The Outside Lands Music Festival started yesterday in Golden Gate Park, a three-day, 60-plus-act bonanza of musical goodness. Highlights from the acts yours truly caught on day one ...
Fullerton rockers Cold War Kids got their blues on, delivering a chest-swelling "Hang Me Up to Dry" before closing with "Saint John." They sounded good and were followed on the same stage by ...
Beck, who dove from one song into another for the first 30 minutes of his 70-minute set. Though he cooked, things didn't really set fire until a mid-set one-two combo of mega-hit "Loser" and "Devil's Haircut." Later, the SoCal rocker delivered a blues-drenched cover of Bob Dylan's "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat." Finishing with the ballad "Lost Cause," the outer-space funky "Chemtrails" and that instantly identifiable keyboard phrase of "Where it's At," Beck definitely packed everything he could into his time slot.
At the same time as Beck on another stage was The Black Keys, a guitar/drums combo from Ohio. According to the Daily Republic's new photographer, Mike Greener, they were "f------ awesome." How's that for a succinct review?
The night ended with Radiohead, England's alt-rock kings. Though they sounded great — rarely does a band that relies so heavily on studio wizardry manage to reproduce its sound even reasonably live, but they show their talent and mastery by making some songs somehow better — the show was not without its snafus. During both "Airbag" and "All I Need," the audio cut out completely for extended periods. After the first hiccup, lead singer Thom Yorke remarked, "You put air in the plug, right? Who put air in the plug?" Later, he apologized for the mishaps saying, "I don't know what the f---'s going on. I'm sorry."
The cool sea air seemed to try Yorke's vocal chords, who noticeably strained to hit his signature crooning wail on "The Gloaming." For as eerily quiet as the 60,000 in attendance were for the first few verses of "Exit Music (For a Film)," they were also in full-fledged "This is what you get" singalong during "Karma Police." The encore was a bruiser of unflappable Radiohead cuts, as the band plowed through "Pyramid Song," "You and Whose Army?," "Paranoid Android," "Fake Plastic Trees" and "Everything in its Right Place." While Yorke stretched for the high notes in "Android," he belted them out with beauty on "Trees."
Symbolic of the night, Yorke chuckled and flubbed a line early in "You and Whose Army?" He played a crashing, downward scale of notes on the piano, then immediately dropped right back into "Army," without any of his bandmates missing a beat. That was Radiohead's show, the first night-time gig in Golden Gate Park, in a nutshell — imperfect, but determined.
Check back Sunday morning for the Day Two Dispatch, which is (more than likely) to include notes on performances by The Sparrow Quartet, Kaki King, Ben Harper, Tom Petty and more.
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