Tuesday August 26, 2008

Outside Lands

I attended Outside Lands over the weekend. Overall I thought the event showed some cracks in the organization. For two of the headliners there were serious sound issues. The sounds boards on almost all of the stages were setup to block the stage from a good part of the fields. The overall bathroom situation seemed to run out of steam each night as the number of reasonable clean bathrooms approached 0 before the headliners were done. The drink options were limited and overpriced. Other things seemed to work well. Bands seemed to get on and off the stage on time and the sound besides the headliners was good. Their was a wide range of reasonable priced food options for such an event.

Friday evening:

• Beck - This was a mob scene. I came in the entrance right next to Beck and not being enough of a Beck fan kept on going. The bathrooms in the walkway between Lindley Meadow where Beck was playing and the Polo Fields was jam packed and a fence by the bathrooms had been knocked down just before I got there. It doesn't seem to me like this was well planned.

• Manu Chao - A little too mellow for me.

• The Black Keys - I like these guys. Maybe almost too unstructured for me? Is that possible? Seemed like everything started out as jam-noise and progressed from there.

• Lyrics Born - I like this guy. One of the better underground Hip-Hop/Rap types. He can turn a phrase nicely and the band he had rocked.

• Radiohead - I don't get these guys. I listened through their whole set. I guess they rocked. They dealt with the sound dropping out twice pretty well.

Saturday:

• Sparrow Quartet - I went to go see this band because of Bela Fleck but I think they all rocked. I think I would classify it as folk or old-time music although there are some bluegrass elements and they seemed to have been strongly influenced by Chinese folk music.

• Everest - eh? I don't get it. According to their bio 80's indie with some jam/prog influences. Seemed pretty generic to me.

• Galactic's Crescent City Soul Krewe - I like Galactic. This ended up being Galactic with part of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band part of the time and one of the Neville brothers the rest of the time. They are funky. They are good. They are fun. That fun aspect to live music is one thing I think some of the young bands miss.

• Steve Winwood - Nice set although he still comes off as too produced to me.

• Regina Spektor - I had my 16 year old niece pick out a few bands she would go see that I didn't know. Most of what she thought was cool were bands I'd seen and would probably pass on. But I like Regina Spektor. I couldn't get close enough to see her perform but I liked what I heard. Lost of tempo and crazy lyric changes with a lot of energy. I would have liked to see the show as it seemed like she was probably pretty entertaining. A conversation the next day on the bus confirmed that was true.

• Ben Harper and The Innocent Criminals - I almost didn't go see this. I'd heard them before but not seen them. This was another one of my niece's recommendations. I still am not entirely hot on Ben's music but he is a good showman. I'm glad I went to go see them.

• Primus - I've seen Primus before and really like them. Les Claypool always seems to do things I like. But this time I thought they fell flat. OTOH I was pretty tire by this time and wasn't really into it.

• Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers - Pretty standard set running through more tunes then I thought I knew of Tom Petty's. But I knew them all. Nothing over the top here. The sound dropped out twice during this set and they had to take a 5 minute break to work on the PA but it seemed like the band dealt with it well. I ended up leaving before the last few songs but the walk out was long enough that I heard the end of the set.

• The Mighty Underdogs featuring Gift of Gab, Lateef and Headnodic - I meant to start the day off with ALO but got the schedule confused. I listened to a few songs an then left. Unlike Lyrics Born this is too "rappy" for me.

• ALO - These guys hit a nice groove. They didn't blow me away but I enjoyed the part of the set I heard.

• Culver City Dub Collective - A little too ambient for me. I needed energy at this point and these guys were not providing it.

• Stars - Also too mellow for me. I did get a nice nap near the end of their set.

• Andrew Bird - This guy is cool. Very talented. I would have never guessed what a "whistler" really was until I hear him. Nice to hear the violin mixed in as he did.

• Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings - Old school fairly high energy blues was a good thing at this point. It had been a mellow morning and I needed a pick-me-up. Nice instrumentals, nice voice, nice showmanship on Sharon Jones part.

• Grace Potter and the Nocturnals - I'd hear these guys open up for Mule at the Fillmore earlier this year. I thought this set was more mellow and didn't quite meet my expectations. But they still sounded good. I didn't make much of this set as I'd heard them before.

• Widespread Panic - I first saw WSP in May '91 in LA. I've been an addict ever since. They had a 90 minute spot but they ran over by 20 minutes or so. The set is high energy from the beginning. In the middle of Henry Parson's Died is a great Green Onion's jam (Sorry to whomever I tried to convince afterwards that was a Ventures song and not Booker T. an the MGs). The later third of the set they had Ann Marie Calhoun on Violin. I thought there was some really nice interplay between Jimmy Herring an Ann Marie during several jams. WSP was the band that made me really want to come to Outside Lands and they delivered. Too bad they could only play 1/2 a show.

• Mike Gordon - Mike Gordon played a set with a keyboardist, drummer, and a guitar player. The set seemed tentative to me. But I was a little burned out from Panic an I think WSP going over might have shorted Gordon's spot (they were on opposite ends of Lindley Meadow).

• Jack Johnson - I was burned out by this point an Jack is just too mellow for me. I listened to about 1/2 of his set an then wondered on home.