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Playing with the music festival formula at Outside Lands' first day

The music festival formula: greatest hits plus new songs plus one offbeat cover.

Most of the acts I saw on the inaugural day of San Francisco’s Outside Lands festival obliged. Natalie Prass, the brave first act at noon on a Friday, playing to a few hundred early arrivals, picked a great cover: Dusty Springfield’s “No Easy Way Down.”

And the winsome First Aid – look the adjective up in the dictionary, and the Swedish sisters will be there – did their single “Emmylou” (with the wonderful chorus, “I'll be your Emmylou and I'll be your June/If you’ll be my Gram and my Johnny too”).