Manu Chao/Radiohead at the Outlands Festival in Golden Gate Park!
This was a three-day festival at Golden Gate Park here in San Francisco. I believe it was the first large event to be held here and surprisingly it went smoothly despite the close to 60,000 people that turned out for the first day alone.
Manu Chao came on first in the main stage and I was able to catch most of their set. Live, they are super high energy, and somehow they integrate both reggae beats and ska/punk speed into all of their songs. I had seen them before in Prospect Park in Brooklyn about a year ago and it was sort of the same energy except way less people were jumping around like I was at this show.
It seems as though the festival was trying really hard to stay on schedule so when it came time for Manu Chao to get off stage, they were pretty much kicked out and the setting up for Radiohead started.
For years I had heard about how awesome Radiohead was in concert but never really made an effort to see them until this last album came out. Before leaving San Diego I had purchased some kick ass seats to the Radiohead concert for August 27 at the Cricket something or other theater but I couldn’t stick around San Diego just for the concert, so when I heard they were playing at the festival, I was as they say here in the west coast “stoked”.
Because I’m pretty petite and very polite, I weaseled my way to the front right of the stage and had a considerably great view of the show. I can get a pretty anxious in large crowds and just as I was starting to wonder if I should get out of the crowd and go somewhere a bit more open, Radiohead came out and I totally forgot about my anxiety. I was in kind of in a trance from that point on. Occasionally I’d look around at the crowd and it seemed like they were enjoying it as much as I was.
I was not only impressed by the quality of the sound (which left me deaf from my left ear for a few days) but the lighting worked so well with the performance! So beautiful! To my surprise they performed a song I hadn’t heard in years but remembered loving and playing on repeat when it came out on the Romeo and Juliet soundtrack. It was like buttah.
Sigh! What a great performance. Really, my hat goes off to Radiohead. I’m so glad I got a chance to see them perform this tour.
My favorite radiohead song too (talk show host) off the first cd I ever bought!
Go here for memories!: