Outside Lands 2015 Recap

Hundreds of thousands of people gather at a music festival in a 1,000 acre park to explore another planet together. 

Earth looks like this:

Planet Outside Lands looks like this:

Earth like this:

Another Planet like this:

Planet OSL harbors an odd sense of community amongst the array of freaks, fashionistas, bros, hippies, grandparents, goths, ravers, toddlers, medieval knights and artists. Wear whatever the hell you want and be whoever the hell you want to be! 

Dilated peoples wander around hundreds of yards of graffiti-tagged walls while sounds emanate from every direction. "Turn Left, and you will see Kendrick Lamar captivating seas of people," your internal voice beckons, "or make a U-Turn and within twenty seconds you will be hearing The Black Keys wail to thousands...and don't forget, Elton John's playing too."  

I did not go into Friday with any great expectations for Mumford & Sons. Instead I spent the day listening to Leon Bridges and Glass Animals in an entirely too-packed Sutro stage (which was the most poorly chosen location for almost every single artist that played there as the sound was not capable for such large crowds), and then St. Vincent, First Aid Kid, and Wilco (they ended with my favorite Wilco song, "Impossible Germany!") tore up the main stage before Mumford came on.

Surprisingly, I was more impressed with Mumford & Sons' performance than any other act all weekend. I still think their new album mostly falls flat, but the good/great songs are REALLY good live, specifically "The Wolf," "Believe," "Tompkins Square Park," and "Ditmas." Their recent album may be looked back on as a bit disappointing, but if it leads to three or four songs that they can continually play at concerts until they're as old as Elton John, I say that's a success.

Saturday's highlight was Kendrick Lamar. I'd seen him back at Austin City Limits two years ago and was not overly impressed. But after two years of touring and being anointed one of rap's saviors, the man has learned to command the stage. Lamar relied heavily on his classic album, good kid, m.A.A.d. City, but for good reason. The crowd went nuts for "Backseat Freestyle," "Bitch, Don't Kill My Vibe," and "Swimming Pools (Drank)," singing along to every chorus.

Tame Impala - the band I was most excited to see - drew a huge crowd and gave a performance that was a bit spotty. The band had sound problems in the beginning of the set that clearly took away from "Let It Happen," and Kevin Parker's vocals were a bit too low and pitchy for his ethereal incantations to float fully through the crowd. Nonetheless, it was great to hear their new tracks (Let It Happen, The Moment, Eventually, and The Less I Know The Better) and "Elephant" has become a track this will forever pump the crowd into a frenzy.

Sunday ended as any great festival should end - Elton John in a sequined blue sparkling onesie. The guy opened with "The Bitch Is Back," need I say more!? He played all of his hits, "Tiny Dancer" and "Rocket Man" were a perfect backdrop to the end of a three day festival. People of all ages gathered around and sung at the top of their lungs as Sir Elton slammed away on the keys. It's amazing that the guy still has the dexterity in his fingers to play such intricate solos on the piano. I'm so glad that I got to see him (and arguably the best part of his act: after each song, he would rise from his bench and implore the crowd to make more noise and applaud him! When the crowd obliged, he would put his fists together like a boxer and and do one big thrust towards the crowd - hilarious)!

At points during the festival, I felt like I was aging out of these three day romps, but then I would feel the energy of the crowds and the music, the goodwill of the people, and the overall community that festivals bring to the forefront. All of our Earth's duties and dailies disappeared in the shade of Golden Gate Park while the wind swept through the clouds of smoke and laughter. We were fenced in, all of our insecurities secure in this weird world, our love of music trumpeting through the fields.

And I think...maybe one more year.

Monday Mixtape, Vol. 16

It is the week of San Francisco's music festival, Outside Lands, so I though it'd be appropriate to throw some of the songs I am MOST excited to see live. As the link above proves, there's a lot of acts coming through this weekend ranging all sorts of genres as this playlist would suggest. I also made an Outside Lands Playlist if you need a warmup playlist to get accompanied to all the great bands!

I imagine you could guess which act I am most excited to see: Tame Impala. This will be a very cool show because they haven't performed many times since their new album was released a few weeks ago. "The Less I Know the Better" is another great track from an album I'm loved and wrote about at length.

It will be interesting to see Kendrick Lamar. I saw him at Austin City Limits two years ago and was left underwhelmed. But two years is a long time for a young performer to hone his craft. If his performance from the BET Awards is any indication, he may put on a great show. "Fuck Your Ethnicity" is my favorite Kendrick track. Would LOVE to hear this.

For a couple years I have tried to see St. Paul and the Broken Bones because of their sound and reputation as a great live band. Even though they have an early slot on Sunday (1:40), I can't miss them! "I'm Torn Up" showcases their great tempos and the striking and powerful voice of Paul Janeway.

I've listened to Mumford & Sons new album a number of times now. I still can't really get behind it. All of the songs sounds pretty similar and are watered-down versions of Coldplay at their best (around A Rush of Blood to the Head). I mean "Believe" is the same song as "Fix You," though you could argue "Fix You" is just a rip off of U2... That being said, I still hold hope that they can put on a great festival show. They make drinking songs that people want to scream out at the top of their lungs, and I'm hoping they give the crowd what they want. 

D'Angelo is a genius recluse who hadn't made an album in something like 15 years, so it's damn important to see a guy like this when you have a change. 

My vote for best dance party is split between Hot Chip and Classixx. I'm hoping Classixx gets the crowd amped, and if "All You're Waiting For" is any indication, I'll be jumping around for the majority of the set. They have a fun, frenetic sound. 

ELTON JOHN. I have no idea what to expect. But someone who can slay the piano will win the hearts of many. Couple that with the fact that it's Elton John, I think it's safe to say that it will be a memorable way to close out the weekend!

Playlist - The NeverEnding Story: Favorite Current Tracks

I stopped updating this playlist once I started this blog, but I stumbled upon it today and started listening to it again. There were so many great tracks I had forgotten about (like "Quiescent" by The Underachivers, so good!), and it was a great trip down memory lane. I need to keep this playlist going.

The idea of the playlist is pretty simple: I update it every few weeks with my favorite tracks, the cream of the crop! "But wait," you are undoubtedly asking, "don't you do that on Mondays?" No silly, the tracks on Mondays aren't my FAVORITES, they're tracks that I'm digging and think are unique, but many of them won't even make it onto my Top 100 Songs of the Year playlist (coming year end!). 

The tracks on NeverEnding will certainly make the Top Songs list assuming it's a song from this year. (Truth alert: every once in a while, I'll sneak in a song I just discovered that may have been released...a year or two ago!).

So all this jabber is to let you know that I'm continuing this playlist! It's a great barometer for me to look back and see what I was loving at that time and date. And these are damn good songs! My most recent additions are at the end of the playlist and works backwards to when I started it in August 2013.

So kick back and enjoy some tunes! 

Monday Mixtape, Vol. 15

Happy Monday all!

Monday Mixtape, Vol. 14

In lieu of putting any tracks from Tame Impala's album, here's a mix of all sorts of genres: we got folky pop (Civil Twilight), FUNK (Thundercat), indie rock (EZTV), electronic (Jamie xx), R&B (Miguel), electro-pop (Cannons), singer/songwriter (Dave Monks from Tokyo Police Club!), and whatever the hell TiRon & Ayomari are creating (which is at the very least awesome and interesting).

I'm hoping to get my Tame Impala review up this week, I've been listening to the album relentlessly for the past week or so, and I feel like there's so much to say about it. Stay tuned!

New Album Alert - Tame Impala

Tame Impala's third album, Currents, has been released today! I've been streaming the album all week through NPR and will be writing up a glowing review shortly.

Stop reading this and get listening!!  

The Silent Majority

As with all things, the Internet has helped to flatten hip-hop — more artists and styles are available to more people, obscurity is a relic, subcultural allegiance can quickly become pop fandom.

- Jon Caramanica, "Vince Staples and J. Cole, Outsiders in the Middle of Hip-Hop," New York Times, July 9, 2015.

Years ago, there were severe categorizations of rap that artists rarely overcame - Talib Kweli and Common preached conscious rap, Dilated Peoples' and People Under the Stairs worked the underground, Nas, Biggie, and Jay-Z as the kings of gangsta rap on the East Coast, and Tupac, Dr. Dre, and Snoop sat on their throne out West. No one really veered outside of their lane. But now, Caramanica interestingly argues, the highway of rap has no lanes, and artists take whichever route they want. Drake, for example, is "an omnivore and a chameleon who never met a target demographic he couldn’t appease, or an Instagram post for which a lyric of his wouldn’t make the perfect caption. He’s post-region, post-era, post-ideology, post-genre." It's the post-label era of rap.

In this post-label era, we have a mix of musicians, such as Kendrick Lamar, Vince Staples, and J. Cole, who despite selling a lot of albums "have been largely shut out of hip-hop's celebrity class" because they don't particularly cater to the ostentatious and moneyed. But by creating music their own way, these guys are being rewarded financially and critically for it. "Their staunch commitment to traditionally underground sentiment has turned out to be lucrative," Caramanica writes, "and also necessitates a rethinking of where hip-hop’s current center of power and influence actually resides."

Kendrick Lamar is one of the highest selling artists in rap, selling upwards of 2 million records from his last two albums, yet he has never had a single in the Billboard Top 10. He's come nowhere close to that with any track on his new album. This is a plus for those like me that devalue singles and hits and place more emphasis on the originality and genuineness of an album and artist. Listen to Vince Staples arresting and ominous debut album, Summetime '06, and you will not hear one hit single; instead, you'll hear an album delicately prepared and exquisitely rapped. You'll hear a story and picture life in the eyes of a man expressing himself for himself and not the money or fame.

Although Caramanica's article speaks only of rap, the Internet has helped to flatten all music to provide more artists and styles to more people. Obscurity is a relic across all genres and the underground can become pop within days. The ubiquitous presence of music in our lives is a fortunate byproduct of technology. I can listen to a teenager in Ireland writing somber melodies, an artist from Atlanta creating strange and incomparable rap, a singer/songwriter composing orchestral anomalies, and any other millions of songs, some terrible, some inspiring, all from my couch. If it wasn't for Spotify, I would never have started this blog and certainly could not have listened to 101,976 minutes of music in 2014.

This democratization of music, the ability to hear almost anything in the world with the stroke of a few buttons, has eliminated anonymity. Even more important, the ability to create music is easier than ever. If someone is truly an amazing talent, he or she won't die undiscovered. That's not possible anymore. It's refreshing to know that brilliance will be discovered but also odd that our unknown musical geniuses are fossils buried in plots around the world.

The majority of music is now out there for consumption, silent and undiscovered for hours, days or months, instead of years or lifetimes. Technology, for all its pro and cons, has brought music and artists to our doorstep.

Knock, knock.

Playlist - Wait...Rock? Vol. 2

In my first playlist of this series, I worried that rock had died the day of Kurt Cobain's suicide. Fortunately, there's been a wave of new bands bringing rock back to the forefront. These bands continue to pop up and rock out.

Almost every band on this playlist has only released one album (and the Wavves/Cloud Nothings collaboration technically counts as their first album!), so it's primarily brand new stuff!