Day One
Day One
by Joshua Krage
Sadly missed The Joy Formidable, but caught a kick-ass set from Brooklyn electro-dance rockers Phantogram at the Sutro stage. Next up, approximately 60% of the festival attendees showed up to watch Foster the People, who having recently been covered by Weezer, returned the favor with a blissfully stoned-out version of “The Sweater Song.” I decided to let’s be friends, and just walk(ed) away from that just in time to catch MGMT day-psyching it out on the Land’s End (main) stage with some hugely surreal visuals on the jumbotrons, making for perfect dinner music to everyone enjoying the many food vendors surrounding the Polo Field of the park, where the main stage resided.
It should be noted that all vendors at Outside Lands, tasty food or otherwise, were local and very environmentally conscious– recycling and compost containers everywhere, refillable water stations, and more eco literature than a Green Party rally. Welcome to San Francisco!
Back to the action, next up was a brief stint watching Clap Your Hands Say Yeah (or say “enh” IMHO, but there was no one else I wanted to see for an hour) before sauntering over to the Panhandle stage to catch glitch-rockers The Limousines, whose awesome synth- and 8-bit-infused set was fraught with technical difficulties but was still amazing and high-energy, with two masked drummers joining the duo on some tracks for extra insanity. This ended my first day, but I heard reports from friends that the second (Twin Peaks) stage headlining set from The Shins was “amazing” and blissfully uncrowded, thanks to Phish playing an epic three-and-a-half hour set on the main stage.