Stevie Wonder headlined Sunday night and our correspondent "ugly cried for the entire set."
Santa Cruz Weekly reporters ventured to Outside Lands this year and brought back the low-down on some of the festival’s best performances and moments (more than we care to mention involved portable restroom facilities…OK fine, we’ll mention them). We solicited input from Bay Area music promoter Stephanie Fields, who leant her industry-wise expertise and made the rounds of the festival’s food and drink scene, which your trusty reporters avoided in lieu of the less expensive “backpack full of string cheese” diet plan.
In case you didn’t make it to the festival but still want to impress music-savvy friends, just reference one of these things:
1. A man waiting in line for the portable toilets with soaked shorts trying to drunkenly explain to his girlfriend that he didn’t need to use bathroom anymore.
2. Stevie Wonder’s pitch perfect medley of sing-along Motown classics and generally nostalgic, heart-warming performance (“I ugly cried for most of his set,” offers Fields.)
3. Sigur Rós’ ethereal, dreamy musical performance accompanied by engrossing, fluid visual effects. We wished we could fall asleep to it projected on our ceilings.
4. The BBQ Pork & Slaw Sandwich from Maverick was the festival’s blue ribbon meal. Fields is from North Carolina and her partner is from Tennessee, making them “unapologetically snobby about BBQ.” This meal passed the test with flying colors. Honorable food mentions go to Q’s Tater Tots and the beer-and-a-shot braised chicken tacos from Tacolicious.
5. Dispatch’s.html performance of “The General” to close out their set with a crowded sea of people jumping up and down and singing along.
6. A woman on her bicycle just outside the festival screaming Golden Gate park screaming “I love labia!” at the top of her lungs.
7. Jack White’s modern twist on old-timey classic blues sounds and progressions.
8. The thoughtful pairing of vastly different artists (Stevie Wonder and Skrillex, Metallica and Sigur Rós) playing at the same time but on opposite ends of the park, leading to very few Sophie’s Choice moments for festival-goers.
9. Excellent sound on the Land’s End main stage to make everyone from Regina Spektor to the Foo Fighters sound great.
10. The “flown-in-from Belgium” wonder that was The Barbary Stage: stained glass, mirrors, full bar and Neil Patrick Harris.
11. Seeing two girls go into one regular size porta-potty. Twice.
