2008's Five Best Summer Festivals

The road doesn't really go on forever, and the trip back from Austin City Limits marked the final leg of our summer festival spree. In the past three months, Pete and I have spanned more than 20,000 miles in North America, attempted to see the best of some 600 bands, braved twelve-hour days under the scorching hot sun, and nearly wanted to kill ourselves -- and a few especially crappy Canadian drivers --after sitting in three-hour traffic in Whistler, BC.

Don't get me wrong. It was a pretty incredible way to spend a summer, and we were definitely spoiled: In addition to getting to hang backstage, where there's plenty of beer to guzzle and rock stars to ogle, we got to see Radiohead three times, Beck three times, Tom Petty twice, and one stupendous performance from Rage Against The Machine. And though all eight of the major events we attended this summer will always hold a special place in our hearts, we are not Dick Van Patten, and we don't mind choosing favorites. Here's a list of 2008's five best summer festivals, in order of awesomeness:

1) Lollapalooza: Chicago's Grant Park might be a giant schvitz in August, but it was worth sweating through our clothes each day when the sun went down and we joined the masses of fans to watch killer headlining performances by Radiohead, Rage, Wilco, and Kanye West. (No disrespect to Nine Inch Nails. We hear they were amazing. We just didn't make it over to see them because we were so gripped by Radiohead's black magic.) Also, major props to Lolla organizers C3 for making the backstage experience not suck. Whereas most fests are difficult to cover because it's hard to get from one stage to the next in time to see everything, Lolla (and ACL, too, which C3 also mans) has a fleet of golf carts to shuttle VIP-types across the park. I told you we were spoiled!

2) Outside Lands: One of this year's freshman festivals, Outside Lands sounded promising from the start. Staged at San Francisco's Golden Gate Park and produced jointly by the dudes who do Bonnaroo (Superfly) and an SF promoter helmed by a Bill Graham protege (Another Planet), Outside Lands brought the 'Roo's chill hippie vibe to the city that invented it. The festival had all sorts of cool local food vendors, a super earth-friendly set-up, and video games in the artist hospitality tent! Oh yeah, there were also some great performances. We were especially blown away by Devendra Banhart, Toots & The Maytals, Broken Social Scene and Wilco. Plus, when Steve Winwood came out onstage with Tom Petty and they did "Can't Find My Way Home"? I plotzed!

3) Pemberton Festival: Pemberton was the first festival we covered this summer, and at the time I wouldn't have predicted it'd be ranking as my third-favorite of the season. Because this was the event's inaugural year, there were a couple compelling logistic problems that dampened my initial enthusiasm. The aforementioned traffic was a nightmare. Plus, it was really dusty in the field where the festival was staged, and a lot of folks spent the weekend with scarves tied over their noses and mouths. But, man, what amazing scenery there was surrounding that field! Whistler's snow-capped mountains circle you, and they even served bottled glacier water distilled from that very mountain right there. But Pemberton's real appeal was its performances. However great Tom Petty was at Outside Lands, he was even more incredible at Pemberton. Even in the confines of a forty-five minute set, My Morning Jacket were nothing short of revelatory at Pemberton. And, as many times as I've seen Vampire Weekend now, the New York band's Pemberton set top-notch.

4) Austin City Limits: I had always heard great things about the Austin City Limits festival, and I can see why. It's a remarkably well-organized event -- same promoters as Lollapalooza -- that attracts major national acts like Foo Fighters, Beck and Mars Volta while retaining oodles of local flavor. And, in Texas, that means lots of rootsy rock music from artists including Band of Horses, Conor Oberst, Jenny Lewis, Gillian Welch, Robert Earl Keen and John Fogerty. The Foos and Mars Volta both impressed, but I found myself gravitating toward the Americana stuff. Glad I did: Lewis, Oberst, Welch and BOH blew the roof off the joint. Plus, I got to hang out with Bill Murray. Yeah, you heard me.

5) All Tomorrow's Parties: For this one, I defer to my colleague,
Kevin O'Donnell, who covered ATP while I ran around Los Angeles on
another story. He writes: ATP -- an intimate 2,700-capacity fest held at the dilapidated Catskills resort hotel Kutscher's -- felt a lot like going to sleep away camp: Fresh mountain air! Rowboating on the lake! Mystery meat from the outdoor eating area! So the food may not have been great, but the indie-rock-heavy line-up was super tasty: U.K. synth-rock act Fuck Buttons, drum-and-bass noise-rock duo Lightning Bolt, Dinosaur Jr., Yo La Tengo, and dozens more. (Personal highlight: Thurston Moore performing one of my favorite albums of all time in its entirety, 1995's Psychic Hearts.) Still, nothing beat Sunday night's headlining set from Irish shoegaze legends My Bloody Valentine, performing for the first time on U.S. soil in sixteen years. True to their reputation, MBV's mind-blowing set was unbelievably loud. The crew ripped into psychedelic jams from Loveless (highlight: "Only Shallow") and capped off their hour-and-a-half set with a sixteen-minute noise jam that sounded like a fleet of jets taking off. Were it not for the complimentary earplugs handed out by the staff beforehand, I'd be permanently deaf. Backstage the night before their set, I got the chance to chat with MBV's notoriously shy frontman Kevin Shields. And there's good news: the band is set to start working on their first album in seventeen years. " Even if it goes badly," Shields said, "we're going to do one." -- JENNY ELISCU