The final day of the second annual Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival turned out to be more about who wasn’t on the bill than who was.
The Beastie Boys – which were originally set to headline Sunday’s show at the Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, but had to bow out when vocalist Adam Yauch was diagnosed with cancer – were definitely missed. People were even talking about how M.I.A., the main support act on Sunday, had “tweeted” about how disappointed she was about the Beasties’ absence, and that was none too thrilled about the fill-in headliner, the comedic-rock duo Tenacious D.
M.I.A., however, should have been more concerned with her own set. The one she ended up delivering was dreadfully incompetent. She lacked direction onstage, stalled for time and, in general, put on a set seemed to turn off as many fans as it turned on. Yet, this wasn’t just M.I.A. putting on a half-hearted gig because she missed the Beasties – it was, as I’m beginning to understand, her regular operating procedure. Local fans should know that M.I.A.’s Outside Lands gig was only marginally worse than what she put on earlier this year at Coachella.
In all, the Sunday show felt anticlimactic, which was a shame given what happened over the previous two days. And that wasn’t the fault of Tenacious D, which worked hard for fans’ money. It was just that the day was lacking in other ways – most troublingly, a legitimate headliner like the festival hosted on Friday (Pearl Jam) and Saturday (the Dave Matthews Band).
Even some of the usually reliable names on the bill, including Modest Mouse, seemed to limp their way through their sets.
I chose to watch Modest Mouse instead of Dead Weather – with seven stages going throughout the day, no one can catch everything worth seeing. That may have been a mistake since I had some people telling me Jack White’s latest project put on a tremendous outing. Or, maybe not, since others gave Dead Weather thumbs down. I am still intrigued enough to hope that Dead Weather comes back through town. (I also missed Calexico, which was scheduled during that same Modest Mouse/Dead Weather time frame – it’s really not fair that the three acts I most wanted to see at Outside Lands on Sunday were onstage at the same time.)
I did see John Vanderslice, the Avett Brothers, Matt & Kim, Band of Horses and Atmosphere, yet none of those sets were overly impressive. On the upside, at least I got to see those acts – which is the true benefit of a multi-stage festival like Outside Lands.
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