Tomorrow the BFD LIve 105 mini-music fest gets underway at the Shoreline Ampitheatre in Mt. View, California. This year’s line-up features bands like 30 Seconds to Mars, Passion Pit, Of Monsters and Men, Silversun Pickups, Wavves, The Airborne Toxic Event, Atlas Genius, Capital Cities, Diplo, The Crystal Method, DJ Shadow, Fits and the Tantrums and many others. The Shoreline is located adjacent to Google headquarters, aka, the GooglePlex. Check out our BFD 2013 Spotify playlist below or click here to open it in Spotify.
Main Stage
Thirty Seconds to Mars Passion Pit Of Monsters and Men Silversun Pickups Awolnation
Bud Festival Stage
Jimmy Eat World The Airborne Toxic Event Fitz and the Tantrums Capital Cities Atlas Genius Youngblood Hawke Twenty One Pilots The Neighbourhood Wavves The Mowgli’s New Politics Gold Fields
Subsonic Tent
Diplo The Crystal Method DJ Shadow Wallpaper Justin Martin/Dirtybird Robert DeLong K Theorty Aaron Axelsen
Soundcheck Local Band Stage – Tumbleweed Wanderers, Picture Atlantic, Finish Ticket, Anya & The Get Down, Mister Loveless, Doe Eye, The Trims, Rin Tin Tiger, and Bonnie and the Bang Bang.
The ferris wheel at Coachella Valley in Indio, California. Coachella 2013 starts today.
The 2013 music festival season gets under way in just a few hours with the 2013 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, California.
While last month’s South By Southwest in Austin is the biggest musical event each year in sheer numbers, it is not a musical festival per se.
Coachella is considered the crown jewel of the big outdoor music festivals in the U.S., followed by Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, Austin City Limits, and Sasquatch. Over the past five years, as the popularity of music festivals has soared, spawning many new festivals (including Outside Lands in San Francisco) Coachella marks the beginning of the outdoor music festival season.
As of 7 a.m. Friday morning, thousands are streaming into the camp grounds and parking lots for this weekend’s big music and arts party in the middle of the southern California desert east of San Diego and just down the road from the Palm Springs city limits. Over the past few years, Coachella has become so big, and the demand for tickets so overwhelming, that organizers from Golden Voice Productions added a second weekend starting in 2012. That move was a huge success that organizers announced within weeks of last year’s event that there would be two weekend festivals for 2013 as well. If you’re going to Coachella for the first time, either this weekend, or next weekend, it is strongly advised to read the rules about passes, will call, wristbands, vehicles, camping and parking. Over the years, we’ve heard plenty of unfortunate stories about people not being able get in to the campgrounds or the festival grounds themselves. For example, if you purchase a pass from a third party source (like online ‘ticketing’ sites) or scalpers, you won’t get in.
If you’re one of the millions that wish they could go to Coachella this year, but can’t, the next best thing is available – Coachella Live on YouTube!
In celebration of Coachella 2013, IRC has put together a special and extensive Coachella 2013 Headliners Spotify Playlist of headliners. The embedded playlist below features many of the other great bands playing this weekend.
The opening day of Coachella 2013, today, Friday, April 12th (and April 17th), includes headliners like Blur, The Stone Roses, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Modest Mouse, Lou Reed, Jurassic 5, Grinderman, as well as artists like Bassnectar, Dog Blood, How to Destroy Angels, Passion Pit, Tegan and Sara, Band of Horses, Beach House, Metric, Local Natives, Of Monsters and Men, Japandroids, Divine Fits, Stars, Johnny Marr, and Alt-J, to name just a few.
For Saturday, April 13th (and April 20th), headliners include Phoenix, the XX, the Postal Service, Sigur Ros, New Order, Hot Chip, Grizzly Bear, along with secondary acts like Knife Party, Two Door Cinema Club, Moby, Descendents, Yeasayer, Franz Ferdinand, Violent Femmes, Portugal, the Man, Bat for Lashes, Richie Hawtin, Major Lazer, Fedde Le Grand, Dropkick Murphys, FOALS, and many others.
For Sunday, April 14th (and April 21st), headliners include Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Vampire Weekend, Social Distortion, Wu-Tang Clan, and non-headliners like Pretty Lights, Tame Impala, the Lumineers, Dead Can Dance, La Roux, James Blake, Excision Grimes, the Gaslight Anthem, the Faint, Hardwell, Paul Oakenfold, Dinosaur Jr., OMD, Airborne Toxic Event, Father John Misty, Tanlines, Rodriguez, Mimosa, Cloud Nothings, and many, many more.
View the entire lineup by clicking on the official 2013 Coachella poster
A couple of days ago, we featured our first SXSW 2013 Spotify playlist comprised of excellent songs from just some of our favorite bands and artists performing at SXSW 2013, including Alt-J, Why?, Shout Out Louds, Major Lazer, PS I Love You, Surfer Blood, Third Eye Blind, Toro Y Moi, Telekinesis, Thurston Moore, Kendrick LamarRhye, Gliss and many others. In addition, the 2013 Top 10 Songs for February and January (determined by which songs listeners download and stream the most), also feature amazing new singles from a variety of SXSW artists and bands .
In addition to the first volume, we produced three other SXSW 2013 playlist mixes via Spotify for a total of 120 outstanding songs by over 100 artists, from some of the most popular indie and alt. bands on the planet, to more obscure, DIY and breakout artists creating a buzz in the past six months or so.
In volume two of IRC’s SXSW 2013 Best Bands Spotify Playlists series (featured to the right), listen to new, and some older, choice tracks from artists like DIIV, Atlas Genius, FIDLAR, Boats, Black Moth Super Rainbow, Braids, Small Black, Deer Tick, The Away Days, Guards, Lord Huron, Everything Everything, Skrillex, Dent May, and Talib Kweli, among others.
But wait, it gets even better. We’ve carefully assembled a list of 10 Free SXSW 2013 Samplers, plus, a compendium of the world’s largest collection of SXSW torrents, consisting of over 9,000 songs dating back to 2005. You’ll also find volume three of our SXSW 2013 Best Bands Spotify Playlists, highlighting another set of 30 selected tracks from some of our favorite SXSW 2013 bands and artists.
The Don’t Mess With Texas SXSW 2013 New Music Sampler is a free download on Amazon of 20 MP3 songs from artists such as Local Natives, The Virgins, The Ocean Blue, Young Galaxy, Ra Ra Riot, Parenthetical Girls, and PAWS.
SPIN spun up a mega zip of 60 tracks highlighting a broad genre and geo diversity of artists at SXSW 2013, including The Coathangers, Beach Fossils, California X, Wavves, Toro Y Moi, The Soft Moon, Generationals, Lightouts, Dent May and dozens of others.
Paste put together a SXSW 2013 free download in conjunction with HGTV, and made available via NoiseTrade, titled The Stages on Sixth (referring to 6th Street, the heart of Austin’s downtown music scene), featuring 25 artists booked for appearances at the Paste/HGTV showcases during SXSW, like Billy Bragg, Social Studies, City and Colour, Easter Island, Ron Sexsmith, Josh Rouse, The Virginmarys and many more.
Emusic.com has assembled a sweet collection of 35 free tracks in their eMusic SXSW 2013 Sampler, available to be downloaded as one entire album, or by selecting individual tracks. Artists featured include FIDLAR, Nu Sensae, Waxahatchee, Pissed Jeans, The 1975, Flume, Parquet Courts, King Tuff, Royal Baths, and Dana Falconberry, to list just a few.
As they have done every year for more than a decade, NPR has put together an extensive SXSW artist and music guide. This year, NPR put together The Mix: The Austin 100, a collection of 100 songs from 100 artists from SXSW 2013, representing a diverse selection of talented musicians and bands. The 800+ MB zip includes tracks from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Cafe Tacvba, Alt-J, Youth Lagoon, Waxahatchee and Le1f.
The website SXSW Baby! has put an 80 song 314 MB SXSW 2013 sampler broken into 8 songs with 10 tracks apiece, with categories like The British Sound Invasion, This Land Is Your Land, and A Little Bit of Rock With Your Roll. Bands include Conveyor, The Crookes, Roadkill Ghost Choir, LIttle Green Cars, Jack Bugg, Foxygen, Delta Rae, The Little Ones, Desert Noises and Reptar.
Little Brother Music Publishing released the Little Brother SXSW 2013 Sampler of 25 songs you can either listen to online and/or download for free. Artists include Yellow Red Sparks, Babybird, Flogging Molly, The Tricks, Shurman, The White Buffalo, Baron Sisters, among others.
Polyvinyl Records released a free Amazon SXSW 2013 Sampler of its artists booked for SXSW 2013, such as Generationals, STRFKR, Of Montreal, Japandroids, Deerhoof, Psychic Twin, Painted Palms and five others.
Texas-based blog CultureMap‘s Texas Showcase Showdown sampler includes songs from 15 of the Lone Star state’s own official South by Southwest showcase bands, including Wild Child, Dana Falconberry, The Crooks and Band of Heathens, to name a few.
Note: By the way, we need to put this out there. No one actually says “S-X-S-W” in a conversation – it’s either South By Southwest, which is actually respectful if you think about it, or ‘Southby,’ which is a hipster phraseology that we’re just not going to say. Simply put, “South By Southwest,” in conversation is the way to go.
The We Can Only Be The Future website’s Future Sounds SXSW 2013 Spotify Sampler is a 20-song playlist with tracks by FIDLAR, Spider Bags, Foxygen, Blue Hawaii, Bleached, Pissed Jeans, The Warlocks and The Afghan Whigs.
If you’re set up for torrents, and have disk space and time, you can go to town on the website SXSWTorrent.com – The (Unofficial) SXSW Torrents. SXSWBaby houses nine years and more than 9,000 songs, totaling 45 gigs of SXSW samplers, beginning in 2005 right through to this year. In fact, the 2013 torrent (in two parts) includes over 1,200 songs and 7.4 gigs in total size.
Each year, the SXSW film and music festival in Austin, Texas hosts a blockbuster bonanza of music performances from roughly lunch time to as late as 3 or 4 a.m. the following morning. And each year, literally hundreds upon hundreds of artists and bands of every imaginable genre, from locales all across the United States and Canada, and cities and town on six continents around the world, descend on Austin during the second week of March for the largest annual gathering of musicians anyway on the planet.
From popular indie bands to DIY alternative rockers, celebrity artists and obscure musicians, from electro pop duos to folk music collectives, masters of punk to veterans of classic rock, and every other type of configuration and style of music you can possibly think of (and those which you never knew existed), SXSW has it all.
They perform in bars, clubs, theaters, music halls, churches, school gyms, hotel lobbies, restaurants, auditoriums, outdoor stages, street corners, vacant lots, rooftops, bicycle shops, pizza joints, alley ways and homes – it doesn’t matter where you go – for four to five days, Austin is home to a non-stop music marathon. Bands are made and broken; artists rise and fall; dreams are launched or crushed each year at SXSW.
The music industry, including CEOs of the biggest record companies and owners of the smallest labels, plus scouts, A&R reps, producers, engineers, managers, publicists, PR executives, among others, from around the world come out in full force; as do gaggles of reporters, writers, photographers, editors, and columnists from the largest to the smallest newspapers, magazines and blogs; not to mention hosts, anchors, correspondents, cameramen, and sound engineers from hundreds of TV and cable news and entertainment outfits, as well as deejays, program directors and staff from radio stations across the globe.
If you’re somehow involved in music, the journey to and through Austin’s city limits each March for the experience of a lifetime.
And then of course there are the music lovers, who flock by the thousands to make the pilgrimage, even if only once in their lives,
Neil Young and Crazy Horse during the finale of the Bridge School Benefit Concert. Photo by John Green
It’s a bit tricky, at first thought, to criticize a benefit concert for kids. But, actually, there are two completely parts of such an event. For any benefit concert, there is the most important aspect – raising as much money and awareness as possible for a great cause – in this case, that helps children in need. That is always a good thing.
On the other hand, with a benefit concert, there is the music side of it as well. And in this case, that’s where the resounding criticism has been making the rounds in the past few days.
Saturday’s 26th annual Bridge School Benefit Concert in Mt. View, California at the Shoreline Amphitheatre was sort of like the president’s performance in the first debate – the overwhelming consensus, even among fans of the artists in the line-up and passionate, long-time supporters of the Bridge School, was that the concert itself was disappointing, disorganized and failed to live up to the high standards set by past years’ Bridge School concerts. Music icon and activist, Neil Young, along with his wife, Pegi, started the benefit concert back in 1986 to raise money for the Bridge School, a Hillsborough, California school for children with special needs.
In addition to many concert goers, the media and blogs also considered the concert an overall disappointment. The San Francisco Chronicle called it “a year to forget” referring to the popular annual event; The Oakland Tribune dubbed it “short on thrills” while The San Jose Mercury News started their review with “Neil Young tried…it’s just that most of his wilder selections – including Guns N’ Roses, Jack White and the Flaming Lips – didn’t go over so well…[and] came bunched towards the end of the show, which made for a very long night for fans.” Yes, it did.
In past years, Bridge School had a reputation for bringing world-renowned, heavy weights of the music world, like Paul McCartney, The Who, Radiohead and Green Day. But this year failed to feature even one huge act.
A significant portion of this year’s Bridge School line-up conjured up images of a reunion show of artists who peaked in the 1990’s, a fact many of them later reinforced by disappointing and unimpressive performances. The Flaming Lips, Lucinda Williams, Guns N’ Roses, and to a lesser extent, Jack White, missed their mark. In fact, it was a surprise VIP guest not on the schedule that drew the most applause of the night. More on that further down. The show’s overall production was disorganized, sloppily executed, wrought with delays and truncated performances, and noticeable sound issues.
The event started off fairly well, with an aging Young performing some of his acoustic classics, “Sugar Mountain,” and with his wife joining him on stage, a wonderful rendition of “Comes A Time.” Young has been the opening, and closing, artist at Bridge School for many years, however, it would be great if he played a couple of songs in the middle of the line-up too, for people who missed the opening or can’t stay up until after midnight to see him close.
“Sugar Mountain” – Neil Young
Next up, singer/songwriter Guy Clark Jr. sounded great, but his set was cut short to only three songs due to scheduling issues. This was the first sign of things to come, even despite a solid performance by k.d. lang following Clark.
After k.d. lang’s solid set, comedian, musician and actor Steve Martin‘s bluegrass hootenanny romp, together with is band, Steep Canyon Rangers, got a good part of the 18,000 concert goers fired up. For those of us who are not exactly bluegrass and banjo-loving music fans, the best part of Martin’s first few minutes was the vibe that it generated throughout the crowd. (Judging from the enthusiastic reaction of the crowd, together with the popular, three-day annual bluegrass-oriented music festival in San Francisco – the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival – that took place two weeks earlier, it’s evident to anyone who has lived in the Bay Area for more than a couple of years that bluegrass is extremely popular in a region that gave birth to, and became the epicenter for, the 1960’s psychedelic rock explosion.)
Following Steve Martin’s county fair bonanza was nothing short of a dismal set from singer/songwriter Lucinda Williams. Her set was completely forgettable, other than it sounded horrible. People were not paying attention, and many teens and young adults in the crowd were clearly waiting for Williams to finish so they could see one of the most talked about ‘indie’ bands of the past year to 18 months – Foster The People.
In fact, it was these relative newbies to the music scene that sounded the freshest and most engaging by that point in the concert. FTP played magnificently and got not only the kids and the younger folks pumped up, but many older adults as well. And yet against all logic (since they were the first rock act that really got the Shoreline energized), the band’s set was cut short, denying FTP the chance to play their best known song, “Pumped Up Kicks.” Whoever was making these on-the-fly changes to the schedule in real time during the show obviously did not know what they were doing, which was evident throughout the nearly nine hour concert.
“Pumped Up Kicks” – Foster the People
Instead, and most likely at the expense of thousands of young people – which probably included some Bridge School students – singer/songwriter Ray LaMontagne was clearly given some of FTP’s time so he could play a longer set. LaMontagne’s performance was acceptable on his part, but for some reason, for much of his set, the loudspeakers’ sound was ear-piercingly overloaded with treble and volume and emitted an echoing sound throughout the venue.
As long time Flaming Lips fans, we can only say that the Lips’ performance was lackluster (other reviewers were more harsh). First off, the opening three songs, “Fight Test,” “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots,” and “It’s Summertime” were decent, but overall, they’re just not songs that translate well into an acoustic set, despite comedian and human beat box Reggie Watts‘ attempts to recreate various bass and sci-fi like sound effects of the original recordings. But the whole thing just didn’t come together well – these popular Lips’ songs are anthemic, epic, flashy and dependent on electronics.
“Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots” – Flaming Lips
But the set really unraveled when Wayne Coyne began hogging the limited set time to talk about his bugle – seriously, his bugle. Much of the audience was talking or looked bored, even frustrated, while Coyne babbled on incoherently, something he tends to do during shows. Plus, people were cold and needed to be warmed up, not cooled down even more. And then we heard the words “military funeral” which understandably stood out from Coyne’s drivel. At that point, in what he must have thought was a masterful idea, and a sure-fire way to get the audience ramped up, he actually starting playing “Taps.” Yup, the death song, and in between pauses in the notes, crickets from the crowd, as if there was a collective bewilderment that enveloped that surrounded it, he decided it would really peep up the crowd, and kids from the Bridge School seated in the rafters, to play “Taps” on his bugle. Come on man, seriously? Thereafter, perhaps realizing (or being told) he lost the audience, Coyne actually pleaded with them to make some noise.
The fumble continued when the band broke into a cover version of The Beatles’ “A Day in the Life,” with Coyne not even able to carry the tune. Plus, his special guest, Reggie Watts, was literally reading the lyrics of the song from his smartphone. Seriously? The last couple of times we’ve seen The Lips, they were not really up to par with expectations, but this appearance was dismal. Perhaps without Coynes’ big plastic ball, ownership of the stage, confetti bombs, video montages, colorful lights and all of the other eye-candy, Coyne and the band seem to not be so great when stripped down to the bare essentials.
Then it was time for Jack White. There were probably thousands of White fans who attended Bridge School for the first time and did not know that it’s an all-acoustic concert. So any thoughts of White belting out the edgy, frantic and blazing guitar rock he’s famous for were quickly dispelled. Rather, White was joined by a five-member all female back-up band, performing a predominantly country and blues set, with a touch of bluegrass influences. And while he managed to get a response from the sluggish crowd that Wayne Coyne practically begged for, it still was not the kind of rousing roar of approval, applause and enthusiasm we’ve heard for headliners at past Bridge School concerts at the Shoreline Ampitheatre, which is adjacent to the sprawling headquarters of Google.
With a couple of brief exceptions, White did not dip into his huge reserve of songs from The White Stripes, The Raconteurs nor Dead Weather, instead opting for songs from his recent debut solo album, which we’ll hazard a guess the majority of people in attendance have not heard. Still, White managed to eek out an acceptable set. But in a night of short-comings and disappointments, line-up and scheduling blunders, long delays and sound issues, it wasn’t enough to mitigate hours of mediocrity.
Another common complaint of the night was that the venue was far too crowded – appearing as if the organizers over-sold the Shoreline’s capacity. Whenever a venue crowds in too many people, it tends to lessen the experience for everyone. There have been rumors for years that the Shoreline doesn’t sell-out, but over sells. For folks who have been going to the Shoreline for years, yours truly among them, it did appear that Saturday night had a couple thousand more people than the venue was built to handle, making it more difficult to find a spot on the lawn, to use the rest rooms and to get food or drink.
Then, with Guns N’ Roses taking too long to get on stage, the organizers turned to a very special guest who was not part of the original line-up to give the crowd something to feel good about. That guest was the legendary Eddie Vedder, who came out on stage with an acoustic guitar to deliver two songs – “Last Kiss” and “Eldery Woman” – a performance that finally got thousands of people up on their feet and arms in the air, followed up by the biggest applause of the night. Vedder joked to the crowd: “This is the last place I thought I’d be when I woke up today . . . opening for Guns N’ Roses.”
By this time it was approaching 9 pm and a pick up in the wind made it feel much colder than it actually was. Right before he left the stage, we swear we heard Vedder say “I think we got it,” which to us indicated that he was sent out there unscheduled with a mission to get the crowd energized. After Vedder left the stage, the chatter among many people in the crowd was that Vedder saved the night from being mediocre.
However, we keep coming back to the point – it’s a benefit concert for kids, and that’s the main point above all else. Yet at the same time it’s long been regarded as a premiere annual Bay Area music event. While the Flaming Lips and White failed to rev up the crowd, and Vedder only played two quick songs and was off, perhaps the most anticipated act of the night for many concert goers – and easily the most talked about in the weeks leading up to this past weekend – would bring it – the 90’s rock sensation, Guns N Roses.
Just the very fact that Axl Rose, although late, showed up at all was supposedly a win for Guns N Roses fans. But Rose, who looked old and frumpy, was hunched over the mic, lethargic, and most noticeably to fans who couldn’t quite see the stage from the lawn area, his voice was haggard and strained, which lead to wild rumors that it wasn’t Rose at all, but a stand-in singer. What also fueled the rumors was the fact that Rose forgot the lyrics to the band’s biggest hit, “Welcome to the Jungle.” It also didn’t seem to help their cause that the the band decided to unplug and play acoustic versions of their hallmark songs. Even on “Sweet Child of Mine,” Rose’s vocals were way off key. The disappointment was obvious as thousands of concert goers, tired, cold and disillusioned by the entire night, began a steady stream to the exits.
Aidin Vaziri wrote in The San Francisco Chronicle of the Guns N’ Roses set: “An unkempt Rose arrived onstage late, hunched over a microphone stand and huffed his way through tunes that sounded vaguely familiar with a cast of misfits that looked vaguely like a band” delivering a performance that Vaziri added “most likely had all the dogs within an earshot of the concert howling in pain.”
Another issue that many talked about was the long delays between sets – at one point up to 25 minutes. At least during the break down of one band’s gear on the stage and the set-up of another’s the organizers could have had some stellar videos running or at the least have Neil Young come out with an acoustic guitar and perform a song or two. In fact, we were baffled by the fact that Young didn’t come out on stage at the half way point, or some interval, to play a song or two as we recall him doing at past Bridge School concerts. Instead, concert goers would have to wait until after 11 pm to finally hear Young and his long-time band, Crazy Horse, perform.
Finally, it came time for the Neil Young and Crazy Horse. But it was past 11 p.m. and cold. Concert goers, the majority of whom had been there for at least six hours, were noticeably tired and weary. Still, many had stayed to hear their local hero and master of ceremonies, Young, and his long-time band, perform.
One of the other major issues of the night was the sound system – at times it was too loud and there was an echo for long stretches. Not sure who the sound engineers were for this year’s Bridge School, but they pretty much failed to deliver a great sound for the night. This was a common complaint among concert goers. Hopefully, next year’s Bridge School will be much, much better than this years. But, in the final analysis, it’s all good because it raised buckets of money for kids with special needs.
A non-stop stream of festival goers converge at the crossing between the Polo Fields and Speedway Meadow in Golden Gate Park on Day Two of the Outside Lands Festival 2011. Photo by Jessy Cluster
Now that we’ve have had more than a week to reflect on it, San Francisco‘s very own Outside Lands Festival 2011 was one of the best since the festival’s beginning in 2008. The impressive line-up of artists and bands, including major headliners like Muse and Arcade Fire, and the fantastic weather for most of the three days, attracted 60,000 festival goers for each day of the fest, selling out all three-day and single day tickets.
During the festival, we Tweeted and Facebooked, in addition to posting a pre-festival schedule of all three days with our top picks, as well as a rushed posting for Day One – “the cold day” – of the festival. That night, in the near-freezing cold, brisk winds and thick fog, tens of thousands of festival goers amassed in the city’s enormous Golden Gate Park, one of the largest and oldest urban parks in the United States.
During the day on Friday, there was no shortage of notable bands, including The Joy Formidable, Foster The People, Phantogram, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Toro Y Moi, Big Audio Dynamite, and Best Coast were popular shows. By evening, headliners like MGMT, Phish and The Shins made sure that there would be plenty of teenage girls, latte hippies and mid-life crisis urban hipsters packed into the Polo Fields and meadows of Golden Gate Park. Read more about Day One here.
We’re going to jump now to the closing headliners of the last day of the festival – Day Three, and provide an overview the daytime performances on Day Three. Following that, we have a review of Day Two.
Arcade Fire Rock the Park to Close Outside Lands 2011
The highlight of Outside Lands 2011 clearly goes to the nearly 90-minute closing set from the insanely popular Arcade Fire.
The hot Montreal indie rock pop band opened with the appropriately titled track “Ready to Start” in front of a massive sea of people as the full moon shone down on them on an unusually clear August night in San Francisco.
The crowd roared as the Arcade Fire broke into one of their most widely-regarded classics, “Keep The Car Running.” During the performance of the track, you could clearly hear the crowd singing along with the choruses to a song that helped propel AR from a Canadian indie buzz band to a band that now headlines major festivals around the world.
“Keep The Car Running” – Arcade Fire
During their fantastic set, that was enhanced by a light show, two jumbo screens and a terrific sound crew, Arcade Fire belted out tracks like “Rococo,” “Haiti,” “The Suburbs,” “Month of May,” and “Neighborhood.” For the encore, Arcade Fire performed “Wake Up,” and “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains).”
“Sprawl II” – Arcade Fire
“Wake Up” – Arcade Fire with David Bowie (Live)
Earlier on Day Three: Lord Huron Junip, Grouplove, Beirut, The Decemberists, STS9, Wye Oak
Earlier in the day we caught the last half of the performance by LA-based band Lord Huron on the Panhandle stage. We were first were turned on to the band after hearing their commendable 2010 album, Mighty, so it was enjoyable to hear them play live songs like the title track from the album.
Right after Lord Huron, we turned to the main stage to catch the band Junip – one of our favorite ‘lesser-known’ bands of the past five years.
“Mighty” – Lord Huron
“Rope & Summit” – Junip
In back-to-back performances, we then returned watched hundreds of people crammed into the Panhandle stage area dancing and clearly enjoying the joyful tracks from LA band Grouplove.
The crowd was especially moved by the incredibly infectious single, “Colours,” a song that helped make the relatively new band a hit with music critics and fans alike, garnering them regular radio play on influential stations like Seattle‘s KEXP and making them one of IRC’s Breakout Bands of 2011 (look for that series coming up soon).
In 2010, the band toured with The Joy Formidable and were hand-picked to open a number of West Coast dates for Florence and the Machine. Grouplove will release their highly-anticipated debut album, Never Trust A Happy Song, in September.
“Colours” – Grouplove from Grouplove EP
While we were digging the set from Grouplove, we had heard that Arcade Fire’s Win Butler performed “The Weight” with the legendary Mavis Staples on the Lands End stage all the way on the other side of the festival grounds. Here’s a video from YouTube of the duet (although it’s a little all over the place, we appreciate being able to see something rather than nothing at all).
Other noteworthy performances that made Day Three such a hit included sets from !!!, Ty Segall, Major Lazer and Wye Oak. Before Wye Oak finished, it was time to hike back to the area around the Lands End stage for the set by The Decemberists, and then over to the Sutro stage for Beirut before returning to the Land’s End stage for the closer by Arcade Fire.
The Decemberists were one of the top headiniers for Day Three of OSL. Photo by Misha Vladimirskiy
By the time one of Portland‘s most famous “indie” bands (even though they signed to Capitol some six year ago), The Decemberists, took the stage, the crowds had swelled considerably. The popular indie folk rock band kicked-off their set with “July, July!,” followed by “Down By The Water,” from The King Is Dead.
The Decemberists also played a number of their older songs, including “The Calamity Song,” “We Both Go Down Together,” and “The Mariner’s Revenge Song.” Following The Decemberists, we hiked over to the Lindley Meadow to listen to Beirut‘s set on the Sutro stage.
“July July” – The Decemberists
“We Both Go Down Together” – The Decemberists
When we arrived in the meadow for the Beirut performance, it was jam packed with festival goers, while it posed a dilemma for the fans of both The Decemberists and Beirut; the only way to see each band, because of their overlapping set times on different stages, was to see The Decemberists first, and then leave early to see Beirut. And so that explained why there were so many people walking back and forth from one area of the festival grounds to another.
We opted to see be a little late for Beirut in order to catch more of The Decemberists on the main stage; admittedly, the bonus of the jumbo screen did help to make it more of an experience because the crowds of tens of thousands of people made it nearly impossible to get close to the stage unless you secured a good spot earlier in the day and just stayed there.
The setting for Beirut’s performance, in a gently sloping meadow encircled by giant eucalyptus trees, and just as day time was transitioning to dusk, was perfect for the band’s eclectic, baroque-style of worldly indie folk music. Beirut definitely attracts a certain type of fan that appreciates the band’s distinct Balkan folk sound fused with western pop music, where Zach Condon‘s trumpet playing and monotone vocals are at the heart of most songs.
The band played “East Harlem,” the first single from the upcoming release of new album, The Rip Tide. Other songs in the set included “A Sunday Smile,”
“East Harlem” – Beirut from The Rip Tide (pre-order via iTunes) – vinyl/CD out August 30th
“La Llorona”– Beirut
A lot of the crowd starting leaving by the middle and towards the end of Beirut’s set; it seemed like an exodus, but we guess that people were going to get their spots for Arcade Fire and Deadmau5.
If you missed it, out coverage of Arcade Fire’s closing set is earlier in this post.
The Vaccines ripped it up early on Day Two of Outside Lands. Photo by Marcello Ambriz for The Audio Perv
Day Two: The Black Keys, Arctic Monkeys, Sonny & The Sunsets, Ok Go, Starfu*ker, Vetiver
Some time around 2 p.m. on Saturday (Day Two), a mini-miracle happened – the heavy fog dispersed and soon disappeared altogether, revealing deep blue skies and golden, warm sunshine, something that is all too rare during the summer in the western half of San Francisco.
And also by this time, tens of thousands of people were filling the open spaces in the park, and in spots, all of the foot traffic was kicking up enough dust to cover you in it, but most people probably didn’t care as long as it wasn’t foggy and cool like it was on Friday.
The first full performance we watched on Day Two was the 45-minute set from one of the break-through bands of the year – The Vaccines. We love this band’s raw garage rock sound, and their debut album, What Did You Expect from The Vaccines, is spectacular, and easily one of the best albums of 2011, not to mention a strong contender for the Debut Album of the Year award.
The Vaccines kicked off their first major festival appearance with the track “Blow It Up,” followed by “Post Break-Up Sex,” and “Wreckin Ball,” “A Lack of Understanding,” and others like “Wolf Pack” and “If You Wanna.”
But something was not right from the get-go with their appearance on the Twin Peaks main stage that afternoon. Basically, it was the same problem that occurs at many large music festivals – that is, unless you are in the right place, the sound quality of a performance can be, well, not so good.
That said, the band pumped out a bunch of tracks from their debut. it was another breakout band of 2011 that we could check off on the list of ‘Bands Seen Live.’
The sound issue is especially the case with the DJ Domes on the Polo Field interfering with the music coming from Land’s End stage some 150-200 yards away. The constant heavy beats pumping out of the domes are loud enough that people furthest from the stage can barely here over the bass emitting from the domes. This clash of sounds is present at almost all festivals.
However, to the organizers credit, on the opposite side of the festival grounds, performances on the smaller Panhandle stage were scheduled in between performances at the much larger Twin Peaks stage one hundred or so yards away, allowing festival goers to see and hear performances at each stage without interference.
In addition to The Vaccines, some of Day Two’s best offerings were Sonny & The Sunsets, Ok Go, Starfu*ker, Vetiver, The Roots, and two of our favorite shows of the entire festival – The Black Keys and the Arctic Monkeys. The latter two bands were secondary headliners, if you will, just below the top headliner status of bands like Muse (a bit too commercial for us) and the remix guru, Girl Talk (a bit too unoriginal for us).
Alex Turner of the Arctic Monkeys put on a crowd-pleasing set at Outside Lands. Photo by Marcello Ambriz for The Audio Perv
We considered The Black Keys and the Arctic Monkeys our top headliners of Day Two. The UK rockers, Arctic Monkeys, delivered one of the best shows of Day Two, with a energetic and electric set.
The band have come a long way since 2006, when they broke out in the states after the release of the album, Whatever People Say I am That’s What I’m Not. The band were really one of the first to benefit from the increasing influence of the Internet on the music scene.
Who knows if they would have been as popular as they were in the mid to late 2000’s without the help of sites like MySpace and dozens of popular music blogs that exposed the band to a wider audience outside of the UK, most particularly in the U.S. and Canada, where they still have a good-size following, although that following abated after the release of Arctic Monkey’s 2009 album, Humbug, which many critics and fans criticized because of the noticeable departure from the blistering rock and silly and sarcastic ballads that made them such a huge hit for at least two or three years (say from 2005 to 2008).
But the band are playing live better than they ever had, and their set at Outside Lands was a perfect example of that. In front of tens of thousands of eager fans, Arctic Monkeys performed some of their best new and older tracks, including “Crying Lightning,” “Fluorescent Adolescent,” “I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor,” and 13 others during their hour-long performance.
While the Arctic Monkeys were wrapping up there set on the Land’s End stage, music festival regulars, The Roots, were just getting started on the Twin Peaks stage way at the other end of the festival grounds. We wouldn’t have time to get all the way to the other stage to hear even 10 minutes from The Roots and still make it all the way back to the Land’s End stage to hear The Black Keys, so we just stayed put. We were not going to miss them for anything. Afterall, it’s not often that they come to town, so this was our chance to see one of the best garage rock bands of the past decade.
It was a bit surprising to see so many teenagers cramming their way enthusiastically through the crowds to get closer to the stage. Even more evidence that many of these young folks were true TBK fans was demonstrated by the fact that they sang along with the band’s older tracks (like “Girl is On My Mind”) just as much as they did with their newer songs (“Tighten Up”).
When they came out on stage to the roar of the crowd, the band kicked off with the song, “Thickfreakness,” as well as other great Keys’ tracks like “Busted,” “Howlin’ For You,” and the 15-song set closer, “I Got Mine.”
Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys performs at Outside Lands 2011 in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park on Day Two of the largest music festival in norther California. Photo credit: Jeff Miller for the Orange County Register
The duos’ raw guitar rock sound carried them through a 65-minute set. They belted one romp after another and the fans that gathered by the thousands absolutely loved it. Clearly, TBK were one of the best performances of the entire festival, and it is also clear that they have a much bigger following among music lovers under the age of 25 than we had previously imagined.
As time goes on, their status as one of the best alt/garage rock duos continues to solidify. It’s great to see there is so much love out there for stripped down, straight up, in-your-face rock, especially at a time when indie and alternative music have become more synth-centric in recent years, we will always seek out pure ole rock and roll – so long live The Black Keys!
As the crowds grew thicker and thicker on the Polo Fields, it was evident that they were gathering for the Day Two closer Muse. In typical fashion, Muse eventually came on and played a 105-minute show to the delight of tens of thousands of festival goers (even as we were leaving after the first 20 minutes). All in all, Day Two = the second successful day for Outside Lands 2011.
The one thing was clear about this year’s OSL fest compared to 2010 – it was much better – the weather, the line-up and yes the fact that the organizers put it back to three days after cutting it back to two days in 2010. The organizers calculation was correct – people wanted three days. Afterall, all three days of OSL 2011 were sold out.
Thanks to Hassle Media and the organizers, as well as all of the artists, crews, security and of course to the tens of thousands of festival goers, for making this year such a huge success. It still went by too fast, but you know what they say about time when you’re having fun.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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
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?
Arcade Fire – The Decemberists – STSR9 – Beirut – Major Lazer – Wye Oak – Ty Seagall – !!! – Grouplove – Tuneyards – Lord Huron – The Fresh & Onlys – Junip – John Fogerty
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.
The Black Keys rocked the packed crowds at Bonnaroo on Saturday. Photo by David Hall for OC Register.
Rap rules Bonnaroo? That was the headline grabber from ABC News’ coverage for Day Tree of the popular music festival located on a 700-acre farm in Manchester, Tennessee.
But, we hardly think that, in a musical context, or any other context we can think of, that rap is ‘ruling’ a music festival where the majority of bands and artists fall within the realms of alternative rock, indie, folk and a hodge podge of other genres like blues, jazz, funk, gospel, country, electronica, pop, and world music. Just because a couple of the world’s most famous rappers, Eminem and Lil’ Wayne, to be precise, performed as headliners this weekend does not make Bonnaroo a rap festival.
One of the things that is so magnificent about Bonnaroo is it’s eclectic and all-inclusive theme, which runs true through everything from the line-up to the participants. So, we thought this Sunday’s S-25 playlist mix should celebrate and reflect the diverse line-up of Bonnaroo 2011. This is the final day of the famous four-day camping fest, which is now in its tenth year, and one of North America’s most popular music festivals.
It wasn’t easy to pick just 25 artists to represent some 200 bands at Bonnaroo this year, but that’s the point of the weekly S-25 mix, so we have to stick to it (even though we’ll sometimes go over the 25 quasi limit as you’d see if you browse through the S-25 archives).
“Modern Art”– The Black Lips from Arabia Mountain
“Under Cover of Darkness” – The Strokes from Angles
“Little Kin” (Live 2008) – Widespread Panic
Cover art for the new single by Beirut, "East Harlem" from The Rip Tide, out Aug. 30th
“East Harlem” – Beirut from The Rip Tide – due out Aug. 30th
The Strokes rocked Mt. View, California, Sunday night at the BFD Festival. Photo by Philip E. Daoust
Tens of thousands of festival goers packed into the Shoreline Ampitheatre Sunday to mark the annual Bay Area BFD Live 105 Music Festival in Mt. View, California.
Crowds were treated to headliners that included The Strokes, Snoop Dog, Linkin Park, Cage The Elephant, Bad Religion, Neon Trees, Manchester Orchestra, Foster The People and many others. By the time the famous New York City rockers, The Strokes, took the main stage, the ampitheatre, from the box sets all the way to the top of the lawn, was packed with people.
Once The Strokes broke into “Under Cover of Darkness,” from their latest album, the crowd was cheering, applauding, yelling, standing and dancing. The energy was thick and it got even thicker as the band broke into hit after hit. Julian Casablancas and the band also banged out “Take It Or Leave It,” among other classic Strokes’ hits, and a few other singles from their recent, highly acclaimed album, Angles.
However, the biggest disappointment came when The Strokes ended their set almost 10 minutes before the scheduled end time. For folks who paid upwards of $80 to see the band, that wasn’t very cool, especially without explanation.
But the entire place really went wild when the hiphop icon himself, Snoop Dog, took the stage, complete with his MCs and some old guy who danced around the stage the entire set. In addition, the stage was set up with two drummers, dancing girls, a live DJ, a keyboardist, and the wafting waves of smoke.
Snoop Dog and his crew hopped the house Sunday night in Mt. View, California at BFD Festival.
This made for a big extravaganza in true Snoop fashion, complete with the hand bling, shades and apparently smoking of marijuana on the stage during the set. Snoop Dog fired up some of his old skool classics, including “Gin and Juice,” “Sensual Seduction” and “Nuthin But A G Thang” during the hour-long set.
Snoop Dog and crew also busted out covers of legendary hiphop songs like the classic, “Jump Around,” which got tens of thousands of people up and jumping and dancing. There were also two tributes during the show. The most notable was Snoop’s tribute to Tupac, our personal favorite hiphop artist of all time. In tribute to Tupac, Snoop Dog broke into “Gangsta Party.” The other tribute went to Nate Dogg, who passed away in March at the age of 41 from complications stemming from a stroke.
“Gin and Juice” – Snoop Dog from Doggy Style (2009)
“Jump Around” – House of Pain from House of Pain (2005)
Snoop and his crew wrapped up their set with “Who Am I (What’s My Name)” before the stage was set up for the festival’s closing act, Linkin Park, who rocked through a set of older classics and newer songs from their latest album. Throughout the band’s hour-long set, the still going festival goers – some of who had been there for nine-plus hours, were still rocking and having fun.
Thankfully, even with uncommonly damp conditions – including a day-long rainstorm on Saturday – the rain held out on Sunday at the Shoreline, situated only a few hundred feet from Google headquarters.
Throughout the day, there were also terrific performances from Cage The Elephant, Bad Religion, Manchester Orchestra, Foster The People, Airborne Toxic Event, and many others. Wish we had more time to write about them all, but need to update the Top Ten Songs page. Get more information and photos from San Francisco’s Live 105 website.
Thanks to Jess Cluster and Live Nation for their assistance in making this event possible.
The Flaming Lips brough the extravaganza to Sasquatch Sunday night. Photo from KEXP.
Day Three of Sasquatch Festival started with overcast, windy and cool weather, and big, dark clouds that seemed impossibly calm; and while they threatened rain, just like Saturday, the rain stayed away. However, the skies soon turned from mostly cloudy to partly cloudy just in time for the first shows of the day.
Note: Because we, and some other media outlets, were unable to get a reliable signal at Sasquatch, we were unable to blog from the festival as we had planned.
On the main stage, Smith Westerns got things going with a rocking set, even though the crowd was light. But that’s typical at music festivals. It’s almost impossible to draw a large crowd at noon-time.
However, as their set winded down, the crowd began to grow larger fairly fast apparently with many showing up to see The Drums, who we saw later on hanging out in the media room not long after we had spotted Wayne Coyne giving an interview.
The Brooklynindie pop surf rock band (they are given so many genre labels it’s ridiculous), The Drums, delivered their typical mix of sixties jukebox pop mixed with elements of new wave and rock with the same energy and enthusiasm they’ve put into every show we’ve seen them perform during the past 18 months or so.
The Drums whipped up the crowd as they plowed through one after another of their popular songs that have become recognizable to music fans around the world, most especially the anti-anthem “Let’s Go Surfing,” a great track that has gone a long way in making The Drums so successful, but, at the same time, a song that we’re sure they must be sick of playing knowing that thousands of teeny boppers are waiting to hear that one song in particular.
We’ve seen it – the teeny boppers are barely listening while the band plays their other tracks, but when “Let’s Go Surfing” starts up, they all stop talking and texting and start screaming and singing. OMG. But still, The Drums always put on a good set and their Sasquatch performance was no exception.
“Let’s Go Surfing” – The Drums from The Drums (2010)
“I Felt Stupid” – The Drums from The Drums (2010)
Up next was the band Fitz and the Tantrums, but we needed to head out to get some food and drink, and catch some other artists on smaller stages, like the unexpectedly large crowd for Basia Bulat, who we’ve featured previously on IRC. But we only had about 20 minutes before we needed to head back to the main stage for the stellar afternoon and evening line-up: Tokyo Police Club, Beach House, Cold War Kids, Flogging Molly, The Flaming Lips and Modest Mouse.
Modest Mouse closed out Day Three of the SasquatchFestival. Photo for Brooklyn Vegan by Josh Darr.
The Flaming Lips and Modest Mouse Headline Day Three
For fans of 1990′s alternative rock, Sunday’s two big headliners – The Flaming Lips and Modest Mouse – were quite the treat, and the fact that they played back-to-back was simply golden.
Once The Flaming Lips hit the stage, and predictably so, Sasquatch got it’s first showy extravaganza, as balloons, confetti, stunning video screen images and pink and purple lights came together all at once as Wayne Coyne emerged in his famous plastic bubble to roll over the audience. Meanwhile, the band played the first minute or so of “Race for The Prize” to huge roars and cheers from the quickly expanding crowd.
“Race For The Prize” – The Flaming Lips from Soft Bulletin (1999)
In fact, Lips fans would have no idea until the first few songs in that the band were indeed performing their blockbuster 1999 album, Soft Bulletin, nearly from start to finish. Next, the band ripped through “A Spoonful Weighs A Ton” and then “The Spark That Bled,” both delivered with the predictable spectacle and glam. Yet, when the band broke into “The Spiderbite Song” the Lips seemed to lose a good amount of the festival goers, at least from our vantage point up on “the hill.”
As Coyne went on and on talking about spiders and hands, the folks far from the stage could not really understand what he was saying anyways, and we watched as dozens and dozens of people just got up and left. That was hard to see for dedicated Lips fans. In fact, we heard people – just as we had with Bright Eyes the night before – say things to the effect of “shut the f**k up and play,” and even some scattered boos as Coyne went on for what seemed like 15 minutes of babbling about the anecdotes behind the song’s lyrics.
The Flaming Lips performed most of their legendary LP, Soft Bulletin, at SasquatchFestival.
But, just in time, the Lips broke into “Buggin’” and the crowd came back to life, and from then on, the set moved along nicely afterwards, including “What is The Light?” and “Waiting for a Superman.” The Lips also paid tribute to the icon Elliott Smith and were graced with the task of honoring Sasquatch’s 10th birthday, that even included cake. By the time they finished with “Feeling Yourself Disintegrate,” the crowd quickly grew more and more packed in for the night’s closer from alt rock legends Modest Mouse.
“Buggin’” – The Flaming Lips from Soft Bulletin (1999)
Modest Mouse were more than a half hour late (as Das Racist were earlier in the evening on the Yeti stage) which didn’t go over well with some folks, especially those who were visibly cold as the wind picked up and the temperatures dropped across the wild badlands of central Washington.
In true fashion, Modest Mouse delivered a bristling and energized set that, with the exception of a few newer songs, was chock full of alt-indie hits from the band’s first three albums. During their one hour and 40-minute set, the band ripped through track after track, opening with a trio of songs – “Sh*t Luck,” “Gravity Rides Everything” and the iconic “Dashboard” that really got the huge crowd of tens of thousands of festival goers really going.
“Dashboard” – Modest Mouse from We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank [Explicit]
It didn’t take long for people to forget that one of the Pacific Northwest’s most famous bands of the past two decades got a late start. At the other end of the set, the band closed with songs like “Poison,” their classic “Float On,” “Here It Comes,” and the show closer, “Spitting Venom.”
“Dramamine” – Modest Mouse from This Is A Long Drive For Someone With Nothing To Think About(1996)
“Float On” – Modest Mouse from Good News For People Who Love Bad News (2004)
Tokyo Police Club put on one of the best indierock sets of Sasquatch. Photo from Beatcrave.com
Tokyo Police Club, Beach House and Cold War Kids
One of our favorite Canadian indierock bands, Tokyo Police Club, kicked off the marathon of terrific bands on the main stage with easily one of the best all around performances of SAS 2011 that we experienced.
After performing their opening track, “Nature of the Experiment,” which simply sounded amazing, singer and bassist Dave Monks shouted into the microphone proudly, “We’re from Canada,” and the presumably mostly Canadian crowd roared in approval.
During the early part of TPC’s set, the crowds around the main stage and adjoining hillside filled up fairly fast. In between the two-second pauses of the infectious track, “Elephant Shell,” the crowd screamed and applauded, which is no surprise since the track is easily one of the songs that catapulted the band to international indie acclaim and fame. The band also played “Breakneck Speed” and “Your English Is Good.” We think that TPC have been one of the best Canadian indie bands of the past decade.
“Breakneck Speed” – Tokyo Police Club from Champ (2010)
“Your English is Good” – Tokyo Police Club from Elephant Shell (2008)
One of the lighter moments of the entire festival occurred when a friend of the band, Taylor proposed to his girlfriend Emma, on stage. An interesting note about that was we never heard Emma say ‘yes’; she simply embraced Tyler and the two walked off stage arm in arm.
Following Tokyo Police Club were the warm, mellow and fuzzy pop sounds of Beach House, who delivered a predictably laid-back and beautiful performance, sailing steadily through songs we love so much, like “Walk in the Park,” “Norway,” and “Zebra.” After Beach House, California popular indierock/blues Cold War Kids came on and picked things up with their predictably uptempo, crowd-pleasing set that included “Robbers & Cowards” and “Hospital Beds.”
We are not really fans of CWK’s new album, but definitely dig their earlier records. Unfortunately, there are no streams available from NPR for Tokyo Police Club, Beach House or Cold War Kids. If anyone hears of any from somewhere else, please let us know using the Comments.
“Norway” – Beach House from Teen Dream (2010)
“Zebra” – Beach House from Teen Dream (2010)
“The Soloist in the Living Room” – Cold War Kids from Mulberry Street
“Hang Me Up to Dry” – Cold War Kids from Robbers & Cowards (2006)
Gold Panda performing in the Banana Shack at Sasquatch, Day Three. Photo by Brittney Bush Bollay for KEXP
Das Racist, Flogging Molly, Reggie Watts, Gold Panda and More
While we needed to leave for other events – most notably Das Racist and Archers of Loaf – we did catch the last couple of songs from Flogging Molly, who predictably delivered their uptempo, Celtic-centric Irish-American punk as thousands of people danced around from the top of the hillside to the pit in front of the stage. Flogging Molly warmed up the crowd for the top two headliners of Day Three of Sasquatch – The Flaming Lips and Modest Mouse (see above).
Other performances that we did not get to see but really wanted to on Sunday included sets from Other Lives, Reggie Watts, Gayngs, Gold Panda, MSTRKRFT, City and Colour, and many others. As many people we talked to expressed, the line-up was so amazing all day on each stage, and just about every day of the festival (with the predictable exception of Day One), that it was really difficult sometimes to decide which to attend.
We were able to catch a little bit of Yeasayer and Flying Lotus in between The Lips and Modest Mouse, and earlier in the day, The Moondoggies (who were camped right next to us).
“Snow and Taxis” – Gold Panda from Lucky Shiner (2010)
“Ambling” – Yeasayer from Odd Blood (2010)
“Piece” – Reggie Watts and Yungchen Lhamo from Antibabel (2006)
“The Gaudy Side of Town” – Gayngs from Relayted [+Digital Booklet]
“Black Tables” – Other Lives from Other Lives (2009)
Canadians Don’t Get Cold and Other SAS Observations
One of the things that was so evident to us by Day Three was the fact that many festival goers – especially teens and young adults from Canada and northern states like Washington, Idaho, Oregon and even Montana – appear to be mostly impervious to the cold wind blowing and the near freezing temperatures that the later evening hours brought. Another impossible thing to miss at Sasquatch was the huge numbers of Vancouver Canucks fans celebrating as their team advanced to the Stanley Cup playoffs.
We were a bit surprised by the amount of trash that festival goers left all over the place each day of the festival; not sure why that was so, but maybe Sasquatch folks need to put out more trash and recycling bins and emphasize more during the festival to keep the grounds as clean as possible. It’s strange to us, because at other festivals, most notably Outside Lands Fest in San Francisco, there was very little litter and plenty of focus from the organizers and the festival goers on keeping Golden Gate Park clean and using the recycle bins.
Another thing that must be pointed out is the food issue. We think there is plenty of room for improvement on supplying better food vendors at Sasquatch in the years to come. Oh, yes, and then there were the hugs: total strangers would just come up and hug you, and there were even long lines for “free hugs.”
We also recommend checking out KEXP’s Sunday Sasquatch photo post.
Check back as we will be adding more songs, photos, links and other goodies.
Coming Up: Day Two and Day One of the 10 annual SasquatchFestival 2011.
Already posted: Closing Day of theSasquatch with headliner Wilco, plus stream full streams, view photos, and MP3 Mix of artists for Day Four.
Jeff Tweedy of Wilco performs Monday night at Sasquatch Fest - Photo by James Bailey
Wilco ceremoniously closed the 10th annual Sasquatch Festival Monday evening after four days of one of the best line-ups we’ve seen so far for a 2011 music festival.
Jeff Tweedy and the band rocked through a two-hour set in front of a crowd of thousands of weary, chilly and wet Wilco fans who were nonetheless enthusiastic and visibly enjoying the final performance at the Gorge Ampitheatre in Quincy, Washington.
The celebrated Chicago alternative rock band (even though they covered so many genres over the years), and one of America’s finest musical exports of the past 15 years, Wilco was the final performance of a festival that is increasingly one of the top U.S. festivals along with the more recognized fests like Coachella, Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza. Here are a couple of the original tracks the band played on Monday night, plus a full stream of Wilco’s entire set.
“A Shot In The Arm” – Wilco from Summerteeth (1998)
Hear Wilco’s entire Sasquatch set via NPR.
Note: Make sure to check back for more of our post Sasquatch coverage during the next couple of days.
Colin Meloy of The Decemberists performs Monday night at Sasquatch Festival in Washington state. Photo by James Bailey
Previous to Wilco, The Decemberists rocked and swooned the crowd with a set list featuring indie classics from their earlier folky maritime-themed albums to songs from their latest, and number one album, The King is Dead, which has clearly catapulted the band out of indie realm and into the world of mainstream rock. But labeling did not matter to the thousands of festival goers who were treated to an electrifying performance, starting off with the dramatic saga, “The Infanta.” After The Decemberists, catch some of Deerhunter‘s set on the Bigfoot stage.
“The Infanta” – The Decemberists from Picturesque (2005)
“June Hymn” – The Decemberists from The King is Dead (2011)
Surfer Blood were one of the big attractions on the Yeti stage on Monday during Sasquatch
Part of what made Sasquatch so amazing, and yet so challenging, was the fact that the line-up was smoking hot nearly all day and all of the night on each of the four stages. For example, prior to Deerhunter, the Bigfoot stage hosted performances on Monday from !!!, Surfer Blood, Black Mountain, Noah & The Whale, Twin Shadow, Givers and others.
“Druganaut” – Black Mountain from Black Mountain (2005)
“I Have Nothing”* – Noah and The Whale from The First Days of Spring (2009)
Note: As much as possible, we only use .mp3 links from record labels, publicists, box.net and blogs that make there own .mp3 links available to Hype Machine and other music services. If we have a song link to your own blog but you want us to remove it, please leave a comment and we’ll get it much faster than our email, which is spammed to kingdom come.
– Stream and download partial sets from Black Mountain, City and Colour and Foster The People.
Best Coast performed the last show on the Yeti stage for Sasquatch Fest on Monday. Photo via Line Out.
Meanwhile, on the Yeti stage Monday, festival goers were treated to sets from indie artists like Jaill, The Young Evils, White Denim, Foster The People, and Best Coast. The latter two bands drew good-sized crowds as the afternoon wore on. In and of itself, that line-up on just one rather small stage is a winner for any indie festival.
“Boyfriend” – Best Coast from Crazy For You (2010)
“The Stroller” – Jaill from That’s How We Burn (2010)
“Houdini” – Foster The People from Torches (2010)
Wavves lit up the Yeti stage on Monday to kick-off Day Four of Sasquatch. Photo from James Bailey
Earlier in the day, on the main stage, Sasquatch, a gigantic platform set far down the bottom of a hillside, and , there were awesome performances from Rodrigo Y Gabriela, Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings (stream), Guided By Voices, Chromeo, Old 97s, Young The Giant, and Wavves (stream) kicked it off with the first show of the day on the Yeti stage at lunch time.
“Diablo Rojo” – Rodrigo Y Gabriela from Rodrigo Gabriela (2007)
“June Salutes You” – Guided By Voices from The Official Ironmen Rally EP (2006)
“King of the Beach” – Wavves from King of the Beach (2010)
If you are a fan of Guided By Voices, Major Lazer, Noah and the Whale, Old 97s and Rodrigo Y Gabriela you can stream via NPR to hear parts of their sets from Sasquatch on Monday.
Check back, and refresh this page, for further updates, plus, don’t miss our Sasquatch Festival reviews for Sunday, Saturday and Friday, featuring coverage of even more performances and songs from Modest Mouse, The Flaming Lips, Bright Eyes, Death Cab For Cutie, Tokyo Police Club, Beach House, J. Mascis, Yeasayer, Sleigh Bells, The Radio Dept , The Globes, The Head and The Heart, Local Natives, Sharon Van Etten, Wolf Parade, Wye Oak, The Antlers, Iron & Wine, The Thermals, Washed Out, and it simply goes on and on.
Modest Mouse closed out Day Three of the Sasquatch Festival. Photo for Brooklyn Vegan by Josh Darr.
The Flaming Lips performed most of their legendary LP, Soft Bulletin, at Sasquatch Festival.
Gold Panda performing in the Banana Shack at Sasquatch, Day Three. Photo by Brittney Bush Bollay for KEXP
Photo Credit: Brittney Bush Bollay for KEXP
