Now that we've recovered from the Saturday's sunshine and sonic overload (and celebrated a little Memorial Day Weekend action), we can tell you that Bostonist was all over WBOS EarthFest on Saturday.

Once you start speaking of concert attendance in tens of thousands, attempts to calculate turnout gets dicey. We're hearing reports that there were around 100,000 folks at the Hatch Shell on Saturday for WBOS EarthFest 2007, but rather than offer our own guestimate, Bostonist will say that there were a lot of people that turned out for the day of free music, swag and environmental advocacy. A whole lot, even. More folks than we thought could cram into the space, let alone spend a whole day out in the glorious, breeze-accented sunshine that was enjoyed along the river Charles.

We tip our hats to those who showed up early and stayed 'til late - gorgeous as the day was (we doubt the WBOS crew could have sold their souls for a nicer day), even we were feeling half-baked by the time Mat Kearney was finishing up his mid-day set on the main stage.

In fact, we were feeling so out of it that we could have sworn that we watched jail-suited D.C. politicians try to walk out onto the stage! Oh wait...that happened, and we saw what would happen if bobble-head dolls came to life and waltzed around for photo ops.

We haven't heard reports of excessive heat exhaustion, so we're hoping that people took advantage of the free ice-cold water available throughout the EarthFest site and the samples of pomegranate juices and java hocked at booths. To the sunburned segment of the concertgoing crowd: we hope the aloe has worked out for you these last couple of days.

As for the music? Quite top notch, with strong showings on both the local and main stages. While there was the occasional miss (sorry, Jake Brennan, we tried to dig it), there were also standout performances (fellow Boston Music Stage-er Mieka Pauley, who added to her set of orginals a lovely cover of John Prine's "Angel From Montgomery).

The headliners delivered the goods as we'd hoped they would. Save Guster, who had a nice long headlining set (the setlist is available on the Guster message board's EarthFest thread, as are links to video and photos), the festival format meant that those taking the stages really could only offer up a scattering of well-known hits, so it would be tough to really screw up the performances. That said, odd radio interruptions seemed to pepper some of the sets (most notably at the conclusion to Grace Potter and the Nocturnals' "Mastermind"), which we thought was awfully funny for a radio-station concert.

The environmental advocacy aspect of the day was clearly visible through the booths and organizations on-hand to discuss how folks can cut down on their waste as they go through daily life. We saw a bike raffle, lots of solar panels and many recycling bins filled with the bottles and cans that were used over the course of the day (and not a whole lot of litter on the ground, so kudos to attendees). Unfortunately, it seemed as if many folks were interested in the quick hits - stopping by a booth to pick up swag and then saunter off instead of really discussing environmental issues with those on hand.

But hey - every little bit helps.

Bostonist took a slew of photographs from the festival - you can view the results here (Victoria Welch's photo set) and here (Jon Petitt's set).

Photos by Jon Petitt and Victoria Welch