Best Fest Bets: Mile High Music Festival

Overbooked band lineups, baking in the sun, bottled water being rationed out as if we were living in some post-apocalyptic dystopia that’s been dried up of natural resources—why, oh why, despite all this, are summer festivals so popular? Four words: We bleed for music. Let The A.V. Club help you ease the bloodletting (and sort through all the crappy opening bands) with our festival picks. In this edition: Mile High Music Festival, which takes over Dick’s Sporting Goods Park this Saturday and Sunday, and features more bands than any one person can humanly stand in one weekend.

DAY ONE: SATURDAY, AUG. 14
Nas & Damian Marley, appearing 3:45 p.m. at Kyocera Main Stage
Collaborations come and go, but a few are meant for something bigger: hip-hop stalwart Nas guested on reggae scion Damian Marley’s excellent crossover single, “Road To Zion” (from 2005’s Grammy-winning Welcome To Jamrock), and the musical simpatico of the two proved undeniable. The song is a mélange of reggae and hip-hop that, remarkably, sounds neither like a bad remix nor a watered-down version of either genre. It’s a perfect complement of both styles, and it established a working relationship between Marley and Nas that, years later, bloomed into the recently released full-length collaboration Distant Relatives.

Cypress Hill, appearing 4:45 at the Wolf Stage
More than two decades into Cypress Hill’s career, the pioneering hip-hop group finds itself in a curious position: Its four members are alternately elder statesmen of the Latino music community, highly visible and vocal proponents for marijuana legalization, and proof that “rap” and “longevity” aren’t mutually exclusive properties. Not bad for an act that once advocated the virtues of “getting toasted—nicely toasted” on The Simpsons. The perspective that comes from age and experience could have added unwelcome weight to this year’s Rise Up (released on April 20, natch), but the album sticks to timeless, familiar Cypress territory like smoking weed and anyone dumb enough to step to B Real. After all this time, who are they trying to get crazy with? Surely by now they know he’s loco.

Phoenix, appearing 6:45 p.m. at the Bison Tent
The charmingly tussled members of Phoenix have had quite a run in the couple years, and they deserve it. The band’s album Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, stands as one of 2009’s (and maybe the decade’s) most universally beloved albums, helping easily danceable pop float off from a crotch-thrusting stalemate into flexible, bubbly warmth. Phoenix’s spirit onstage—somewhere between a dreamboat rock band and a bunch of teenage friends getting high and fantasizing in their parents’ ‘70s rec-room—keeps getting warmer the bigger it gets. It’s a band that’s put in the time, going back to its 2000 debut, United, and it seems likely to stick around for a good time to come.

DAY TWO: SUNDAY, AUG. 15
Drive-By Truckers, appearing 2 p.m. at Kyocera Main Stage
With 2008’s masterful Brighter Than Creation’s Dark, Drive-By Truckers resumed a run of great albums that many fans felt was broken with 2006’s A Blessing And A Curse, the band’s final record with singer-songwriter-guitarist Jason Isbell. The winning streak continues with The Big To-Do, which finds the band fortifying its considerable strengths while also making a play for a larger audience with hard-hitting, easily digestible songs like the working-class fist-pumper “This Fucking Job.” (Though the band thankfully hasn’t completely turned its back on oddball character studies, as the unsettling “The Wig He Made Her Wear” attests.) Live, the band cranks it to 11 while passing around a big jug of whiskey.

Jimmy Cliff, appearing 3:45 p.m. at Kyocera Main Stage
To varying degrees of interest and success, reggae legend Jimmy Cliff continues to pump out new studio albums like clockwork—the latest being the upcoming Existence, which Cliff describes as “a concept album about existence.” Since breaking into the reggae pantheon in 1972 with The Harder They Come—the album and the Jamaican gangster film he starred in—Cliff has been beloved and covered by everyone from Bruce Springsteen to Widespread Panic to New Order. The secret to Cliff’s broad, longstanding success is simple: He effortlessly balances a sun-drenched pop vibe with a serious, heavy roots-reggae core. Now in his 60s, the intrepid road warrior took most of 2009 off to work on Existence, but he still peppers every live set with a generous helping of his ‘70s anthems. 

My Morning Jacket, playing 5:45 p.m. at Kyocera Main Stage
My Morning Jacket has garnered a lot of attention for being something that’s all too rare: a good, old-fashioned Southern rock band with arty ambitions. That means the guys in the band have both hair and brains that are known to swing around, and the mystique certainly adds to a string of albums that are strong and digressive. The band is straying a bit from that image lately, expanding their palette to include funk, prog and Prince-inspired pop. The most recent studio effort is 2008’s Evil Urges, which dialed down the fabled My Morning Jacket reverb and plays around with singer Jim James’ singular voice in more distinct sounds. This tour suggests James is done (for now) with his solo work as Yim Yames and side project Monsters Of Folk, ready to focus on an upcoming album.