Part one of this indie fest saga can be found here.

I woke up at 7:30. The temperature had risen from "friggin' cold" to "friggin' hot" in the space of three hours. Sleeping was no longer an option. The hipsters next door were already awake, may have stayed up the entire night, in fact, and were chattering like magpies. Whatever they had put in their 16 ounce cans of Pabst, I needed some. I finally gave up around 9. Festivities around the camp had shut down around 4 AM the night before but already it was awake and alive at this early hour. Distant drum circles were already in full effect and dozens of groggy eyes were lined up in front of the Port-a-Potties. It was now obvious that none of us would be sleeping more than six hours, total, this weekend.

The organizers had packed us in like businessmen on a Tokyo subway. Our 15 x 10 foot spot was littered with cow pies but, as my colleague noted, bovine waste is preferable to a single pile of dog feces. Indeed, our site's two pies didn't smell and were easily avoidable. Still, crawling out of a stuffy tent and being greeted by the crap of a beef stick is no way to start a day of live music.

Fortunately, it wasn't a harbinger of things to come, unless you take into account Queens of the Stone Age's performance. On to the set reviews....

PRETTY GIRLS MAKE GRAVES: High noon on a sunny Sunday isn't the time or place for this sort of thing. Although the edge of a cliff is probably the proper local for Graves' brand of gloom rock. The band's music is caught somewhere between Bauhaus and Sleater Kinney so I can't get away with any goth jokes here. All I can wonder is how the band wound up at an outdoor rock fest. They seem like they'd be a better fit for a smoke-filled club after midnight. This isn't to say they were bad, just that they were out of their element.

NADA SURF: I really liked their "Popular" song when I was 16. If memory serves, it was one of the first songs KNRK played to death back in the day. The band came out, it was their first song and I spent the rest of their set staring at all the pretty scenery behind the stage. To be honest, I can't tell the difference between Nada Surf, Fountains of Wayne, Weezer or a million other middle-of-the-road rock bands that debuted in the mid-90s. Did they do the song about Buddy Holly? The one with the video set in the diner from Happy Days? Yes, I'm being snarky but, seriously, all those damn bands are interchangeable.

A FEW, QUICK NOTES ON THE TEENAGERS SITTING IN FRONT OF US: We spent the day in the middle of the amphitheater, overlooking a section of large, grassy steps prefect zoning out on. Directly in front of us was a group of five teenagers who spent most of the concert sleeping. At no point were all of them awake at the same time. The most life we saw out of them was during Death Cab for Cutie's set, when three of them rose to watch the show. One girl, wedged in the middle, didn't open her eyes the whole time. The middle-aged couple sitting next them, who spent the entire day chain smoking joints, may have had something to do with their semi-comatose state. More on them later.

THE DECEMBERISTS: At one point, Colin Meloy jumped into a tiny area between the stage and the crowd, letting those in the front rows play a guitar solo. This is the first time I've ever seen twenty people try to play a single instrument at the same time. I wish I had seen the band during their last tour when they performed "The Mariner's Revenge Song" during encore with a large, whale puppet. The crowd at a show at the Roseland last year tore it to pieces. Towards the end of their set at the Gorge, Meloy somehow convinced everyone in general admissions to crouch down and pretend that they were all sleeping, only to wake them up with a blast from his guitar. This band is a national treasure and don't let anyone tell you different.

ARCTIC MONKEYS: Easily the luckiest teenagers on the face of the planet. I envy their fame but I wouldn't dare sign the same contract with Satan it took to skyrocket them from internet obscurity to the top of the UK charts. And they're talented to boot. Have you heard that "You Look Good on the Dance Floor" song? Impossibly catchy. This was to be the band's first show in an outdoor venue. Much like a few other rags-to-riches British supergroups, they were cheeky as hell and spent every second between their songs dropping one-liners on the crowd. "I don't think I've ever seen such lowly attempts at moshing. You should really work on that." "Ok, we're going to play one more song and then leave all of you to get rained on." Rich, famous, young and incredibly obnoxious? I knew I should have spent more time playing my guitar instead of studying chemistry in high school. What has the periodic table ever done for me?

MATISYAHU: Reggae is my kryptonite. Tie me to a copy of Bob Marley: Legend to my leg, drop me in a pool and I'll sink like a stone. But coming out the mouth of a hyperactive Hasidic Jewish guy from White Plains? Now that's sumethin'! When I first heard about Matisyahu, I figured the whole thing was a joke- a novelty act along the lines of Tenacious D. Based on his set on Sunday afternoon, he's the real deal; completely sincere. Matisyahu took to the stage, jumped up on a speaker and spent his entire set running around and waving his arms like he was from Compton and it was still 1990. It started raining halfway through and he started rambling about Genesis. "Once upon a time there was Noah and he built an ark because the world flooded. God won't ever do that to us again. He won't drown us today!" And with that a rainbow appeared over the amphitheater. The timing was perfect.

No, seriously.

Matisyahu, eager to prove God's benevolence, pointed at the sky. "YOU SEE! He won't drown us! He's here right now, smiling down!" The rain stopped shortly thereafter and didn't make another appearance the rest of the weekend. Divine intervention? Was God sitting in his heavenly La-Z-Boy and toking on a big, fat bowl while pushing buttons on a mystical rainbow machine? You decide. I don't think I'm quite ready to turn in my agnostic membership card. Here's a photo of the good Lord's contribution to Matisyahu's set:

And here's a photo of Matisyahu jumping up and down. I've never seen anything like all this and I probably never will again. I wonder how many people converted to Judaism or at least Christianity after his set.

QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE: And then we went from hair-raising spirituality to the depths of alt-metal hell. My colleague fled in search of an elephant ear. I buried my head in a magazine, resigned to saving our seats but completely unwilling to watch a minute of their set. I looked up only once when the lead singer decided to give a security guard a piece of his mind for not letting a girl in the audience sit on her boyfriend's shoulders. "That's not what rock n' roll is all about." Sorry, pal. You don't get lecture anyone on music when you're cranking out material that's one part Foo Fighters, one part Tool and twenty parts pure "bleeech." I wonder what he would have thought had the girl fallen on her head and suffered a concussion. He probably would complained about the security staff not doing their job in an Vh1 interview. The singer continued ranting about the guard after another song. Rather than watch him continue to pose away, I headed in search of food.

A FEW, QUICK NOTES ON THE BOOMER POTHEADS NEARBY: They spent the day sitting on an old blanket chain smoking joints and blowing it in the faces of the teens. They had two pre-teen sons with them, who probably spent the entire time roaming the grounds or hanging out in the Xbox 360 tent. When they occasionally returned for more cash to buy junk food, the father quickly lit up a cigarette to mask the smell. They were both in their mid-to-late 40s. What were doing in the middle of this crowd? Why had they come? Did the kids know what their parents were doing? The father looked a lot like Ron Perlman? Could it have been him? I'll never know the answers to these questions, will I?

CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH: I caught half of their set while standing in a half-mile long line for yakisoba noodles. They were crammed into a tiny, secondary stage set off in the middle of the concession stands. A fairly big crowd abandoned Queen's set to stand on picnic tables and swarm the area. After being snatched from nowhere by Pitchfork, they're the hot, new thing, I guess. Sure, their music sounds like regurgitated early-Radiohead but I found myself nodding my head to "The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth."

DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE: The hearts of every hipster in the crowd swelled as they hit the main stage. I liked We Have the Facts... but gave up on the band after The Photo Album. Repititious songs about break-ups and ennui get old after awhile. I wonder if anyone in the crowd would have heard of them if it wasn't for The OC. Ben Gibbard made a joke about feeling like a "pussy" after coming on after Queens of the Stone Age and I forget what else happened but that has absolutely nothing to do with all the pot smoke coming wafting in courtesy of the boomers.

BECK: One word: Team America-style marionettes. A few more words: live puppet accompaniment. As Beck and his band blasted through an hour-long set, four puppeteers mirrored their actions with a band of tiny doppelgangers on a miniature stage near the drums. Even more amazing, they kept time and sang along nearly in sync with their larger counterparts. When the band replaced their instruments with silverware on a dinner table brought on stage, the puppets did the same. The whole thing left me wondering, "How did they pull this off? How can the puppeteers keep an eye on the band and the puppets at the same time?" It was all pretty slick.

But now that I think of it, Beck's looked more like Tom Petty.

"Puppetron" was projected onto the Gorge's monitors. Beck was scheduled to play for two hours but cut his set short for unknown reasons. At one point, the band left the stage and let the puppets "perform" "Loser." The song was cut-off halfway through and a previously recorded comedy segment of the puppets ran. After it concluded, two people in bear costumes took over the stage. Meanwhile on the smaller stage, the puppeteers broke out a pair of teddy bears to keep up.

Beck later returned for a quick, one song encore. I don't know if the band was backstage playing "Loser" when the management told them to hurry things up because the roadies wanted to go home. For what it's worth, that's what it seemed like. I saw Beck under worse circumstances last summer and, puppets aside, it was pretty much the same set. I've seen him live five times now and he's never disapointed. I just wish he'd cranked out another 50 minutes of music.

Click the play button above to watch Beck and the puppets perform the end of "Summer Girl."

I woke up Monday morning to the sound of our hipster neighbors shouting "AND THOSE GUYS ARE BASTARDS!" It was 7:15 AM. For all I knew, they hadn't slept in days. I don't know who they were talking about but I get the feeling it was us. We had nothing but put up with their boistrous, per-dawn giggling and endless arguments about Weezer with muttered, inaudible (to them) insults. Immediately enraged, I thought about sneaking over and letting the air out of their tires or telling them exactly how much all their favorite bands sucked.

Instead of that, I stewed in my tent and enjoyed the effects of continued sleep depravation. Nobody said this outdoor festival stuff was going to be easy. I hope they're still washing cow pies off their camping gear. To misquote the Dead Kennedys: "[Emo] punks, [emo] punks, fuck off.