Already exhausted from the Friday and Saturday’s festivities, I entered Outside Lands on Sunday afternoon with a long checklist of acts to see.

But first, I checked out the Beatles Rock Band tent, which was pretty fun. There were three stations where people could play the game. It looked like a potentially awesome party game. The tent was filled with cushy ’60s retro furniture, shag rugs, and groovy decor. I got a free t-shirt!

But I couldn’t stay long. Off I went to see an indie pop quartet called the morning benders who hail from none other than Berkeley, California. I enjoyed their brief, breezy set of fresh-faced guitar pop. Their new song “Cold War” was particularly good.

The morning benders. Skyler Reid/staff.

Then I caught another local artist’s set. John Vanderslice, from San Francisco, put on a sleek performance. He had a crack band in his employ, which featured upright bass, vintage keys and bass clarinet. His music was smart, tasteful pop/rock with an ear for clever arrangements and acute song craftsmanship; the closest approximation I could muster would be a mellower early Elvis Costello. (Click here to read more…)

In addition to the Thursday print column, “Painting with Thought” will have a weekly multimedia portion, Sundays on this blog. This is intended to enhance the experience, like ginger in a wok.

This week, I will recommend a few choice fan fictions for your reading pleasure.

Harry Potter
“Harry Potter meets the King of the Monsters” by DJ Rodriguez:
This is a new HarryHarem fanfic. Harry and some special ladies go to take a vacation in Japan… and meet someone that could make even Voldemort shudder in fear. (31,152 words)

Pirates of the Caribbean
“False Identity” by Divinething:
Finished Michelle is a poor girl barely making a living in Tortuga until she meets Jack Sparrow and decides to dress up as a man and join the crew of the Black Pearl. (18,162 words)

The DaVinci Code
“Secrets in the Stones” by Lews-Therin-Telamon:
Robert Langdon is again dragged into another mystery, this time in Cairo. Surrounded by conspiries and murder, he finds an answer to a mystery that has been over ten thousand years in the making. (1,291 words)

Enjoy. I’ll see you next week!

Raphael Saadiq: The feel-good vibe of this set could not be beat. The sun was shining, the music was terrific, and crowd-batted beach balls were in abundant supply. Saadiq, a funk-influenced R&B singer with a collaborator list as long as he is tall (star singers he’s produced songs for include The Roots, John Legend, and Whitney Houston), ripped up the stage with the help of a full backing band. Generous doses of funk and soul kept up an impressive live show energy. In between numbers, Saadiq extolled the good great value of music and its role in keeping him from derailing in his youth, which he spent in the poorer parts of Oakland.

Suits were shed. Bawdy songs about sex were sung. And life was good.

(Click here to read more…)

My second day at Outside Lands was way more jam-packed than the first, so I’ll get straight into it.

First I saw local hip-hop act Zion I. The Oakland-based group (consisting of core members DJ AmpLive and MC Zumbi) kicked the day off right even though they had an unflattering early time slot working against them. Live and programmed beats laid a solid foundation for layers of dark, spacey synths and soulful singing. Zumbi laced these infectious beats with some savvy rhymes and catchy choruses, especially on highlights “Antenna” and “Coastin’.” They gave off a positive energy that got my groggy self pumped up for the rest of the day.

(Click here to read more…)

I’m not going to have too much to talk about tonight, as I only caught the last three hours or so of Friday’s Outside Lands 2009 festivities. Which brings me to a brief aside … If you’re a UC Berkeley professor, let me humbly suggest that if a class is scheduled from 2:00 to 4:30, then I think it’s reasonable to ask that the class be over by 4:30; and it probably shouldn’t approach anywhere near 5:00. Because scenarios like this cause people to miss 90 percent of Q-Tip’s set, which, judging from the last portions of closer “Life is Better,” was probably pretty cool.

Needless to say, I was bummed that I only got a fleeting glimpse of Q-Tip and his band. But with a complimentary Monster beverage keeping me in artificially high (and somewhat jittery) spirits, I headed on optimistically to Tom Jones’ set that started at 6:50 on the Sutro stage.

Tom Jones at Outside Lands. Skyler Reid/staff

Tom Jones was exactly what you’d expect him to be–super cheesy, oozing machismo and totally charismatic. His band, though not terribly original, was tight, funky and glitzy in a good way. The horn section added some Vegas-style showiness while the back-up singers provided fullness and drama. Meanwhile, Jones belted out his strong and huge signature baritone while gyrating his hips in that simplistic, trademark way of his. Panties predictably flew on stage in response to this crowd-pleasing display cartoonishly masculine sleaze. (Click here to read more…)

Well, shoot. You didn’t think the Daily Cal’s esteemed arts blog would go the weekend without dusting off its megaphones and raising a hullaboo about that one music festival that’s sweeping through town, did you?

Outside Lands, currently warring with SoCal’s Coachella and the transbay Treasure Island Music Festival for the vaunted title of ‘it’ music powwow in all of the land (read: California), kicked off in Golden Gate Park today. With an expected attendance of 100,000 over the three day festival, the city’s expecting to make some two million bucks off the event. The Daily Cal braved 90-degree weather and the noxious smell of Porta Potty slurry to watch Incubus’s Brandon Boyd battle a throat cold and women on six foot stilts go gaga over Kinky’s celebratory funk-rock.

Bassist Ben Kenney of Incubus. Skyler Reid/staff

Akron/Family: No strangers to reverb, these. Folksy folk Akron/Family know how to work up a crowd — not as easy as it sounds, with the temperatures climbing and the audience dozing in scores from the heat. This was hearty, homespun music, very meat and potatoes. The band aren’t afraid to break it down, either: One of the set’s longest tracks rounded out to some ten minutes of straight riffing. Also included: head-banging, piccolos and enthusiastically rattled bean gourds. (Click here to read more…)

Welcome to the first installment of a weekly feature called “Off the Beaten Track.” My goal here is to give some exposure to music that goes under-represented in the blogosphere. I could’ve used this space to regurgitate what bigger, more influential blogs are hyping up, but what’s the point?.  I won’t be adding yet another voice to that endless echo chamber of over-exposure and empty hype. Pitchfork, Stereogum, and other heavy-hitting music blogs often act like jazz, roots music, modern classical, and just plain unclassifiable music don’t exist or isn’t worth covering. “Off the Beaten Track” will be a space for the good stuff out there everyone else ignores.

This inaugural post is about the latest album from jazz pianist Robert Glasper called Double Booked. It opens with a message left on Glasper’s cell phone from a jazz club owner. He has Glasper’s acoustic trio (featuring Vicente Archer on bass and Chris Dave on drums) booked to play his club that night. But he’s irked by suspicious rumors he’s heard that Glasper has been booked on the same night to play with his other group, the more electric and hip-hop fusion prone Robert Glasper Experiment (featuring Derrick Hodge on electric bass, Chris Dave again on drums, Casey Benjamin on alto sax and vocoder, and guest appearances from rapper Mos Def and singer Bilal). The first half of the album then kicks in. The five tracks that follow feature the acoustic trio improvising around complex melodic and rhythmic figures that hint towards hip-hop beats and R&B textures. (Click here to read more…)

Tomorrow, Shattuck Cinemas will begin showing “It Might Get Loud” by director Davis Guggenheim, who also directed and produced the Academy Award-winning “An Inconvenient Truth.” The film focuses on three guitarists you might have heard of: the Edge (U2), Jimmy Page (the Yarbirds, some other band that doesn’t actually title all of their albums) and Jack White (the White Stripes). You can read the full Daily Californian review online here.

The showtimes for Shattuck Cinemas are (2:15), (4:40), 7:00 and 9:25. Parentheses denote matinee showings.

“It Might Get Loud” Trailer [YouTube]

As previously reported on this blog, Memphis, TN, punk kid Jay Reatard played a free show at Berkeley’s Amoeba Records on Aug. 22, right in the midst of Move-In Weekend. His set included newer tracks like “It Ain’t Gonna Save Me,” “Faking It,” “An Ugly Death” and “I’m Watching You,” as well as Blood Visions faves including “Greed, Money, Useless Children,” “Oh It’s Such A Shame” and “Not A Substitute.” Jay and his band head-banged and yowled through the tracks in around half an hour. Jay’s hair was in his face the WHOLE TIME. For the final song, he handed his guitar to a nonplussed member of the audience and proceeded to stand up on a CD bin and shout the last couple verses. (Click here to read more…)

Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds,” starring Brad Pitt, opened today at both Shattuck Cinemas and California Theatre--you know, so people living on the other side of the block can see it too. You can expect a review of it this coming Monday from the Daily Cal, so keep your eyes peeled and julienned.

The showtimes for Shattuck Cinemas are (12:50), (4:00), 7:20 and 10:20. The showtimes for California Theatre are (12:30), (3:40), 7:00 and 10:00. Parantheses denote matinee showings. (Click here to read more…)