At 5 pm, Hot Chip was blaring through an outstanding set in a tent called Mojave, packed with thousands of shirtless 20-somethings, absolutely every one of them dancing, and not in the reserved head bob concert manner, but full goofy splendor, and at about that time, I fell down. Okay, I kind of slumped in a corner. I never lost consciousness, but I got to the point where I had to leave one of the better concerts of the year.

I called a friend to acknowledge my shame, and was told that it was 103 degrees, my sickness was understandable. 103 degrees at 5 pm.

Given that astoundingly difficult fact, something Regina Spektor took pains to apologize for as she began her set on the unshielded main stage, it is a testament to the crowd and organizers that nothing went horribly wrong. These have been the safest concerts I have ever attended, not because the music put people to sleep, but mostly due to one virtue I didn’t know was so prominent: outrageously good manners. As Win Butler, the singer of Arcade Fire, said in his parting compliment to the festival, the crowd had been very polite, a good Canadian virtue, and followed it with this axiom: “Manners are the cornerstone of a strong, prosperous society.” Good manners allowed thousands to dance together and take in the best performances of the festival without incident.

Manners are a complicated thing though. I thought, for example, that Jason Lee, Earl of My Name is Earl, and all the other celebrity fans of the Black Keys demonstrated outstanding manners by fleeing their backstage seats and taking over, however briefly, the photographer’s pit to enjoy the pride of Akron, Ohio. They were universally asked to leave the pit by a security staff that seemed non-plussed by their celebrity status, but for there was something remarkable in seeing famous type people show unbridled enthusiasm, to say nothing of the respect I felt for the posse after one of them sported this reporter a couple cold beers.

Okay, I mentioned the famous people, kind of. (If you want photos, log on to www.coacheelovesyou.com to see stunning photos by Biff, this ridiculously hard working artist and photographer with method to his madness.) This is a blog, so I should talk famous people. I should also say that Ghostface Killah swore that Cameron Diaz was in the crowd. He shouted this to the audience as he was requesting that some women get on stage and dance, explaining that “usually get girls up here and get them to show their titties, but we’re not going to do that here, unless you want us to.”

Anyway, that’s the gossip crap, now about the music, the concerts that make this festival so outstanding. Regina Spektor, from her opening pitch perfect a cappela number through a charming performance which demonstrated, even when her sometimes slightly overly precious and cute lyrics grated, that as a performer, as a singer, musician and personality, she belongs on the biggest stage. I saw her show after an easy-going if unoriginal opening set from Icelandic and English band Fields, an enthusiastic but not particularly memorable set from The Cribs, and a disastrous set from Fountains of Wayne, who can write a tight song and rhyme in any genre, but who probably should sell said songs to other bands for performances. Regina Spektor, then, saved the afternoon and suggested how good the evening would get.

More in extended entry…

Hot Chip were outstanding, their songs from their 2006 The Warning improving with age. Peter Bjorn and John of Sweden followed Hot Chip. They came off flat and uninspired.

At 6:15, Saturday’s schedule offered performances from the following bands: Kings of Leon, the Decembrists, !!!, and Andrew Bird. I got involved in a number of lengthy discussions about which show a journalist should cover—all four bands essentially being the future of indy rock. The conclusion was absolute. No doubt about it, I had to go cover the Decembrists show. Why? Because the Decembrists had an amazing gimmick: they were hosting a wedding during their concert. Wow. A wedding. At a rock festival. Now that was a story, I was told.

I like the Decembrists. Hell, they were a key reason I came to the festival, even if their recent album didn’t exactly wow me. But at exactly 6:15 Saturday, I completely lost it over their constant neat little press stories. Bios are cool. And maybe I can take the occasional documentary, theirs gets pretty regular play on the Sundance network, but when you take that and combine it with the press off of their nifty little green screen fan-submitted video stint and then their guitar off with Stephen Colbert, and then a wedding on stage, you get this annoying geeky amalgam.

So I bagged the Decembrists concert and the easy story, though I assume the wedding went through, about halfway through their concert a bunch of journalists walked by my post at Kings of Leon writing in their notebooks and smiling that Oh-aren’t-they-clever-and-cute smile.

It was the best decision I could have made. Kings of Leon got up looking like the coolest kids from high school, not mine, by the way, but that high school in Dazed and Confused, and completely revived a heat-stroked audience. I’m not going to say that people danced quite the way they did at the Hot Chip show, this was a bit more reserved, but people moved and moved well. It was bliss. The key reason, beyond the sheer beauty of the band, was their powerhouse rhythm section, which seems to have locked in through their extensive touring schedule. But there was also a quality to their show that the other highlight, the Black Keys, would have: they were polite, but they got to their business. They didn’t talk about how neat it was to be in the desert, or name their albums—there was no damn jibba jabba. They made good music, they obviously felt the music and enjoyed the stage, and then they thanked everyone and left.

Arcade Fire later played the same stage, with a doomed opening from Neon Bible in which their use of so many voices and instruments all played vigorously but without, honestly, notes, just a couple monotonous chords, made anyone not in the Arcade Fire cult question their prestige. As the set went on, though, and they moved to their standards and stopped being so damned schticky, they nailed a couple tunes, especially Wake Up.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers followed Arcade Fire, and would dedicate a song to the Canadians during their set. I didn’t see many people looking forward to the Chili Peppers, they haven’t gotten much airplay on the local radio, especially compared to Sunday’s headliner, Rage Against the Machine. When they took the stage with a blazing instrumental freak out, featuring John Frusciante going ballistic on guitar, I think quite a few thousand casual observers realized that maybe the Red Hot Chili Peppers could put out something great. But as soon as they broke into their set, as son as Kiedis started singing, honestly, the energy got sapped. There’s only so much you can do when you’re freaking out to the lyrics “Turn Off Your Television.”

At the end of the night, we got to the front of the stage of the Black Keys, and watched Patrick Carney and Dan Auerbach get up and blaze through their hits. An hour and twenty minutes of bliss, it was a frenetic, powerhouse set from the two-man band—the best songs, to me, were a couple Junior Kimbrough covers from their final Fat Possum EP Chulahoma, but the material from their new album Magic Potion didn’t disappoint.