Outside Lands — The Review

I am very blessed. I know this. There are days that I feel bad complaining that I feel tired, or FML-this, FML-that because I have a terrific gig — working at the Daily Journal and writing isn’t a job. It’s way too much fun to be a job.

That said, the day I leave, one of my biggest regrets will be not having the opportunity to cover Outside Lands anymore. I’m truly going to miss it.

Nothing can really top that first year at Outside Lands, back in 2009 … but 2011 came very very close. And as such, I wanted to write a review worthy of how I felt in my 2.5 days there. Here is my review of the festival, which ran in Monday’s edition of the Daily Journal. Thank you to everyone at Big Hassle (mainly Chris Vinyard and Ken Weinstein) who allowed my publication to cover the event for a third year. Thank you to Matt Maniego and Heather Murtagh, who help me cover the festival, and thank you to the people of San Francisco for making it so memorable. We’ll see you in 2012, Outside Lands. I can’t wait.

Outside Lands has the winning formula
By Julio Lara, Daily Journal Staff 

For all its awesomeness, there aren’t many things “San Francisco” that can honestly say they embody the complete spirit of this place. 

Sure, certain events, festivals, days of the year, get bits and pieces right here and there. But those “complete” events, festivals or days are rare entities. 

And that isn’t a knock on these things because the San Francisco Bay Area as a whole is so rich, thick and diverse that the recipe is a hard one to master. 

But that is where Outside Lands version 2011 is a winner.

Now officially four years old, the music, food, art and wine extravaganza has figured it out – “it” being that a music festival isn’t necessarily made awesome by the artists it books, but by whether or not you can book the home-spirit of the place you are borrowing for a couple of days. Accomplishing such a feat was Outside Lands’ biggest success. 

Not that the music wasn’t great or important, because it most definitely was and is – but you had to expect that much going in. The headliners all lived up to their billing: Phish’s double-set on Friday was epic, Muse was better than advertised on Saturday and Arcade Fire’s stock couldn’t be any hotter right now. 

Then you had your “can’t miss” acts, like The Black Keys, MGMT and John Fogerty who added a sense of absolute credibility to the three-day festival. Of the acts in this category, none were more impressive than Erykah Badu on Friday at the Sutro Stage. Badu had the task of not only putting on a dynamic, soulful and profound set, but she also was the one tagged (albeit involuntarily and unintentionally) with rescuing the festival from the gigantic fail that was Big Boi, who failed to perform because of equipment failure, much to the chagrin of the crowd. 

Mission accomplished.

The set of the festival belonged to The Roots, the hip-hop band from Philadelphia. Honestly, is there anyone hipper, fresher and for lack of a better word, sicker than The Roots? All the rumors about how fantastic they are live are true. And if you still don’t believe, ask the thousands of people that took in the 60-minutes of cool at the Twin Peaks stage – the crowd stretched for about a quarter-mile, almost reaching the Panhandle Stage. There is a reason why The Roots are called “legendary,” and they showed San Francisco why on Saturday. 

Then there were those pleasant surprises, or acts that you heard were great but had no idea just how much until you saw them live. Ana Tijoux, Ellie Goulding and Ximena Sarinana fall into that group. Goulding is a rising star, Sarinana an impressive pop talent and the world needs more artists like Tijoux. Tijoux, the Chilean hip-hop artist, puts all current (and most past) female MCs to shame — her skill on the microphone reminds you of artists like MC Lyte and Queen Latifah in their hip-hop hey-day.  

But the all the music aside, what Outside Lands accomplished, what made it awesome, was getting a little bit of everything that makes the Bay Area beautiful into Golden Gate Park for three days of fantastic. 

The menu and selection of food and wine was curtailed for the exact purpose of satisfying every possible taste bud. The same goes for the activities.

Year four of the festival was crucial for Outside Lands — while year three was successful, there were certainly those who were left that festival feeling like it lacked something. 

It felt like 2011 was different. There was a different energy.

Walking across the Polo Field toward the Speedway Meadow people-watching is a great barometer of that. And it was obvious every type of person and every type of flavor, made it out to the festival. There were fathers carrying their young children on their shoulders walking next to a group of hipsters from the Mission. Latinos, Caucasians, Asians; the young and the not-so-young, DeadMau5 fans and those there to see OK GO!

And there were enough flower-children to make the 1960s very proud – For a part of the country known for its diversity, there is no better way of symbolizing this than a festival like Outside Lands, which gets all these people in one place, together. 

Oh, and no San Francisco party would be complete without a cameo from the city’s most important celebrity, the 2010 World Series, trophy, which made an appearance at the Sports Lounge tent on Sunday. 

Even the most important San Franciscan, Mayor Ed Lee, could feel the energy. Lee walked out on the Lands End stage Saturday afternoon and proclaimed to the 60,000 people that Outside Lands was “here to stay forever.”

The prediction of a festival that will be exist as long as San Francisco does isn’t far-fetched though, given that the organizers of Outside Lands seem to have the correct equation figured out. 

Yes, forever would be a terrific thing.

Outside Lands — Julieta Venegas

After two very busy days of Outside Lands, my goal for Day Three was to chill, and write. Sunday was a solo mission with Matt and Heather out with previous engagements, but my focus changed a bit. I had gotten this idea to write a story about the Latina artists at Outside Lands and their impact on the festival. Key to this was an interview I thought I had locked in with Julieta Venegas. But that changed when that face time fell though. Color me bummed. I had the other two interviews I wanted, with Ana Tijoux and Ximena Sariñana, already done … so 2-for-3 isn’t bad. I focused my attention then, on Julieta’s show. Man, I love this woman.

This picture was lifted from the Outside Lands website, where you can go and get pictures from all the artists at Outside Lands. More of Julieta in particular can be found here. 

I’ve seen Julieta twice, once in San Francisco and another in Oakland, and I loved the Oakland show a little better — mainly because she was coming off of her Unplugged album, and the changes she made to the songs were awesome. Her set at Outside Lands was good, but short. When we got there at 3:45 for the show, the road crew was still setting up. And it wasn’t like, “we’re almost done,” they were a good 45% from completion. The show started about 20 minutes behind schedule, which forced a reduction in the song list. So, no “Andar Conmigo,” #HalfFail … but still, “Limon Y Sal,” “Lento,” “Me Voy,” and some from her new album “Brindemos,” y “Tan Original.” She finished her set with “El Presente,” … I recorded that one for you guys.

That’s right, the present is all we have, folks.

You know, Julieta is the kind of artist that will not blow you away with her voice — her vocal ability is satisfactory at best. But there is something terribly likable about her that I haven’t been able to peg. Maybe it’s her lyrics, or maybe it’s the fact that she comes across as genuine. Either way, her music boiled down is by the far the best way to enjoy it — I think that’s why her Unplugged album is my favorite. That’s who Julieta Venegas is … an unplugged artist. Gotta say, I love her very much.

Show done with, it was time to head back to the media tent to finish up my stories. To my pleasure, I got there right as John Fogerty was a couple of minutes into his set. I caught the majority of it as I typed. My time at Outside Lands then came to an end after downing another Heineken. I was off to the Greek Theater to catch Adele. If you have yet to read about my experience there (which was, unreal), you can click here. 

Outside Lands — The People

You’ll read this in the review (you will READ the review, right?!), but the best part of Outside Lands for me this year is the mixture of people. San Francisco is a special place. You don’t realize just how special until you get bits and pieces of everywhere in one location. My boy, Matt, and I were chatting about this a little when we were getting ready for The Roots. If it wasn’t for the spirit and energy brought by the people, the festival wouldn’t be a quarter of what it is.

Matt is all about capturing the human element of things. And we got really lucky at the tail end of The Roots’ set when Mother Nature herself provided him with some insane natural light. Here’s a thumbnail of what he was able to capture. If you want a better look at these shots, you can visit his website http://visualsbymethod.com/ … You can also stalk his ass on Twitter @methodikalgee … I heard he likes it. Thanks again for the help, Brother #HulkHoganVoice 

Outside Lands — Muse

The band the majority of people came to see at Outside Lands was the one-and-only Muse. And I have to say, while I might not be the biggest Muse fan, I couldn’t help but be impressed by their set at Outside Lands.

Picture above belongs to the awesome Heather Murtagh (and do I really have to repeat myself with the whole ‘copyright’ thing?). Muse didn’t waste any time puling out the big guns. Their first song was “Uprising,” still their biggest and baddest American hit. It was one of those, “You had me at ‘hello'” moments. I was way to fixated on enjoying the set to actually record the whole thing. But I did get the bridge. What you’ll see is my view from the media tent. I had just finished doing a slew of other stuff and decided that the view was best from there.

Somewhere in that sea of people, right up against the stage, was Heather, who got the task of shooting the show for the Daily Journal. I remember her telling me earlier in the day about some of her concerns revolving around lighting, shutter speeds, etc. etc. I told her bologna, that she’d be fine. And sure enough, we got some magic. She was super excited to get some great shots. Her photo was our feature for the review I filed for Monday’s edition. Good job, Heather! Here are some thumbnails of her work; click and you’ll be transported to the magical word that is the Daily Journal Facebook page.

 

Muse wrapped up a long day of coverage, albeit fun coverage. We were everywhere on Day Two. One more day, a less-hectic, but equally awesome day to go.

Outside Lands — II

I have labeled Day Two of Outside Lands 2011, “The Monster.” By far, it was our busiest day. Not necessarily because I’d be filing anything on this day, but because a lot of great stuff was happening on Day Two, and I wanted to hit up all of it. Three-person crew on Saturday, with Matt coming again and my girl, Heather Murtagh, grabbing a camera.

Yes, that would be Muse frontman, Matthew Bellamy, as shot by Heather Murtagh. As I mentioned before, all these shots belong to the photographer who took them, and come with the copyrights and all our special tracking devices. Don’t steal, man. Just email and we’ll be like, SURE. Go ahead. Anyway, the day started with a bang. I get there and I have have have to see Ana Tijoux. It was a must. Why? Because I heard she was awesome. Actually, the day before, while I was trying to confirm my interview with Julieta Venegas, I got ahold of her press contact at Nacional Records and he arranged for some interview time on Saturday. #Winning. And everything I had heard about Ana was right. Girl has got mad skills on the microphone. I tweeted plenty while I was catching her set, but to sum things up, Ana puts all current and most former female MCs to shame. Manaj, Brown, Kim, they really don’t have jack on Tijoux. Here’s a bit of her set (performing, “A Partir de Cero”), which was awesome.

I caught a nice chunk of that and tracked down my photographers. Heather was in the building, but Matt got HIT BY A FREAKIN’ CAR! He was on his motorcycle, details details details, the man is OK. But that sucks for his day. I told him to take care of business and get ready for The Roots, this was after we got some shots of Ximena Sariñana, another Latina artist I wanted to talk to — which was part of my plan (more on that later).

Ximena is another great Latina talent. After her set, giving Heather and Matt the game plan for their shoots and sending them on their ways, it was time to get ready for my interview with Ana Tijoux. I went to the media tent early, got a couple of texts and got my camera ready. The plan was to record the interview and post it on the Daily Journal’s Facebook page. And that would have worked great, were it not for OK GO! starting their set at the exact time that my interview with Ana started. Urgh. Actually, going back through the video after the fact, we would have been just fine because you can hear her clearly, but I got scared you wouldn’t be able to, so I switched to my audio recorder. Which was actually worse. FAIL. I got good stuff anyway, and Tijoux was a joy to talk to. Here’s us after the interview.

While chilling in the media area, Ximena showed up and her PR guy was kind enough to grant the Daily Journal a couple of minutes. She looked tired … actually, when I asked how she was doing, she kind of gave me look like, “umm, dude, how do you think I feel?” Oops. I asked for 60 seconds, I took 142. But she was fun to talk to. This is me, being a journalist.

Interviews out of the way, it was time to make a stop at the Heineken Domes (FOR THE MEXICAN INSTITUTE OF SOUND) and then march on over to the Twin Peaks Stage for The Roots. Did I mention I was super excited to see The Roots? Probably did, but worth mentioning again. Well, Matt didn’t send me any photos from our time at the Dome, but THE MEXICAN INSTITUTE OF SOUND was the shit. Those that know me know very well that I hate House music. It’s a waste of time and your ears would be better off listening to say, a lawn mower, or fingernails on a chalkboard. But the MIOS was terrific. They mixed and spun records that I have never heard before. If they’re ever in town, I’m going to see them again.

I’m going to cut this post off here, because The Roots and Muse deserve their own separate posts. So, Day 2 Part I is done with. Day 2 part II to come in the very near future.

Outside Lands — Preview

Wow. So, the real reason why I’ve been so MIA is because of Outside Lands, and the all work that went into making this year’s coverage the best we’ve done at the Daily Journal. We’ve covered the gourmet music festival the last three years, and I have to save, 2011 was the hardest we’ve hit. I took two photographers, did a preview, filed a story after day one, locked up a couple of interviews for a feature piece and turned in a review. And that was on top of running around Golden Gate Park trying to catch as much music as possible. Tired? Yes.

First, the preview and infographic — As is accustomed on this blog, click for a larger view.

The graphic was built at first to fit a 10×10 section of the Weekend Journal, which was slightly larger than what we ran in 2010. Remember that one? No? Click here. The thing was, the festival in 2011 was back to three days, so that meant we had to squeeze more into a relatively small amount of space. And I didn’t want it to be just a copy-and-paste job, re-inserting information from this year into last year’s graphic. But after doodling and tinkering, and doodling some more, I came to the conclusion that there was no way to do what I needed in the space. So, WE MUST GO BIGGER! And we did. I sent the guys from the Journal a peak and told them that we could run it page 1 of the Weekend Journal and run my preview on top and that they had to say yes because I would cry if they didn’t. Email had this attached:

I got an email a couple of minutes later from Jon Mays (AKA The Most Electrifying EIC in Newspaper Entertainment today) which simply read “yes.” OK. Good enough for me. As you can see, it changed, a lot. I reduced the size of the OL art on the bottom so I could include night show information, added more illustrative details, but kept the calendar (which I really dug for some reason). Draft one is complete on Tuesday, goes to the awesome Heather Murtagh for proofing the same day, gets a visual critique by the Production Team at the Daily Journal and is completed on Thursday for Friday’s edition. Somewhere in that process, I get to write a preview, and that thrown on top of the graphic. The finished product come out on Day 1 of Outside Lands.

I liked the end product. Oh …

Ok. With that out of the way, it was time for the ‘fun’ stuff. Don’t get me wrong, going to Outside Lands is different than working it. And we worked (pretty) hard at the Daily Journal.

 

Outside Lands announces line-ups

Hola amigos.

Outside Lands is just about a month away and the good people at the festival have announced the individual day line-ups. So for those of you planning to go on a specific day, to see a specific band, the wait is officially over. Time to start planning, planning for real for real. Click below for a larger view.

Fun times to be had all the way around. Also, OL has announced the Night Shows, which are always a great time.

Don’t be a dufus, buy a festival pass. It’ll be well worth it.

Outside Lands — The Lineup

UPDATE: Well, that answers my question: Foo Fighters are in Europe during these dates. Although, there is a gap where they could have flown over I guess. Yet, it’s a slew of dates across the ponds … so no can do

UPDATE: Random thoughts just by reading some of these tweets … There are happier people this year than last. The rumor mills had names like Foo Fighters and Radiohead floating around — either one of those names would have made this the best show ever. But make no mistake about it, PHISH fans will fill Golden Gate Park for sure.

I was a little disappointed not to the FF though, if I’m being honest. New album, touring, I thought maybe that was a shoe-in. Oh well. Great lineup. Can’t wait to get out there this summer.

UPDATE: Here’s your lineup for Outside Lands 2011. Couple of great surprises … and more to come they say. We’ll see. I’m glad the lineup is out early this year.

What do you guys think?

Well, the much anticipated line up for Outside Lands 2011 is about to be announced. You can follow the announcement on Twitter, Ranger Dave (the Outside Lands mascot/spokesperson) can be found at @sfoutsidelands — so yeah, today is the big day. I’ll be updating this post as soon as I hear anything and I’ll be following as well. You can follow me on Twitter too @julitolara …

Images and logos all belong to Outside Lands, I’m just using it for art. Don’t copyright infringe people, god will hate you.

It’s 8:29 … let the awesomeness begin already …

at 8:57 … ranger dave is @muse @phish @arcadefire @deadmau5 for Outside Lands. #SFOutsidelands

Looks like Phish will play two sets. The Black Keys are in. MGMT is in. Girl Talk is in.

The Decemberists … Erykah Badu … THE ROOTS …

My Latino influence this year is … JULIETA VENEGAS. I can live w/ that.

Big Boi is in the building as well.

Outside Lands — Line-up Announcement

… is this Monday, the 11th. They’ll be announcing it on Twitter. You can follow SFoutsidelands or Ranger Dave. Among the rumors I keep hearing (and note that these are just names that keep rising up over and over again):

• Phish • Muse • Black Keys • Foo Fighters • Kanye West • Radiohead • Coldplay (because they’ll be touring this summer apparently) … The possibilities are endless, but the pressure for OL to produce a great line-up is on. I’m keeping my fingers crossed they bring some decent Latino bands … Caifanes has done some festivals already and Mana does have an album out next week.

I’ve covered the last two, and look forward to another great summer of music. I’ll post the line-up on here once they announce it.