The duality of man was on display last night at Jack Johnson's Third Annual Kokua Festival at the Waikiki Shell.

You have thousands of concertgoers attired in hemp clothing with recycling tattoos on their arms, and at their feet are piles of plastic cups and cigarette butts. As always, Earth Day is cool, as long as it doesn't mess with their buzz.

The show followed the theme of contrasts, with great entertainers plagued by terrible equipment and technicians.

Henry Kapono began his set with an acoustic version of the Hawaiian national anthem, asking everyone to please stand in honor of it. But when he began to play, the sound was so tinny and hollow that he sounded more like he was playing in a garage than an amphitheater.

They eventually fixed the guitar sound, but Kapono's vocals still came out muffled, much to the disappointment of the crowd eager to hear his new music.

Ben Harper followed with a cleaner sounding microphone, but the music was so quiet that the first half of the set was barely audible in the grass seating. Despite the fact that Harper was seated the entire performance, the man running the spotlight jerked it around as if he were having a seizure.

But the fans enjoyed his half-hour set that included new songs like "Waiting for You" and "Get It Like You Like It," while missing some of his biggest hits like "Diamonds on the Inside."

There was plenty beside music to keep people busy, with more than 40 booths behind the Shell hawking everything from organic milk to World Turtle Trust T-shirts.

Willie Nelson, a Farm Aid fanatic and proponent of biodiesel, stuck to the music on this rain-slicked evening.

He was never the strongest singer, and the years have not been kind to Nelson's vocal chords, but the emotion in his music reaches across generations and genres. The crowd enjoyed old favorites like "Whisky River" and "On the Road Again," and it really came to life with "Always On My Mind."

No sooner had Nelson gotten the first words, "Maybe I should have ..." out, than every couple nestled into one another and began swaying. There were many damp eyes as Nelson warbled through the song.

This set the stage for Jack Johnson, North Shore boy to the core, who stroked right into "Never Know." As always his sound was simple, catchy and made you ache for a campfire.

Part of that ache was also because it was freezing with the intermittent rain, but Johnson made the best of it by breaking out into "Banana Pancakes," with the chorus, "Can't you see it's just raining."

They wrapped the show up with Harper, Nelson and Johnson together, singing the Nelson classic "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain."

The sold-out throng loved it, and despite the technical gaffs, for $35 it was the best value for a multi-act show in this town in a long, long time.