The idea to put on a music festival in Golden Gate Park was always going to be an ambitious one. The Park’s nestled lawns amidst dense foliage provide a near-magical setting, but the constrains of bringing 17,000 fans into urban terrain and shuttling them to a single location were very real. Anyway, none of that matters because Radiohead was headlining. In the days leading up to the initial evening of the festival, they were all anyone, myself included, could talk about.

The first day of the festival (of three total) only began at 5PM, with each of the six stages hosting 2-3 acts. With a mildly heavy heart, I decided to forgo seeing Beck (and The Black Keys and Cold War Kids and Black Mountain) all together in the hopes of camping out for a good spot at Radiohead. It worked, much to Beck’s chagrin, but I was forced to sit through an hour long Manu Chao set before the British titans of postmodern alternative music sauntered their way onto stage. Chao is a legend of western-influenced latin music, but his performance was marred by inadequate sound mixing and painfully monotonous songwriting. The majority of his songs were punctuated by tired fist-pumping, semi-anthemic latin quasi-punk and very average musicianship. I know the man is revered in latin speaking countries, but I figure it has to be more for his persona and reputation than his music. Chao’s performance wasn’t offensive at all, it just offered nothing remotely exciting, despite the diminutive frontman’s effervescent energy.

Radiohead, either in congruence with, or despite the hype, put on one of the best shows I have ever been privileged to see. The sound was immaculate. People often hope that a band sounds as good as they do recorded, but Radiohead live were even better. The set contained the majority of their new album In Rainbows and a liberal sampling of their older material totaling almost two hours of music.

The festival’s youth was exposed on a grand scale as the sound cut out twice during their set. The mercurial Thom Yorke, however, seemed largely nonplussed and the show went on without so much as a hiccup from the band themselves. They opened with the rollicking (but simultaneously soothing) first track off their new record, 15 Step, and closed with the classic Everything in it’s Right Place and everything in between was indicative of a band that is unabashedly defining musicality and able to perch soundly on the pedestal that so many of us have placed them on. Yeah, yeah, the new album isn’t as amazing as the preceding ones, but had any other band put out In Rainbows, I’d probably be fawning over it. I just have high expectations for what I feel to be the most important band in operation right now. Radiohead was the undisputed heavy-hitter of the headliners, with respective counterparts Tom Petty and Jack Johnson failing to capture the imagination of many festival-goers. But then, more about that tomorrow.

Story by Jemayel Khawaja.