The Shins headlined Day One of Outside Lands 2011
Thick, gray fog enveloped everything for miles around, and steady winds together made it feel like it was in the mid-to-high 40’s for Day One of the Outside Lands Music festival.
We immediately noticed that crowds were larger than last year, when the festival was scaled back from three days to only two days. But for 2011’s opening day, the festival packed in 60,000 fans, the maximum capacity.
Now in its fourth year, OSL kicked-off this past Friday in San Francisco, with an amazingly diverse line-up, and what seemed to have been the largest attendance for a Friday opener since OSL’s debut in 2008 (at which Radiohead was the main headliner). There was something for everyone – rock, electronica, pop, folk, techno and so on.
Just as it hasn’t in previous years, the thickly layered fog and brisk, cold winds (the wind is the real culprit) blowin’ off the Pacific Ocean only blocks away, did not keep the masses of music fans and festival lovers away from celebrating OSL’s 4th annual festival opener this past Friday.
Headliners The Shins and Phish Please the Masses
The Shins, who hit the Twin Peaks stage at 8:40 p.m., and performed about a 70-minute set, was easily our favorite performance of Day One at OSL. Despite the bone-numbing cold, Shin lovers (yours truly included) braved the elements as night fell on Golden Gate Park. The band opened with the classic indie track, “Caring Is Creepy,”and the huge crowd roared in approval.
“Caring Is Creepy” – The Shins
While The Shins’ intimate brand of indie pop does not translate necessarily all that well in a huge outdoor venue like Golden Gate Park, tens of thousands (at least it felt that way) of fans were cheering and singing along with old favorites like “New Slang,” “Phantom Limb,” “Australia” and “Sleeping Lessons.”
“New Slang” – The Shins
“Phantom Limb” – The Shins
One of the best surprises for the day was The Shins performance of a new and untitled song that frontman James Mercer (also the other half of Broken Bells) said should be on the band’s next album, which Mercer confirmed is currently in production. Watch the video from the Baghdad Cafe; the videos of the song being played at OSL last Friday do not have a good enough sound quality to justify embedding here.
Sadly, some Shins fans may be disappointed to learn that last week The Shins signed a contract with the major record label, Columbia Records. Whether or not fans will reject the band for ‘crossing over to the darkside,’ as a friend put it, remains to be seen. We shall see if selling out their most loyal fans for money affects the band’s first major label release, expected to be released sometime in 2012.
Another Friday night headliner, the seminal ‘jam-band’ Phish, played two sets spanning an impressive four-hour long performance.
Many of the band’s fans – especially in San Francisco, which lays claim to the hippie birthright – with their tie dye shirts, long hair (even if they’re bald on top) and cannabis smoke-ins – are also fans of the famous San Francisco band Grateful Dead. In fact, since the death of Grateful Dead founding member, Jerry Garcia, in 1995, Phish has just become more popular, and happily took the torch as the ultimate jam-band. For their Phans, the band included favorites like “Wilson,” “Fluffhead” and “Sample in a Jar.”
There is little doubt that the booking of a double-set marathon from Phish was one of the reasons that Golden Gate Park was packed to capacity, and it was fairly easy to separate which festival goers were there to see Phish, and which were not.
Day One of OSL music fest started at noon with sets from bands most people have likely never heard of before, such as Release The Sunbird and Marky.
But it wasn’t long before the first well-known indie band, The Joy Formidable, took to the Sutro stage in Lindley Meadow for a 45-minute set. It was a great way to start the day, even though it was foggy and cool. A half hour later, at 2:25pm, the upstate New York electro indie band, Phantogram, put on a sweet show that the growing crowd appeared to enjoy immensely. Friends since junior high school, the duo signed to BBE in 2009.
“Austere” – The Joy Formidable
Their band name was inspired by the phantogram optical allusion, which is the effect that 3-D glasses provide. In 2010, they released their debut LP, Eyelid Movies, which received thumbs up from fans, bloggers and critics alike.
“When I’m Small” – Phantogram
The lesser-known band Lotus began their show at 2:15pm on the Twin Peaks stage during almost the same time slot as Phantogram – making these hard decisions is one of the biggest dilemmas all festival goers face at one time or another. So, we opted for Phantogram, and were not disappointed.
Later, we weaved ourselves through the crowds to the Sutro stage for the Foster The People show. While FTP were on, Toro Y Moi were performing (3:50 to 4:40 pm) on the Twin Peaks stage, which was a bummer to miss, but there was no alternative really.
“Pumped Up Kicks” – Foster the People
At 4:40pm, indie-gone-mainstream electro-pop band MGMT hit the Land’s End stage which is all the way at the opposite end of the festival grounds from the Twin Peaks stage. Unfortunately, festival goers who wanted to see MGMT and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, had to leave the MGMT show around 5:30 pm to hike all the way back to Twin Peaks to catch CYHSY.
“Electric Feel” – MGMT
Clearly, the reason for the thousands of high school and college aged festival goers was likely because of the MGMT show. Based on the roars from the crowd after each track, MGMT pleased their young fans with an assortment of songs they’ve released in their short time as a band.
It was evident as the afternoon wore on that the entire area – which is the length of some four to five football fields – was going to be packed with people for the night shows – most notably, The Shins and Phish, who performed at opposite ends of the OSL festival grounds.
This is where it can get a little tricky. Right about the time 6 p.m. rolls around, there are many choices of bands playing all at the same time on the four main stages – Phish (Land’s End); Big Audio Dynamite (Twin Peaks); Big Boi (Sutro).
Big Boi made fans wait more than one hour before his set was altogether canceled due to “technical problems.” Fans who bought single day tickets just to see Big Boi (as there was few other rappers or hiphop artists on the schedule) should have been given some kind of refund.
After that, Erykah Badu took to the Sutro stage to perform a worldly set, bringing a touch of real diversity to a mainly indie and rock music festival. Badu’s performance was the last show of the night on the Sutro stage, but we couldn’t stay long anyways because we needed enough time to trek across the festival grounds (did we say the area is gigantic?) and weave our way around tens of thousands of people, many who were also on their way to The Shins show (see above).
By the time The Shins’ got on stage, all the way on the other end of the festival grounds, Phish were already more than two hours into their jam-a-thon on the Land’s End stage. In some ways, the main stages – Lands End stage, and at the opposite end, the Twin Peaks stage – were practically inaccessible unless you got there very early to take a position close to the stage. As you scan the sea of heads from a hill near the stage, it was only then that the true enormity of the crowds was realized.
There were other bands that we only got to see for a few songs due to conflicts in the schedule, including Big Audio Dynamite, Best Coast, and The Original Meters.
All in all, the opening day of OSL 2011 was a promising kick-off to the city’s biggest summer music event, and what is steadily becoming one of the most well-known and popular music festivals on the west coast.
Stay Tuned for Day Two and Day Three reviews
