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Sometimes the finest melodies emerge from the darkest moments. Day Two of the Sasquatch Festival illustrated this point to perfection: The performances were sharp and the crowd was thoroughly engaged, yet a large contingent of the acts painted their musical work in grays and blacks rather than blues and greens. In other words, shit wasn’t all sunshine and singalongs this past Sunday.

With the afternoon sun warded off by the clouds above, Kid Cudi, the Cleveland MC heralded for helping bring out the darker side of Kanye West, took the stage in a vintage Anthrax T-Shirt, skinny black jeans and retro-Nikes. Unlike rappers who rhyme about bling and booze, Cudi raps about reality. (And who are we kidding, reality isn’t always pretty.) Drawing on material from his excellent debut, Man On The Moon: End of Days, Mr. Solo Dolo ripped through tracks including “Soundtrack of My Life,” “Simple As” and “Day N’ Nite.”

Later that evening, a group that surely inspired Cudi’s brashness, Public Enemy, celebrated the anniversary of their iconic rebel album, Fear of A Black Planet, as Chuck D and Flavor Flav, in all of his clock-donning glory, charged through lengthy renditions of “Fight The Power” and “Power to the People.” No Flavor Of Love jokes needed here. This was a group who were every bit as serene and disarming as they were in their late ’80s prime.

Standing atop a steep incline of grass at The Gorge Amphitheater on Day One of Sasquatch, it’s nearly impossible to feel as if the scenery in the distance is anything less than, well, surreal. But sometimes it takes another’s perspective to gain insight into your own. It also seems to help when that perspective comes from the dude headlining the festival.

“The energy is just so huge and powerful here,” My Morning Jacket’s Jim James said yesterday, hours before his band were slotted to close out the main stage. “This place— there’s real energy in the rocks and ground and the landscape that makes things happen in your brain that are undeniable.” James, despite his band’s global success, still says he finds it unreal to be  headlining this festival—especially since his band was cast off to a side stage back in 2003. “We saw The Flaming Lips [that year] and we never thought that was a possibility [for us]. It’s something else.”

While there were a handful of bands on Day One of Sasquatch who had achieved success rather quickly—Vampire Weekend, for example, who played to a packed main stage after having seemingly coasted to the top of the Billboard Albums charts on an express F train—the one thing that tied together many of the acts on hand was that their success has been a slow-burning match whose flame was finally getting hot.

The confetti. The fake blood. The giant plastic ball. It’s no secret that The Flaming Lips are one of the wildest, and most consistently great, live acts currently walking this planet.

But aside from that, they are also lead by one of the most intelligent and unique minds in the music business, in the form of Wayne Coyne. Which makes you think: What would you ask the dude if you had the chance to sit down with him? And what if you actually got to hang around with the band before they play what may be one of the biggest shows of the year?

Well, just as we did last month with arena rockers Muse, we are giving one lucky fan the chance to meet and interview the Flaming Lips before they play Dark Side of The Moon in its entirety at this year’s Bonnaroo.

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again:  Jimmy Fallon is the best place for music on late-night television. Whether the props gotta be handed to his musical booking agent, or whether music dudes just flat out love Jimmy, we’re happy to reap the benefits.

On Thursday, the power hip-hop duo Reflection Eternal, made up of prolific poet Talib Kweli and top-notch producer DJ Hi-Tek, dropped by Late Night with Jimmy Fallon to perform “Ballad Of The Black Gold” off their new album, Revolutions per Minute.” Lucky for us, Fallon’s house band, The Roots, joined in on the party for a killer collaboration. The whole thing went so well that Fallon decided to take it all in from the audience.

By now you should be well aware that Drake’s upcoming debut Thank Me Later is going to be one of the summer’s biggest hip-hop albums—and that’s due in no small part to fact that it features a plethora of guests including Jay-Z, T.I., Young Jeezy, Nicki Minaj, Alicia Keys, Lil Wayne and just about every other hip-hop star in the Universe. (Oh yeah, and the production was handled by some guys named Timbaland, Kanye West and Swizz Beatz.)

But here is what you might not know: Today a track from the album debuted called “Light Up,” which features Jay-Z, and you can hear it over at The Fader’s site. The song itself features a stripped down beat and ambient keyboard flourishes which act as the perfect backdrop for Drake to rap about how hard he works. It also allows him to namedrop the original gangster: Frasier star Kelsey Grammer.