Armed with a concentrated lineup of modern rock heroes and 70s throwbacks, Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival is looking to survive its gawky adolescent stage this weekend. As Grateful Dead devotees and cardigan-wearing teenagers spill out of the BART, the scaled-down festival, entering its third year in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, will still be figuring out its niche in the otherwise well-established Bay Area music scene. Think of this Saturday and Sunday as the fest’s soul-searching period: all the bands and elements of success are there, but whether they all gel after this weekend is another story.
How eco-friendly Outside Lands fits into the summer concert calendar is a work in progress. If Indio’s Coachella is a sunburned attention hog and the maturing Treasure Island is a soggy but lovable eccentric, then Outside Lands 2010, held in the heart of urban wilderness, is the newly-minted vegan sandwiched in between. It’s the type of festival that bills its headliners, wine menu and bike parking at the same height.
Surprisingly, up until 2007, music-rich San Francisco was still without a music festival to call its own. Noise Pop and Another Planet Entertainment whetted appetites with the creation of Treasure Island Music Festival in September of 2007, but floating off the Bay Bridge, TIMF never managed to inspire any homegrown pride. As beloved as TIMF has become, it hasn’t been the defining music event for the City by the Bay.
Cut to the other side of the Peninsula in August 2008. Another Planet Entertainment struck again, dropping big-name acts such as Radiohead, Ben Harper and Jack Johnson into the iconic park for the first Outside Lands, which drew in around 100,000 music and nature lovers. Though the event garnered a smaller attendance in its sophomore year, its sturdy lineup of Pearl Jam and Dave Matthews Band assured Outside Lands of its “annual” status.
For 2010, the festival has moved past survival to self-reflection and improvement. Unable to lock in an anchor act for Friday, organizers shaved off the third day early on, condensing the music and arts fest into Saturday and Sunday. The distilled schedule still packs a potent punch, though the identity of this year’s Outside Lands seems to be split between scenester indulgence and hippie-chic.
On Saturday, ennui-effusing indie-rock vets The Strokes are juxtaposed against Grateful Dead successor Furthur, featuring original Dead members Phil Lesh and Bob Weir. It’ll be an interesting mix of jaded and free spirits – expect to see hippies’ bare feet sharing turf with trendily-aged European leather shoes – a fitting combination for a city famous for both its Summer of Love roots and its Whole Foods-consuming yuppies.
Nevertheless, the central attraction of the festival, the music, promises to deliver on the sonic end. Furthur has the advantage of an excited, if a bit aged, hometown audience. And with a will-they-won’t-they fourth album in the works, the Strokes still enjoy superstar status, even after spawning multiple (and questionable) side projects in their three-year hiatus. Louisville rock natives My Morning Jacket, currently between albums, and now-sober belter Chan Marshall of Cat Power round out the rest of Saturday’s lineup.
They are followed up by Kings of Leon on Sunday, who are looking to finally escape all those pigeon references (unlikely, considered the arboreal nature of the park). The rock outfit may have broken into the mainstream, but fans of both early “Youth and Young Manhood” and commercial “Only by the Night” will roll out for their headlining performance.
Festival mainstays Phoenix, Social Distortion and Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros ensure that this year’s sound system will go out with a bang. A smattering of newcomers such as Freelance Whales, The Temper Trap and the Soft Pack have also been thrown in to satisfy the Bay’s indie tastes.
Equally committed to the arts end of Outside Lands, organizers this year have placed almost as much marketing weight on the wine and food offerings as the festival soundtrack. Attendees will have their pick of 33 restaurants and 26 vineyards to get a sampling taste of the Bay Area.
The vision for Outside Lands 2010 may be the experience of sipping local merlot out of a compostable wine glass on Speedway Meadow, with Phoenix strumming in the background. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
Tickets, which are “affordable” in this age of jacked up ticket monopolies, are still available. Proceeds go to the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department, which will have the joy of clearing out all those reusable bottles and once everyone clears out of Golden Gate Park on Sunday night.