T.I., Santigold, The Flaming Lips at Rites of Spring, The Protomen and more

Reality bites
The Spin is going to blame a certain telecommunications monopoly for forcing us into a situation where we had to watch Blueskyreality, one of the worst bands we've ever seen. See, if said monopoly (rhymes with Dumb-Assed) hadn't interfered with our regularly scheduled viewing of Growing Up... on Animal Planet, we would have shown up at Rites of Spring Friday night just in time to see the artists we actually wanted to see instead of showing up two hours early.

Catching locals Southerners Without Shirts (not their real name, sadly) and Blueskyreality (their real name, sadly) made it more than a little painful that we weren't at home watching fuzzy animals do cute, fuzzy animal things. Watching douchey dudes do douchey dude things leaves a lot to be desired.

Southerners Without Shirts, who actually have the far worse name of "Run With Bulls," were only notable because their singer wasn't wearing a shirt while there were cops and TV cameras present. Anybody that watches cable knows that Southerners without shirts in the presence of videographers and law enforcement will automatically end up in custody and TV coverage—which, in hindsight, might have been the plan 'cuz music that weak sure ain't gonna get the job done. But they were a lot better than Blueskyreality by a lot.

As a rule, there are a few things that should never leave a frontman's mouth while introducing a song—like, say, "We've never played this before," or, "I hope this doesn't suck," or, most especially, "Third Eye Blind are, like, our favorite band ever." The first two we expect from entry-level New Face Night-type acts and we can write that off as an amateur mistake. But the last one represents a character flaw so egregious it's unforgivable. It's one thing to like Third Eye Blind a lot (we don't understand why you would do that, but whatever), it's another thing to tell us about it right out the gate and ruin any hope we had for seeing you play even one decent song.

Seriously—Third Eye Blind? Were Dishwalla and The Verve Pipe too edgy for you? How does Third Eye Blind become anyone's favorite band? Is that what happens when you're too cool for Richard Marx but not cool enough for Semisonic?

Fortunately, the bludgeoning mediocrity was followed by K’Naan, one of the most innovative artists on today's global music scene. The Somali-born rapper's blend of hip-hop, Afro-folk/funk and, well, guitar pop was a perfect fit for a beautiful, sun-drenched afternoon. At first we were a little disappointed that he skipped the darker, more horrific songs from his album, but a whole lot of hope, optimism and sing-alongs is never a bad thing. Also, seeing a bunch of pasty-ass Vandy kids freakin' out to "This Is Africa" made us think that humanity might not be totally fucked—despite how hard Blueskyreality are trying to prove otherwise.

After a beer run (sorry, Okkervil River), we staked out a spot and got ready for some Santigold. Talk about a smile you could feel from 150 feet away—it was like she was beaming feel-good directly into our brain. Her set was badass and a lot of fun, which doesn't happen often enough. Santi dropped some Wu-Tang just for the hell of it, gave us the hits ("L.E.S. Artistes" and "Shove It" both killed extra hard) and had the crowd grinding like pepper mills. Is she the perfect woman? Maybe. Do we want to have her babies? Probably. Oh, and the sexy S-1Ws that flanked Santi on either side: totally awesome.

Q-tip managed to make it through his set despite some incredibly awkward problems with the sound system—as in no sound at all, then sound again, then no sound at all. Eesh. By the time T.I.>B> came out, Alumni Lawn was so jammed with cotton and flip-flops, and everyone so worked up into a froth, that ol' boy could have just spit and slurred through a sloppy, meandering, pointless set full of unnecessary talk breaks and monotonous jams, and everyone would have eaten that shit right up.

Smart, hardworking motherfuckers

After an exhausting but utterly fulfilling Record Store Day spent shop-hopping and early drinking, we checked in at Vanderbilt to catch the tail end of Saturday night's Rites of Spring happenings. Once we'd determined that the spare press pass we hoped to finagle for our date was indeed confirmed, we crossed campus to catch N.E.R.D. just as they kicked off their set.

Pharrell Williams, clearly adored by the female segment of the audience, made a valiant effort to get folks crowd-surfing. It eventually worked, but he seemed particularly interested in getting as many fly honeys dancing onstage as possible, though a few dudes joined the party as well. (We're pretty certain we spotted Pico vs. Island Trees vocalist Bryan Carter vocalist cutting a rug onstage at one point.) N.E.R.D. put on a remarkably rambunctious show, and we were pretty stoked at how hard Pharrell advocated responsible partying while simultaneously getting completely "asshole foolly." At least we think that's what he said.