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Life is a bit of an expectations game. If you're thinking filet mignon and they bring you a hamburger, you're going to be bummed. But if you're expecting gruel, and out comes a nice, juicy Niman Ranch burger, you'll probably be pretty stoked. I'd only been to one previous Outside Lands - the festival's 2008 bow that was plagued by poor organization, gate crashers, bad sound and generally bad vibes. Combine that with a 2010 line-up that had been cause for considerable grousing as well as one of the coldest SF summers in recent memory, and I was expecting wilted succotash.

I'm happy to report that I was wrong. This edition of Outside Lands was one of the better conceived and executed festivals in recent memory, with a line-up that may have lacked the big-ticket "wow" factor, but offered an immensely satisfying and more idiosyncratic take on modern music.

Day one of the third annual Outside Lands Music Festival has come to a close and I must say I have never felt more relaxed after a full day of sunshine (well ... clouds), stage-hopping, beer-guzzling (well ... wine tasting), picture taking, TP-stashing, and, most of all, straight up rocking. Maybe it was the cosmic noodling of San Francisco's legendary Phil Lesh and Bob Weir or the whiffs of herb blanketing the Polo Fields, but somehow I walked out of Golden Gate Park unfrazzled and without any desire to punch anyone.

This is one of the tamest music festivals I've been to. And that, my friends, is a good thing. What an improvement from Outside Lands' first year, when fences came ripping down and Radiohead's sound went out... twice. This year the capacity was a comfortable 60,000 and the lineup was diverse enough to keep the hip kids on one side (The Strokes) and the OGs on the other (Further).