 1 was a success, despite a few guffaws here and there. I might have preferred a slightly smaller festival grounds, as some of the stages were rather far apart, and maybe a shuffling of the performers (to me, Beck should have opened before Radiohead) but those are pretty minor quibbles I think. Finally seeing Radiohead was satisfaction enough for this fella!

Tags: Festivals, Outside Lands 2008