Starting today, music lovers in the San Francisco Bay Area have three major music festivals to look forward to in the next couple of months – Outside Lands; Treasure Island and Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festivals.
There are also a bunch of other smaller festivals – we call them “one-off fests,” such as the All Shook Down Festival held on August 6th at the Regency Ballroom in San Francisco, where Crystal Castles were the headlining band.
At the noon hour today, the Outside Lands Festival returns in full force for its fourth annual fest-bash. Thankfully, OSL reverts back to a three-day fest this year, after it was trimmed back to only two days last year. We’re going to try and get an answer as to why it was changed back to three days, since that’s of interest to many festival goers.
The big headliners for Day One of Outside Lands are MGMT, Phish, and of course The Shins, followed by other bands, such as Toro Y Moi, Clap Your Hands and Say Yeah and Big Audio Dynamite.
By the time the sun goes down today, there will be only one show left, The Shins, who will come on the Twin Peaks stage at 8:40 pm and play a 70-minute set. And all the way – say, four or five football fields – at the other end of the festival grounds closest to the ocean, is the enormous Lands End stage, where Phish are scheduled to already be two hours into their marathon three and a half hour set. So, by 8:30 pm everyone will be at either one of those stages.
As the clock strikes 10 p.m., OSL 2011 Day One will come to a close. Weary, and likely cold, festival goers by the tens of thousands of people will funnel out of Golden Gate Park, many of whom will be returning Saturday for another day and night of fabulous music, having good times with friends, and meeting new ones, and OSL’s better-than-most-festival food and drink, and what looks like will be partly cloudy skies with temps in the low 60s by day, and the low to mid 50s by night.
But then again, you never can be quite sure what you’re going to get in San Francisco – afterall, it is a weather phenom of it’s own – a sliver of land (only 12 miles from west to east) surrounded by water on three sides. Sunny blue skies or thick coastal fog – it’s usually one or the other. There are clouds sometimes in the summer, and fog as the perfect but just about never is there rainfall in August in the city by the bay.
If we’re able to get a signal (keep in mind, we have AT&T), we’ll be sending messages from the festival via Twitter, and perhaps via our Facebook page.
Also, don’t forget to check back for our coverage this weekend of the fourth annual Outside Lands Festival in San Francisco‘s magnificent Golden Gate Park. In the meantime, here is a day-by-day listing of which artists and bands we plan to experience at OSL 2011.
Day One – Aug. 12th
The Shins – Phish – Best Coast – Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – Toro Y Moi – Foster The People – Ellie Goulding – MGMT – Phantogram – Tamaryn – The Joy Formidable – Big Boi
“Caring is Creepy” – The Shins
“In This Home On Ice” – Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
Day Two – Aug. 13th
The Black Keys – Girl Talk – Muse – The Vaccines – Paper Diamond – The Roots – Arctic Monkeys – OK GO – STRFKR – SIA – Vetiver – Sonny & The Sunsets – The Mexican Institute of Sound – Bob Schneider – The Stone Foxes – Ana Tijoux
“Act Nice and Gentle” (The Kinks) – The Black Keys from Rubber Factory
“Norgaard” – The Vaccines from What Did You Expect From The Vaccines?
“Triple Double” – Girl Talk from All Day
Day Three – Aug. 14th
Arcade Fire – The Decemberists – STSR9 – Beirut – Major Lazer – Wye Oak – Ty Seagall – !!! – Grouplove – Tuneyards – Lord Huron – The Fresh & Onlys – Junip – John Fogerty
“The Suburbs”– Arcade Fire from The Suburbs
“Ghosen” – Beirut from The Rip Tide
For the full schedule and line-up goto sfoutsidelands.com
San Francisco is known by many names, but our favorite is the air conditioned city, which for anyone who’s spent enough time in S.F., knows that it is indeed true, especially in the summer. It is a rare occurrence that temperatures in the summer reach 80.
But it’s the western half of the city that has a climate all it’s own – which, even in the summertime, usually means heavy fog, cool temperatures and chilly winds. In fact, when the fog is really thick, and it’s windy too, it is often warmer in Wisila, Alaska than the west side of San Francisco.
For schedules, maps, tickets, lineup and more, go to San Francisco Outside Lands website