As usual I let the pressure of catching up on the posts about the Spain trip get in my way from posting about other stuff. Without further delay I’m going to instead write about this year’s Coachella festival.
The Coachella festival is one of the big things I look forward to each yet. For me this rates way above other normal holidays like Christmas and all that junk. We rented a nice house in Palm Springs with a pool and invited a bunch of friends and my brother, sister-in-law and nephew out to join us for a long weekend. Thursday evening we flew down. It should have been a great flight but I initially flew up to 23,000 feet and Kat got altitude sickness which was no fun (and a special bummer since it was her birthday). After that we descended to 19,000 and the flight was great except for the last little stretch where we hit some storms down in southern California. In any case being able to fly non-stop all the way to Palm Springs sure is great, I just wish the airplane was pressurized.
Friday was awesome- just hanging out by the pool, sipping margaritas, and a bit of tennis. In fact the only thing we did wrong with our planning is not saying through Monday to do the same thing again to recover from the shows.
Overall this year’s festival was great, but not quite as good as last year. They have usually done an amazing job of logistics given the 80,000 people that attend, and once again the traffic was actually really handled well, and while the lines to get in were a bit long overall it wasn’t so bad. The one thing they really screwed up was the Madonna show. Part of what makes the 80,000 people thing work is that a quarter or more of them just get parked in front of the main stage and they stay there to get their great spots for the main headliners. This year on Sunday they had Madonna play the dance tent instead of the main stage (and more on her act later) and this created a massive traffic jam as 40,000 people
left the main stage to go to the dance tent and then back after she was done.
The music highlights for me this year were (in descending order)- Bloc Party, Daft Punk, Art Brut, Franz Ferdinand, Ladytron, Lady Sovereign. Carl Cox and stellastarr* also seemed really cool but I barely caught them so I’ll reserve judgment for later.
Saturday we got in just in time to catch Lady Sovereign. She was pretty good- basically a somewhat less interesting version of MIA. After she was done we headed over to the dance tent to catch Joey Beltram. He was very good during his actual tracks but his transitions were pretty unsmooth frequently breaking the groove. We wandered around a bit and saw a little bit of Wolfmother who seemed to think they were Led Zepplin, which didn’t really do anything for me. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah were decent, but TV On the Radio were very disappointing.
Finally we got to see Ladytron- they started off a bit slow (low energy) but it built up during the show and the last few songs were awesome. When they finished we headed over to the main stage where Franz Ferdinand had just started. We watched them from way back, but there was actually room to dance and I was bouncing all over the place with some guy that I think was from Scotland. They put on a great set which was amazing for the main stage at a huge festival and I can’t wait to see them in a club again sometime soon.
At this point we headed over to the dance tent to get a spot for Daft Punk. Audio Bullys were on and they were pretty disappointing so we saw Depeche Mode do 3 songs that were also very lame. Nick and I scoped out a pretty good spot mid-way back but in the tent for Daft Punk. The thing that sucked was that for 15 minutes before the show and 20 minutes into the show we felt like we were in the middle of a highway with people pushing by us. What was most funny to me was when people would get offended that I wouldn’t step out of the way as they pushed me out of the way- my take is, sure, push to the front if you want, but don’t expect me to be friendly about it and keep going if you are going to do it.
The sound started with the alien tones from Close Encounters, the curtains opened and Daft Punk were in this pyramid dressed in alien space-suits (I’ll post some pictures tomorrow). They had 3 layers of cool lights on the side and the pyramid itself had cool displays. The beats were awesome and it was just an amazing show. You can check out some at http://www.daftpunk.com/ althoughunfortunately the video is in the Real format.
Sunday we got to a bit of a slower start and missed Mates of State, but got there just as Ted Leo / Pharmacists were starting. Ted Leo was pretty good although nothing super amazing. After Ted Leo we saw Matisyahu from the beer garden by the main stage- again, he was decent but especially for the festival thing wasn’t that great. We went right over to get a good spot for Bloc Party.
To say I’ve been anticipating seeing Bloc Party would be an understatement. Last year when I saw them I had no idea who they were and even at Sasquatch I knew a few of their songs a little bit. Since then I’ve listened to Silent Alarm hundreds of times and I consider it the best album from last year. About the second song of the set I bounced into the middle of the crowd where a bunch of people were bouncing all over. The set was just incredible. The crowd was totally into it in a way you rarely see at festivals, the band was really on for almost the whole set, and I had such a great time I almost passed out. I’ve seen some music press mention Adorable when writing about Bloc Party and the comparison is apt- they both have a great combination of high energy and slower songs, huge passion and just a great stage presence.
After the Bloc Party set I mostly wanted to collapse for a few hours but instead caught a few minutes of Paul Oakenfold and a beer. The dance tent was pretty crowded for Oakenfold (and also people lining up for Madonna) but his music didn’t really do anything for me.
Bad logistics aside, the Madonna set was a disappointment. She went on 20 minutes late, the sound was really crappy from back where we started out. Also she played guitar on two of the songs which was a bit weird. I should be clear- its totally cool that she wants to reinvent herself a bit, but it was extra strange that she played the dance tent given the set she played. Finally she only played 5 or 6 songs and none of them hits (other than the single from the latest album). Now, you don’t need to just play the hits, but a festival is not the time to drag out all the stuff from the new album- its just not the classic format for playing a festival and its too bad that she didn’t tune her set for the venue. Finally, walking away from the
area I could tell that a bunch of Madonna fans who came out to see her were really pissed off about the length of her set. They probably shouldn’t have expected a normal concert-length set, but she went WAY shorter than the 50 minutes listed in the schedule.
After Madonna Kat and I were stuck in the massive crowd movement and didn’t make it to catch the end of Mogwai. We went to the outdoor stage instead of the main-stage which luckly wasn’t too crowded and Kat promptly fell asleep. The Go! Team was ok although nothing substantial- Nick said he hated them. Finally we headed over to see Art Brut. Dungeon was finishing their set and they were just awful. I had downloaded 3 of their songs and they didn’t seem so bad but they were just terrible. They also wouldn’t stop and kept going for long after their set was supposed to be done. This meant that Art Brut was late to setup and they were having some problem with the bass amps so they started very late.
Finally Art Brut went on. They hopped on stage and struck a bunch of rock and roll poses and after a little intro kicked into “formed a band”. The singer, Eddie Argos , continued to insist that every member of the audience was required to go home and join a band. I love that kind of attitude. They strutted all over the stage, had great intros for their songs and Eddie at one point jumped into the audience and even tossed his microphone back just strolling through the audience encouraging everyone to shout the lyrics.
At one point Eddie announces that they have been given permission to go past midnight at a cost of $2000 per minute. Apparently the local noise ordinance charges that much if the shows go late. I suspect that Tool was on track to go 15 minutes late so Art Brut wasn’t actually costing them anything but they played up the two… thousand… dollars… per minute.. and announced that they would use their extra valuable time to play a b-side, and then threw out the set list and did an appropriate choice of “Moving to LA” for the venue. Of course at this point its past 12:10 and they haven’t done their last two songs “bad weekend” and “good weekend” so they launch into those, but are still taking their time while the guy at the side of the stage (roadie? manager?) is getting a bit tense. At the end of Good Weekend Eddie goes off stage but the band keeps playing. Its well past 12:20 right now and the stage guy is just getting frantic. He is motioning to the drummer to stop. But the crowd is going nuts and the band just keeps pumping people up. The stage guy runs out and grabs the drummer by the leg to try to stop him but continues to get ignored- he looks pyscho pissed and stressed out. Like he expects that at this point the band is being charged that $2000/minute. He motions to the sound board guys to shut them off but the drummer keeps going for at least another 30 seconds before finally leaving the stage.
All in all an awesome show. I just hope they didn’t just get bankrupted by some fines or something. I am happy to see they got some good coverage in the LA Times review of the show and I really hope they make it back to the US. They feel like one of those things that are pretty uniquely British with tons of just incredibly obscure UK music references, but hopefully there are enough of us around here who get it when you title a song “These Animal Menswe@r” to keep them afloat.
Coming soon- tons of festival pictures and maybe even a little video.
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