The Outside Lands Music Festival announced the festival's dates for 2011 today. No big surprises on the weekend it's taking place: August 12th-14th, 2011, but maybe some slight surprise to see the festival will returning to the original long-weekend format after the 2010 edition slimmed down to just Saturday and Sunday. Eager Beaver 3-Day tickets go on sale this Friday, March 11th at Noon, but you'll be buying blind since there's no word on the lineup yet.

With that, we can embark on the second stage of summer music festival speculation - which is lobbing out semi-educated guesses on the 2011 Lineup. Judging from last year's headliners and other festival lineups around the same time, our best bets for closing act each night go something like this: An aging-but-still-decent rock band will close out Friday (looking at you, Wilco). For Saturday, our money's on Arcade Fire or someone else who you will no longer admit to liking now that they will be headlining festivals all summer. And finally, Kanye West will be slated to for the final spot on Sunday, but will inevitably be bumped to an early-evening spot where he will be followed by a mediocre comedy-rock act. This move will displease him greatly and he will tweet about it incessantly. That seems about right.

[SFOutsideLands.com]