Outside Lands 2015, best one yet

Outside Lands begins my favorite time of the year. It’s good weather in San Francisco, except in Golden Gate Park where it’s held, and there are plenty of fun things right around the corner. Treasure Island Music Festival, Beyond Wonderland & SF MusicTech to name three.

This year’s lineup for OSL is looking to be one of its best. I’ve compiled 12 of my favorites, not including Elton, D’Angelo, St. Vincent, Leon Bridges & Toro y Moi. Their SoundCloud presence is lacking and 8tracks doesn’t give us enough numbers to give a damn about dat.

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Below the playlist we have two highlights from the festival, Odesza’s set and meeting Toro y Moi.

ODESZA Set

The sun was shining bright Sunday afternoon, or as sunny as Golden Gate Park gets, and Odesza was playing at Twin Peaks. I had to run ahead of my friends to get a good shot, the place was packed. I managed to get my way up to the back of where the sound check was, the structure in the middle of the crowd, but still couldn’t get a good shot.

Once Sun Models started up I was hell bent on getting something good to show Madelyn (she sings on the track). So I went up to one of the security that was guarding the sound check and started stressing to her that I was part of the media and needed to get some shots there. She wasn’t sure if had the right credentials, so she ran to the front to ask someone else.

Now at this point I thought to myself, I have a 50/50 shot of her allowing me in and if I ran for it then at the least it would make for a good story, so I did. It was the last day and Odesza was the only duo left I wanted to see. I had already seen Elton John, even though it turns out his set was probably second best. His piano work especially. So I jumped the fence and booked it to the other side.

I got a few shots in and thought that would be good enough when the security lady came running up to me. She said she still wasn’t sure if I was allowed back there, so I told her someone else said it was ok, which wasn’t all untrue but definitely not the whole truth. To my surprise she said, oh ok, and let me keep on taking shots.

While standing around for the right timing, I got talking to someone else who had managed to make it in there. I started to tell her about what had happened when I looked down at her wrist and saw the same color wristband as mine. She told me she had just done the same thing.

Meeting Toro

I was talking with some friends in the media tent on Saturday when I looked to my left and saw Chaz Bundick, aka Toro y Moi, aka Les Sins. Never have I ever – let’s play that game – went up to anyone with any sort of celebritism and asked for a photo, but I am suuuch a fan of his side project, Les Sins, and thought it would make for a good story, a lot like the Odesza incident.

We talked about his appearance on Song Exploder and how much I appreciated his work on Les Sins and then my photo friend took a couple pictures. Then he had to go catch a golf cart to his gig <3 what a dream boat <3 Next time I I go up to someone I'm a fan of I'll take the time to pick their brain. That is what I'm suppose to do at these things. I just need to prepare next time! --- Oh, and about the picture I chose above, it's the better of the two. Let's just say I have a long track record of fucking up photos. Obviously I was going to screw it up in the most classical sense here.

Thanks to the photo man, Rudy Padilla.