Outside Lands, Saturday

I woke up a little discombobulated this morning, but ready to jump out of bed and prepare for another day of music. The sun continued to shine all through saturday and having very little shady spots in the festival got tricky. We arrived early, I guess festival volunteers and security had some big meeting on how to give people a hard time because the security was close to being in an airport. I hear that by 3pm when the crowds arrived they were barely opening bags anymore and meanwhile I was harrassed for having water in my water bottle and a personal camera with a questionable size zoom. The ID check people also requested that we remove our sunglasses for an accurate comparison of face-to-license. It's ironic that after all of that they always give you that American smile and say "Have Fun!" By now I am wishing I lived in Europe.

Moving on we tried to forget about our experience entering the festival and headed over to see Albino! Joe had seen them before, and wanted me to go, they were really upbeat, fun, and easy to move to. It was a great musical start to the day. We hung out by the same stage to watch Nortec Collective, a musical ensemble from northern Mexico blending electronica in the nortec ("norteño" + "techno") style. They sounded interesting and it was really cool when the beats picked up. We unfortunately had to leave that set about halfway through as we were trying to make it across the festival for Tom Morello's new band, Street Sweeper Social Club. I was a little disappointed with that, Tom Morello rocks my world but it was impossible to understand a word out of the vocalist. Then they sang that MIA song and I just thought that was a little lame. Rage would never have done that!

After Street Sweeper we took a break to have some grub. We split a half-dozen BBQ oysters from Hog Island and truffle fries from Eos. We thought about doing some wine-tasting but the ticket lines were way too long. The whole concept of needing tickets for the Wine Haven is an annoyance, I wish they would just have the vendors deal with cash.

Our next band was Mastodon, Joe's choice, but I happily compromised by having us watch them from afar under the shade of a tree, my shoulders were burning by now. They were loud but sounded good. Joe enjoyed it and he's the fan, so it doesn't really matter what I think! After they were done we moved up closer to secure a spot for TV on the Radio. This stage is next to the entrance and I could see people were packing in. Today was so much busier than yesterday, the lines are longer, porta's stinkier, and moving around isn't as easy. TV on the radio came out and played mostly songs from the new album, and then their hit "Wolf Like Me" which I always thought would be so fun live and they butchered it. He was screaming the lyrics incoherently and it just sounded bad. We left after this song terribly let down.

We make a quick stop for dinner at Taylors in the wine tent and shared a Caesar Salad and a pulled pork sandwich. Each was $5 and by far the best deal we've encountered so far, not to mention both were really tasty. The salad was cleverly served in a tall plastic cup which was pretty handy. We watched about 10 minutes of Deerhunter over dinner before heading over to the Polo Field.

Once again, we were transported to the 90's through Dave Matthews, except just in theory because I didn't know a single song for the first hour and a half (and I was a fan back in the day). They can still keep an awesome jam going, and I just love to watch Boyd Tinsley play the violin. We ended up leaving a little over two hours into it, I was just hoping to hear one of my favorites but it didn't look promising. My only Saturday regret is I wish we had made it to Os Mutantes...