MAGNET’s Maureen Coulter reports from the 2012 Outside Lands Festival in Golden Gate Park.
In the past five years of its existence, the Outside Lands Festival has morphed into much more than a music festival. It has cherry-picked pieces of our culture—food, wine, comedy, art—and designed a San Francisco product that is hip and cool—but still appeals to the masses. Does that sound like some other Bay Area enterprise just a quick jaunt down Highway 280?
Outside Lands is on its way to becoming the Apple of music festivals. Its marketing alone was pretty genius: spoon-feeding fans bits and pieces of the lineup over social media and press releases as we all salivated for more, whipping up a frenzy that resulted in a sellout almost a week before the doors opened. As with customers of Apple, concert-goers are so hungry for the experience they are willing to fork over oodles of cash for items that would cost less anywhere else (even in San Francisco): $5 cups of black coffee, $40 parking 20 blocks away, $70 for thin (but really artsy and cool!) hoodie sweatshirts.
They sweat the small stuff, so we didn’t have to. After half a decade of maneuvering through all sorts of kinks, from parking to ticketing to congestion inside the festival, it seems that the concert organizers have got it down. Another thing I noticed: In three days, I did not see one festival-goer doing a Randy Travis and being escorted out by security guards. Everybody seemed to just be having a good time—probably because there were so many cool activities going on, the main focus wasn’t on getting obliterated.
That’s not even to mention the lineup, which was stuffed like a gourmet portabello sandwich at one of the venue’s 60-plus restaurant vendors. With aioli sauce. Big names like Metallica, Jack White, Stevie Wonder and Neil Young attracted a wide audience, while a multitude of up-and-comers like Tame Impala and Electric Guest impelled those same folks to download new albums on their iPods. Like Steve Jobs, Outside Lands knows what people want even if they don’t know it yet. I’ve already heard rumors that some parents have been converted to Skrillex.
On Friday, it was 90 degrees and blazing when I left my home an hour south in San Jose. By the time I reached Golden Gate Park, the comparatively arctic San Francisco wind and fog made me regret not bringing a winter parka and hand warmers. Yes, it was that cold. I pitied the fresh-faced Outside Lands virgins who wore flip flops and scanty H&M tops, who bull-rushed the merch stands stocked with sweatshirts once the evening acts came on.
I made my way into the park and checked out a musician who became popular long before MTV stopped playing music videos. The normally playful alt-rock troubadour Beck began his set in a mellow fashion, lulling the crowd with songs like acoustic ballad “Lost Cause,” before grabbing his electric guitar and leather-jacket swagger and jamming out “Gamma Ray” and “Where It’s At.”
Andrew Bird is the Michael Phelps of musicians. The classically trained warbler can deftly pluck a violin, play a xylophone and whistle simultaneously—then switch to strumming a guitar three seconds later. Even if you don’t appreciate his music, simply watching an artist at the top of his game, effortlessly performing his craft, is a masterpiece to behold.
I slipped in a little comedy that evening at the Barbary tent: Hot Tub with Kristin Schall, Kurt Braunohler and friends. True to the variety theme, they had a set from a juggler, who managed to be witty and hilarious while riding a seven-foot high unicycle and throwing sabers in the air—at the same time. The Barbary was legit: stained glass windows, wood paneling, bar booths that looked like something out of a fancy steak joint.
Early on Saturday I had a sit-down with electronic DJ MiMOSA (well, we sat on the back of a cart as we drove to the VIP area). The man, the myth. The Armenian-born California artist arrived at the interview sporting tinted aviators with a cigarette in one hand and a beer in the other—something that didn’t change unless he was pushing a button on his equipment during his performance onstage. When I watched his set a few hours later, even then he stepped away for about a 40 seconds to take a generous swig from a bottle of Patron he kept handy on the side of his equipment table.
The guy was energetic, I’ll give him that—gold chain swinging, arms thrashing, amping up the crowd with his glitchy beat-heavy remixes and dubstep, reflecting his background in the L.A. hip hop and Bay Area pysch-trance scene. He also gave hope to all of the 22-year olds living in their parents’ basement doodling with Frooty Loops. “At first, my parents were not so sure about my music,” MiMOSA said during the interview. “They were like: Oh no, our kid is a stoner and sits in his room all day listening to this weird trance stuff. We don’t know what he’s doing with his life! Now that I’m successful and making money, they think it’s great.” After taking that aforementioned pull from the Patron bottle during his set, he gave a shout-out to Mama MiMOSA, who happened to be in the crowd. Supportive indeed.
San Francisco-based threesome Geographer was one of the best bands in the Saturday lineup. The singer’s sweet-yet-powerful vocals were accented by burgeoning, throbbing bass and synth, as well as an electric cello. They sounded like a bit like Passion Pit if the frontman from Keane was their lead singer. A throng of multicolored heads and bodies in the crowd whirled to the looping vocals and synthesizer beats as the afternoon sun peeked out from behind the fog.
I headed back to the media tent to rest my legs in the late afternoon, and Explosions In The Sky was the perfect chill-out theme music for the occasion, the band’s electronic instrumental jamming a massage for my weary ears, which had just been assaulted by MiMOSA’s bass.
Several hours later I found myself loitering in the midst of a throng waiting for hipster favorite Passion Pit, which ended up being too much pit and not enough passion, as you would expect from the usually electrifying dance pop crew. I blame it on the Live 8-sized crowd, which muffled all sound and created an uncomfortable situation where I was involuntarily hot boxed by 40,000 people smoking California’s finest green and counting the hairs on the back of the person’s neck in front of me, watching a couple strobe lights blinking at the top of the Twin Peaks stage. It was enough to make me leave the festival to sit in my car, blasting “Sleepyhead” and remarking how pleasant it was not to be crunched like a used Beer Land plastic cup.
Outside Lands built up to Sunday like a Sigur Rós crescendo. It was easily the most crowded day, seeming to be at capacity by Franz Ferdinand’s set, which consisted of its usually lively thumping beats and Alex Kapranos-climbing-on-the-amplifiers guitar riffing.
Sunday afternoon’s highlight was youthful indietronica group Electric Guest, whose rabid fans sang along with all of their lyrics. A diverse set featured songs ranging from MGMT pop funk to Frankie Valley-type ballads infused with synthesizers and bass. Fans around me “flower-bombed” the crowd with petals and washed us down with an influx of bubbles emanating from bubble torches they were carrying—signifying the commencement of the Awesome Games.
Weaving through the array of costumed college kids, wine-sampling parental units, mustachioed hipsters and chattering families, I noticed everyone seemed to be wearing the same wide-eyed, toothy-smiled expressions. Before the lights went out in Golden Gate Park, I could hear festival-goers already talking about Outside Lands 6.0. And next year you can be sure they’ll deliver, just like that little company down the road.
More photos after the jump.
