This weekend, 100,000 people gathered in Golden Gate Park to partake in San Francisco’s largest and most anticipated music festival – Outside Lands. While the amount of Heineken, wine, oysters, fried macaroni and cheese consumed was staggering (at least in our experience) – the music can be summed up as being the kind of next level amazingness that was M.I.A.’s tiger/leopard/Minnie Mouse outfit. [Check out our photo gallery from Outside Lands and see M.I.A.'s outfit for yourself, thank us later].

With unseasonably HOT temperatures on Friday, the people of San Francisco were out in full form – nearly naked and in unbelievable spirits. Bay Area natives - The Dodos took the stage at Sutro around three – about when everyone who had to work the first half of the day finally told their bosses that the combo of sun + live music > spreadsheets. Aside from supporting the local talent at Outside Lands, we took it upon ourselves to support the old school talent too and we took a walk over to Twin Peaks stage to see Q-Tip dig deep into Tribe’s catalogue and dedicate his set to DJ AM [check out a video of Q-Tip at Outside Lands]. After our fill of hip-hop we made the trek to the Lands End stage where the main event was going down with Pearl Jam. Unlike last year, festival-goers could actually find a patch of grass, drink their beer and listen to Eddie Vedder’s swoonable voice; the “light is right” indeed.

Saturday continued San Francisco’s bout of weather bliss and we’re pretty sure the Panhandle solar stage’s sound was infinitely better on Saturday than on Sunday when the sun couldn’t be found. Or, was it just the talent that woo’ed us? Portugal. The Man. [click here for a video of Portugal. The Man. from SPIN] followed by a mesmerizing set from British vixen Bat For Lashes [click here to see a clip from Bat For Lashes from SPIN]. Since we couldn’t be everywhere at once we caught the first half of TV on the Radio’s layered set and then walked over the hill and through the windmills (helping us to not feel as bad about all that fried mac n’ cheese we just ate) to see a little bit of Fergie in the flesh at Black Eyed Peas. Since we didn’t feel like we’d be doing a little justice to our high school years we couldn’t help but stick around for Dave Matthews Band. After seeing him cover Neil Young, Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” and playing a twenty-minute version of “Lie in Our Graves” we’ve gained a new appreciation for the band’s following. [Click here to see a video of Dave Matthews Band at Outside Lands].

Although the weather wasn’t cooperating, there was absolutely NO reason anyone should have stayed home from the festival on Sunday. Cage the Elephant woke us all up on the Twin Peaks stage followed by a lyrical set from Atmosphere. Meanwhile awe-inspiring Robert Randolph and the Family Band played the Lands End stage. After stopping at the Winehaven ($2 for a hefty wine-tasting, anyone?) to get warmer we caught The Dead Weather’s energy-laden set and we’re pretty sure Jack White played every instrument at his disposal. [Click here to see a video of The Dead Weather via YouTube's Live Stream at Outside Lands] Cut to M.I.A.’s stage-presence complete with fluorescent suited back-up dancers and singers and a Paper Planes encore and you’d think you’d be able to call it a day. Fortunately Outside Lands and Superfly didn’t think that was enough for Sunday and Band of Horses worked through a soulful set on the Sutro stage while Ween commanded a youthful crowd in a two hour set at Twin Peaks. That’s not all though, Tenacious D was closing it out and we had to at least catch Jack Black and Kevin Glass for a little rock opera and stunt-doubles (did Jack Black really just do five roundoffs?) Great, that’s what we thought because that pretty much sums up our feelings about the weekend: pure musical bliss.