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.
We’re still on Day Two of Outside Lands 2011. And without a doubt, the best set of the festival, in my humble (yet expert) opinion belonged to the one-and-only, the hardest working, the legendary ROOTS band from Philly, PA.
My boy,Matt, took a lot of great photos over the weekend, but this one with The Roots’ Black Thought (AKA Tariq Trotter) is my favorite one of the entire festival. This was my first time seeing The Roots, and I have to tell you, it was definitely an experience and a half. When we got to the Twins Peak Stage about 20 minutes before they were scheduled to perform, about half the Speedway Meadow was full, but 2-3 minutes in, and the crowd extended across the Meadow, ’till about 30 feet before the Panhandle Stage. I have no proof, but it was like, a quarter-mile worth of people.
And they put on an amazing set. Here’s a bit of their opening. I wanted to record more, but I was way more interested in enjoying the set.
Yeah, and that was just the beginning. There are very few bands that arguably, sound better live than when you listen to their records. The Roots are on that list. They are just so versatile and speak music, all forms of it, so fluently — it’s like listening to your favorite foreign language spoken in the most incredible accent you have ever heard … and falling in love over and over again. I feel that way about French.
Of course I had to put The Roots in my final review, and here’s what I wrote: 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.
There’s more to say, like, how super sick Captain Kirk Douglas in on the axe — The Roots did a rendition of “Bad To The Bone” which he completely killed, channeling the spirit of Jimi Hendricks (not that I ever saw Jimi, but I figured that is what people must have felt like watching him shred back in the day). And don’t get me started on ?uestlove. To me, he’s one of the freshest, most influential musicians on the planet. My musical round table/dinner with whoever I want ever would include him. Anyway, you can hop over to my boy’s Facebook page to see more photos, here are some thumbnails.
So we leave the Twin Peaks stage to upload photos, and get ready for MUSE. Oh yeah.
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.
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 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.
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.
Oh My July! 