There’s no doubt about it – Radiohead is the finest band in existance right now. The band’s show last night at Outside Lands (barring two inexcusable sound failures) was amazing. There were far too many people and several annoyances with the festival (which may stem from me not liking festivals), but as Thom Yorke said after the second time the sound cut out: “In the end, it’s all about the music, right?”

Yep.

The music was sublime – played to perfection and nearly flawless. The band tore through an amazing set, starting with “15 Steps” then blasting through “Reckoner,” “Fake Plastic Trees,” “The National Anthem,” “Paranoid Android” and the set-closing “Everything In Its Right Place” among others. Here’s a setlist, courtesy of 58hours. The lighting was also spectacular, especially during “Everything In Its Right Place.” It was, regretably, my first time seeing Radiohead and I can’t wait to see them in a more friendly, personal venue, but for a good taste of what a real show would be like, Friday was hard to beat.

With the Outside Lands Festival coming up this weekend, we thought it’d be awful helpful to pull together playlists for each day of the festival so you can sample to a bit of each artist before you go. I’ve tried to find representative and/or live songs for each artist to give a good idea of what you’re in store for.

With our fancy new media player, you can even hit the little play button next to any song and listen to it as a mix even without downloading anything.

Here is the first of three days. We’ll post a new playlist each day. Enjoy:

Friday:

See also:

Saturday lineup & playlist
Sunday lineup & playlist

Yesterday, Beck announced that Modern Guilt will be officially released on July 8, 2008. If you can’t wait that long you can work some voodoo magic with your cell phone and get an early listen.

Beck’s new album will include ten songs produced by everybody’s favorite producer, Danger Mouse. As of today, Beck’s myspace page has three songs available for a listen: Orphans, Gamma Ray and Chemtrails.

MP3s:

While the folks at APE Concerts haven’t announced the schedule for the Outside Lands Festival [Update: full schedule now available here], most of the bands involved have which night they’re playing on their respective sites. So we did a little investigative journalism to cobble together a schedule.

According to their site, Radiohead is scheduled to headline the opening night of the three-day festival. Tom Petty’s site notes that they will play Saturday night, leaving MoR Jack Johnson to close out the festival on Sunday night

[Full schedule after the jump.] (more…)