YouTube video of Pearl Jam performing "Black" at Outside Lands Festival, Saturday
The second annual Outside Lands Festival in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park closed last evening with the eccentric acoustic metal band Tenacious D playing to a crowd of thousands of people. Clearly, the chilly temperatures, created by a mix of heavy fog and winds coming off the Pacific Ocean only blocks away, made the closing hours of the fest a challenge for everyone, including festival goers - some with only T-shirts and shorts - performers and festival staff.

Luckily, it was the only foggy, chilly day of the three-day festival. First-timers to San Francisco seemed baffled, and were often under-dressed, for the typical San Francisco summer time weather. On Sunday, a woman from Canada said, "It's warmer in Alaska right now then it is here. So much for sunny and warm California." She missed Saturday and Sunday, which were warm and mostly sunny days.

Promoters and organizers are calling the second annual festival a success, even though attendance appeared to be down over last year, especially on the opening day of the fest. Rolling Stone reported that attendance was 100,000 over the three days. Headliners like Pearl Jam, Dave Matthews, Ween, Modest Mouse, Incubus, Black Eyed Peas and Thievery Corporation helped bring a good chunk of the ticket sales, but it was the diverse mix of dozens of other well-known artists and bands from nearly every popular music genre that helped make the festival an overall success for music lovers.

For many people, the biggest damper for this year's Outside Land's happened before the festival even started, with the sudden cancellation by the iconic hip hop trio Beastie Boys. The band canceled their appearance at the festival (and their concert tour) in June after band member Adam Yaunch learned he had cancer. Yaunch has been recovering at his home following his August 5 surgery.

Headlining artist MIA wanted to back out of her performance after learning that Tenacious D would be replacing the Beastie Boys. The sentiment among many Beastie Boys' fans was similar. In fact, some people left before the Tenacious D set; others who stayed seemed baffled, even annoyed, by the Beastie Boys replacement. In fairness to the organizers, how do you possibly find the right replacement for the Beastie Boys, especially within a few weeks of the festival launch?

Celebrity and Tenacious D. co-founder Jack Black apparently told MTV that he wasn't insulted by MIA's Twitter messages in which she made public her displeasure of performing on the same stage before Tenacious D rather than the scheduled Beastie Boys. MTV reported that MIA was not going to perform, but the threat of a lawsuit forced her hand.

Nevertheless, many festival writers, and her loyal fans, were uninspired and disappointed by her lackluster performance. Thankfully, seeing Ween on the opposing stage in the massive area of Golden Gate Park was an alternative, even though their set was a bit of a let down.

In the end, MIA should have never been a headliner at Outside Lands from the get-go, and hopefully festival organizers will learn, as Coachella organizers learned earlier this year, that more consideration is needed to booking big name acts that have a broader appeal - like Pearl Jam, Radiohead, or even Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers.


Band of Horses at Outside Lands' Sutro stage in Lindley Meadows (photo:IRC)
The bright spots for Sunday came from performances by lesser known indie and alternative rock bands like Cage The Elephant, Band of Horses, Dead Weather, Calexico, Avett Brothers, Morning Benders, Lanka and Heartless Bastards.

Yet for many of the festival goers in the indie and alternative rock/folk/country collective, if you will, it was when the Sunday schedule was revealed a couple of weeks ago that things looked less than ideal. As a music writer of a San Jose metro newspaper wrote, and this writer agrees, fans of bands like Calexico, Modest Mouse, Matt & Kim and Dead Weather had no chance of seeing each band play a full show due to some unfortunate scheduling.

Having to make the decision to skip Jack White's (The Raconteurs and The White Stripes) latest band project, Dead Weather, and Matt & Kim, in order to see part of Calexico, and most of Modest Mouse shows, turned out to be a bad decision in retrospect. Surprisingly, Modest Mouse didn't even sound like the same band that fans grew to love over the past decade and more. Perhaps it was the cold weather - or coming on before MIA - that played a part in a mediocre set from Modest Mouse.


Built To Spill put on one of the best shows at Outside Lands 2009
One of the best shows of the entire festival was clearly Built To Spill's set on Saturday afternoon on the Land's End stage. The band played beyond expectations and the crowd grew and grew during the band's set that included fan favorites like "The Plan" and a couple of new tracks from their forth-coming LP.

[Editor's Note: Oops! The first filing of this story incorrectly identified the songs "The Lazy Eye" and "The Royal We" as Built to Spill songs. They are Silversun Pickup songs. It was a long three days. Thanks to those of you who spotted the error. ]

But BTS also has some work to do to appease die-hard fans - some of whom have been fans since BTS's humble early years - who were uncomfortable at best when BTS signed on to Warner Bros. Records. Still, Built To Spill, next to Pearl Jam, put on one of the festival's best and most memorable rock shows.

On Friday night, despite Eddie Vedder's self-confessed 'tickle in throat,' which was really not that apparent, Pearl Jam rocked a massive crowd into the late hours and delivered one of best shows of the entire festival. The crowd broke out into many remarkable sing-a-longs during Pearl Jam's electrifying two-hour set. The most memorable was when thousands of fans literally sang the lead vocals on "Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town."

Being amongst the packed crowd of Pearl Jam fans in every direction, with the band playing in top form, you couldn't escape the sense of being part of a big moment in rock history. The crowd also took over on major portions of "Daughter," "Alive" and "Even Flow." The band, as a whole, sounded as good as they did a decade ago.


Jenny Lewis with Conor Oberst and The Mystic River Valley Band (Photo: IRC)
Other highlights of Outside Lands' festival for myself and company (it's impossible to see all the shows, and with preference to mostly non-headliners, makes this a biased view) include Conor Oberst and The Mystic River Valley Band, Silversun Pickups, Akron/Family, TV on the Radio, Portugal The Man, Midnite, The Duke Spirit and The Dodos, among others.

Overall, when compared to Outside Lands 2008, this year's festival line-up had a bit less of a rock emphasis. Last year featured a more powerful line up, with phenomenal shows by Radiohead, Beck, Wilco, Andrew Bird, Jack Johnson, Cake, Regina Spektor and Broken Social Scene, as well as fine performances from The Walkmen, Stars, Cold War Kids, Devendra Banhart, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Lupe Fiasco, M. Ward, The Black Keys, Rogue Wave, Primus, Bon Iver, Ben Harper & The Innocent Criminals, Steve Winwood, Rodrigo y Gabriela, Widespread Panic, Galactic and dozens more. Ahhh, now that was a festival!

All in all, Outside Lands 2009 was a good festival and all those involved deserve a thumbs up for pulling off such a huge event as smoothly as they did in the middle of a major city. What organizers might want to consider for the expected 2010 Outside Lands Festival is to have a line up that looks more like 2008 than 2009, and pay more attention to scheduling conflicts and headliners, especially for the closing day. Everyone knows that a festival needs a strong closing day to be considered a success all the way around.

Finally, as all music festivals should be, it would be nice to see ticket prices come down just a bit to allow more people to attend. Festivals are not supposed to be all about making money but they are becoming more like that every year. Yes, they are enormously expensive to put on, but they also bring in huge profits - so it would be nice to see the line move more in the direction of the emphasis on music and community and less on money and commercialization. Still, Outside Lands does a better job already (only it's second year) than many other big music festivals that have been around for many years.

Related Outside Lands' posts:

- First-Ever YouTube Live Streaming of Outside Lands Festival

- Second Annual Outside Lands Festival Starts Friday

Labels: Built to Spill, Outside Lands Festival, Pearl Jam, San Francisco