Today marks the beginning of the inaugural Outside Lands music festival right here in my new stomping grounds of San Francisco. The festival, which is set in the historically hippie-tastic Golden Gate Park, is already on pace to become the next Bonnaroo (thanks to the same promoters) and I couldn’t be more excited to go see what the festival is all about. I’m already predicting a new institution out West and I’m feeling pretty confident this will fill my Lollapalooza withdrawal having lived so close to such a tremendous yearly music festival (that seriously killed it this year).
As much as I’d love to sit here and go through all the fantastic stuff I know I’ll be catching, I’m realizing that if you look at the festival lineup it’s easy to see who you’d want to hit or not. And really, given my recent mindset, I’m open to just about anything musically these days. The day will probably start with Steel Pulse, a band that Gadiel’s been trying to get me into for a while. From there, I imagine I’ll head over to Cold War Kids after I got mostly shut-out when they played Lollapalooza ’07. Then onto Benevento/Russo Duo, a band I’ve already seen twice this week (once at Mojito, then one at Google over my lunch hour — a perk I do not take lightly). Then Beck. Then Radiohead. Incredible.
For the fans at home, you’ll be able to follow along to a lot of the music from the comfort of your computer thanks once again to AT&T’s Blueroom. Follow their Twitter stream for live updates. I’ll be updating the Live Music Blog Twitter stream and Flickr photos as I go, and I’ll be looking for Some Dude from Hidden Track and the dudes behind Coventry: A Phish Blog as I know they’re both in attendance. I wonder who else I’ll run into, also.
I can’t wait. Stay tuned throughout the weekend for some updates and highlights.