Radiohead's Johnny Greenwood: the 21st century's preeminent mop-top. Photo by Josh Withers

From the ashes of our poor, cooked Vegoose, a cool new 3-day festival with a name just as bad. This weekend, my posse and I hit San Francisco’s foggy, lusher-than-life Golden Gate Park for the Outside Lands Music & Arts Festival, co-founded by Vegoose backer Starr Hill Presents. Due to a late arrival and subsequent abuse from three disaffected taxi dispatchers, we ended up missing Beck’s 6:40 p.m. Friday appearance (trembling lip and bitter emo tears were mine), but did rush like madmen through hilly, malevolent S.F. traffic patterns to get to the church in time for Radiohead’s 8 p.m. set — the first time a band has ever played in that park after dark.

The worst part? Two early sound collapses, each resulting in dead silence for about 30 seconds. The thousands of us stood and gaped while the band played on, going by their monitors and oblivious to the horror outside. (”I don’t know what the fuck’s going on,” said Thom Yorke a bit later. “Sorry…”) It never happened again.

The best part? All the rest. Radiohead’s light show was liquid and apt as ever. They astounded with a quiet-to-loud dynamic range I didn’t really think possible in a festival setting, and by “Karma Police,” the chilly, damp bay air was warmed a few degrees by a St. Peter’s square-sized congregation all softly singing the “This is what you’ll get” refrain. The park’s 10 p.m. no-noise curfew came cruelly fast.

In a Saturday artist docket without too much to scream about, highlights included M. Ward, Ben Harper, and rock en español’ers Café Tacuba. Regina Spektor was what she was (i.e. lackluster), Primus pleased hardcore fans, but did so in a sort of draggy, unspired way, and Cake was a complete mess — we walked after a few non-fan-favorite songs (including one mysteriously stopped and restarted), to the fading sound of sad sack John McCrea entering between-tunes speaking mode, forcing psedo-surreal pop culture twistings and, ridiculously, asking the audience if there were any questions. People left in droves.

Tom Petty headlined at 8 p.m., taking an utterly devil-may-care tone with the audience that was half-jovial, half-dangerous. It rocked. “Listen to Her Heart,” “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” and “Free Fallin’” all sailed by, high-energy and beautiful. The “American Girl” encore was loud and brash, and ended with a phaser-effected, wow-wow-wow noise sustain that reminded us all how hard it’s always been to pin down this Southern rock/psychedelic/ folk/pop phenomenon with three toes stilled dipped in the late-’70s new wave of his inception. Awesomeness.