The Coachella Report for 2009

Quick Notes on my Coachella Experience for 2009 (images pillaged liberally from flickr):



-This year was probably my least stressful one yet, at least in terms of transportation, parking, traffic time and logistics. I can't say the same for all my friends, but it's nice to know I'm getting the weekend procedures down to a workable science, even if I fought with "parking enforcement" more than once.

-Friday felt hot only because it's been relatively cold for so long; Saturday was hotter and made me really start to feel the burn; Sunday was an outright blister of a day that flattened everyone who ventured outdoors for more than a few minutes. Coachella was a week earlier this year specifically to AVOID this. Now it looks like next weekend's gonna be fairly reasonable in comparison. Oh well, B for effort.



-Los Campesinos! were easily the most fun band of the weekend, though that was pretty easy to predict. There were technical difficulties galore - I don't know whether this was because the band themselves set up everything, or the general sound problems that seemed to plague every fourth band we saw that weekend, or what - but it was a small price to pay for the kind of infectious enthusiasm you only ever get from bands this young and this new to the circuit. They seemed to be in awe of the size of the crowd, to the point that a quarter of the band decided "fuck it, I'm crowd surfing" as the show drew to a close, drummer knocking over his set in the process and all. I'm not an expert on their gigography, but I don't see how this show couldn't have been one of their best.

-I'm the one guy on earth who didn't really know the Ting Tings, so I ended up going to see them as kind of a last resort, but it turned out that 1) I actually did recognize a lot of their stuff and 2) They totally rocked the house. That's a hard thing to do when "They" is two people without a stage show and "house" is the fucking Sahara tent at Coachella, so there you go.



-Hilarity at Coachella #1: three hours before McCartney is scheduled to appear, Alex Kapranos takes the stage in a George Harrison shirt. Franz Ferdinand was better and looser than when I saw them four years ago, but I wish they'd kept the extended jamming of songs like "40 ft" to a minimum for such a short festival set. They didn't go that heavy on Tonight songs, but some of those they did play were head-scratchers ("Turn it On" but not "Lucid Dreams"?), but overall still a good time. It's kind of amazing how, after all these years, "Take Me Out" still sounds so amazing.



-Fearless crowd navigation got us up close for Leonard Cohen, whose band provided probably the best-sounding set of the day. Amazingly, this guy still sounds exactly like he did forty years ago. I'm not overly familiar with his stuff but I assume we got most all the hits: "First We Take Manhattan", "Everybody Knows", "Hallelujah", etc.

-We got almost to the front of the stage for Silversun Pickups, and I'm glad we did: apparently the crowd flocking to this secondary stage was MASSIVE. Maybe because this was essentially the coming-out show for their brand-new sophomore album (Glass House show doesn't count). But they ripped through material old and new alike, and still found some time for very appreciated crowd banter, which seems a rarity these days (maybe I'm seeing the wrong bands). I was struck by just how genuinely happy and appreciative these guys were to see so many fans there to support them - they probably could have spent half their set thanking us. And the crowd was so enraptured that they probably would have been fine with it.

-I did not see much of Paul McCartney, and I only half regret it. Exhausted from over six straight hours of walking/standing/dancing, I was about ready to pack it in. And I figured I'd decide to leave or not based on what McCartney was playing. So of course all I heard was his solo stuff: "Band on the Run"; that awful new single of his; some silly "ho hey oh" business. It didn't help that the one Beatles song I did hear, "Eleanor Rigby", sounded awkward and out-of-tempo. So yeah, I left. And I was bummed when I heard echoes of "Live and Let Die" as I got to my car - would've liked to see that one, especially with the fireworks and all. Some of my friends who did see it told me it was beyond an amazing concert experience, and that some of my favorite Beatles songs ended up getting played. I mean, I'm glad they enjoyed it, I guess I just wasn't into hearing "Helter Skelter" and "Lady Madonna" if it wasn't the real deal.

-Saturday I didn't get to see Ida Maria. Too bad, but why did she have to be scheduled at 1:30?? We were barely awake by then.

-Arrived to see most of Dr. Dog, who were pretty good. Caught one song from Amanda Palmer, who recruited the Lucent Dossier dancers from the next tent over for some crazy theatrics. Also caught part of Henry Rollins, which turned out to be a "spoken word" set - but it was more like him telling us about his life than free-form poetry or whatever. A lot of it was interesting and funny, but we were in the mood for music and carried on.



-The coolest piece of Coachella's ever-revolving installation art pieces this year was The Hand of Man, a giant metal hand which was strong enough to pick up, drop and smash mid-size cars (and did so, frequently). It was controlled by actual festival-goers via a fancy Power Glove-type apparatus - pretty rad idea, though I was never able to take part.

-Wish I knew Superchunk better. We caught the last few songs, which were super energetic - especially closer "Slack Motherfucker". These guys definitely have a '90s alt-rock aesthetic - which is now apparently nostalgic, making me feel ancient by comparison. Good stuff, and I'm sure the fans were more than pleased.

-Hilarity at Coachella #2: I overhear a guy ask his girl, completely matter-of-factly, "so what's in your pussy"?

-TV on the Radio is such an iffy band live. I don't know if their stuff doesn't translate, or they make the wrong choices during translation or what. I thought their set was mostly good when I saw them at the Wiltern in November, even if they couldn't nail what made "Golden Age" and "DMZ" sound so great on record. At the Coachella stage, a second awkward rendering of the former made me not want to stick around for a possible second chance at the latter. But I'd been planning on leaving early anyway to see these next guys...



-Fleet Foxes took the stage just before sundown, and the transition from day to night only intensified the band's ethereal performance. These guys nailed every aspect of their sound, from deep echoing vocals to pounding rhythms to extra little instrumental flourishes that (unlike some bands I'd just seen) served to enhance the songs instead of changing them. The band may not have thought so, but for my money this was probably the best performance of the weekend.



-I gave MIA a second chance after last year's debacle, and I'm glad I did. This time there were few technical glitches, no overuse of gunshot clips, and a less angry crowd. MIA herself was more into it too - dancing, joking, postulating like a third-world dictator - and she just had a baby! The visuals were great too, a good mix of interesting animation and glowstick-lined dancers who looked like neon skeletons dancing in the desert dark.

-Caught bits of Mastodon and Coachella staple MSTRKRFT. Also saw several songs from Gang Gang Dance, whose electronic beats translated much better to a live setting than I'd have given them credit for. Chalk it up to live drums. Two sets of them. And I wasn't the only one enjoying myself - I was a few feet away from TVOTR's Kyp Malone, and (apparently) a few feet further from the girls of Los Campesinos!.

-Sunday I had to run through 101-degree heat to make the Friendly Fires set on time, but it was completely worth it. Missed No Age, which is a shame, but sleep is really nice too. FF is another young band with something to prove, and they brought a real playful intensity to their set. I wonder how many people were in there just to escape the oppressive heat, though.



-I ventured into the Mojave tent for Fucked Up's set, and within three seconds I'd noticed 1) The lead singer was in the middle of the moshpit; 2) He was bleeding copiously from his forehead; 3) there was some sort of weird stench reminiscent of rotting artichokes that intensified exponentially as I got closer to the front. Numbers 1 and 2 made me want to stay, but number 3 forced me to get the hell out of the tent before I threw up. I don't know what it was; I can stand the smell of sweat and vomit and all that other fun stuff, but this was something on its own planet of ripe. Maybe next time, guys.

-Hilarity at Coachella #3: Flabby white dude walking around in a Borat bikini. All that effort to dress up and he still purposely flashed people left and right.

-Saw bits of lots of Sunday afternoon bands. Peter Bjorn and John were kind of lackluster; Antony and the Johnsons is just not my thing; Clipse canceled. Oh well. X felt like an Important Band I Never Got the Chance to Know. I know they're important and should be seen and all that, but after seeing so many upstart young turks giving it their all to rock your face early in the festival, it was hard to get into a show that looked essentially like my friends' parents playing in a punk cover band.

-Father of the Year award goes to 20-something Douchebag in front of us at My Bloody Valentine - remember, their show is so loud that they handed out earplugs to everyone at the festival that day - who was too busy dancing to notice that his two-year-old daughter was covering her ears in pain for the first few songs of the set. When she got tired and wanted to sleep, dude went to the trouble of letting her lie on the ground between his feet. In the middle of a General Admission crowd. With people walking around and through them constantly. IN THE DARK. If the drunk, lumbering asshole from the Silversun Pickups crowd had been there, that girl would not have a face anymore. As opposed to just not having any hearing anymore. PARENTS, DO NOT BRING YOUR KIDS TO LOUD CONCERTS. ALSO, DON'T BE DICKS.



-I'm glad I got to see Public Enemy, but - in keeping with a disturbing trend for this year's festival - their sound felt way off, with absolutely no bass in the mix (even during "Bass in your face!") and Flava Flav rapping over his own vocal track. Flav did some stage diving, sure, and these guys are still eerily relevant, but "Don't Believe the Hype" was all I really needed to hear before I was ready to head elsewhere.

-Other evidence that Sunday was the Day of the Unimpressive Reunion: My Bloody Valentine was good, but played the same show I saw last fall (this may be my problem more than theirs, but still); they really stuck to their guns by retaining their Sonic Holocaust for the festival setting, but I can't imagine they made many fans out of the casual set for doing so. Later, Throbbing Gristle played us some creepy industrial music that felt very revolutionary for its time, but was too droning to keep my interest that late in the evening.



-Though really, how can you complain when the dude's rocking a kingly robe like that?

-Oddly enough, some of the most fun I had Sunday was watching Devendra Banhart. People like to hate on the guy, and I'm admittedly unfamiliar with his stuff, but coming in not knowing a thing, I had a real blast. The music was the perfect combination of chill and dancey as the sun set, and the crowd loved all of it. Something about a fan's sign reading "HEY DEVENDRA IT'S MY BIRTHDAY, BROTHER" really made me smile. He played a new jammy song "Rats" which everyone seemed to love on first listen; oh yeah, and he brought up HAR MAR SUPERSTAR for the last song, thankfully to play maracas and not to strip. Why Coachella stuck this popular band in the tiny Gobi tent while other bands had been struggling to fill even half of the Mojave tent throughout the afternoon, I may never understand.

-The Cure played us out as we headed for the car. I've never been a fan but they sounded good, and I'm told they were in the middle of their third encore when Coachella actually pulled the plug on them - which is a shame, but damn, so much music!

-Overall it was another great concert experience - there were some disappointments and I wish the scheduling had worked more in my favor, but we'd all like a perfect life, wouldn't we? Now that we're all crammed back into our desks and office buildings, I think the thing I already miss the most is that brief situational fraternity you have with everyone around you in the crowd: you may never know their names and you might not get along in real life, but here, for a few minutes, you're all dancing as one to your favorite music, the briefest part of something indescribably bigger and deeper than yourself. All lives fraught with the meaning between the chords. Something that, at the end of the day, you know is more than worth it. Bring on the next one.

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Music is the Blood of Life, Part Two

My week has suddenly become very busy sprinting to finish a script - fingers crossed I got a bite that leads somewhere - but I did promise a Coachella-related article, and I thought it'd be good to mention the bands worth seeing BEFORE the set times are posted (whenever that ends up happening), just to keep my opinions free of timing and technicality, I guess.



Anyway: as always, many many bands worth seeing at Coachella. Frankly, there are very few bands playing that aren't worth seeing, and there's something great and refreshing about wandering aimlessly from tent to tent, discovering new bands on the strength of their live performances alone. But vague road maps are pretty nice too; after the jump, I'll mention some of the bands I'm most interested in seeing, for one reason or another.

Fleet Foxes (Saturday): 2008's indie darlings will soon be playing in front of one of the largest crowds of their career. I've never seen these guys live, so this should be a highlight for me. I hope their sound translates to a wide-open desert setting, so far away from the closeknit acoustics of their studio recordings and abandoned French alcoves. But whatever, I'm going to rock out as much as any other beard-having hippie in the crowd.

Leonard Cohen (Friday): I'll admit to not knowing much of this guy beyond the Essential compilation, but what am I gonna do, not see this guy? From everything I hear, he puts on an amazing live show - and this guy is in his 70s.

Friendly Fires (Sunday): Shorter festival set times are actually a benefit to bands with only a handful of songs to their name (The weird tour for Gorillaz' first album awkwardly bloated the setlist with as much filler as possible, including playing "Clint Eastwood" twice), so I'm looking forward to a concise and catchy show from these newfangled youngsters. Really danceable stuff like "Paris", "White Diamonds" and "Skeleton Boy" might make these guys this year's MGMT... for better or for worse...

Gang Gang Dance (Saturday): "Crazy post-globalization electro soundclash" will accurately describe maybe a few minutes off of St. Dymphna. This shit is seriously nuts, and I can't wait to see how it translates to a sweaty desert rave.

Franz Ferdinand (Friday): Their new album might have gotten really mixed reviews, but I like a lot of it, and there's no way they won't put on a super-energetic show.

Mastodon (Saturday): Fuck it. I'm going elbows-out in the mosh pit, so you better watch out.

Los Campesinos! (Friday): Finally, I get to see these guys! I'm going to be selfish and hope they focus on their first album over their pseudo-b-sides-collection We are Beautiful, We are Doomed, which hasn't really gelled with me yet. Regardless, this looks to be a uniquely hyper show that will probably end up one of my highlights of the weekend.

Fucked Up (Sunday): Not a huge fan of their music, but their live shows sound so insane that I kind of have to go for the spectacle alone.

Ida Maria (Saturday): I at first got her confused with the band Oreida. Then with Mirah. Then with Rainer Maria. Et cetera. But in actuality, this is a Norwegian lady whose really fun rock-n-roll sounds kinda like Bjork fronting The Hold Steady. Her live shows are supposed to be nuts, non-album singalongs and all, so it should be a good time.

My Bloody Valentine (Sunday): OK, well I just saw these guys recently so I will probably skip their set, but you should go. And bring earplugs, seriously.

There's plenty of other acts I'm sure I'll check out - Chemical Brothers, No Age, Paul McCartney why not - but I'm still down for other options, if you think I'm missing anyone that looks to be pretty awesome. Suggestions?

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Music is the Blood of Life, Part One

I hope you've noticed this widget off to the side. ->

Call it the soundtrack, or the jukebox, or the playlist. Whatever. This is basically my shorthand for sharing music with anyone who's curious. If you haven't tried it yet, don't be scared - all you have to do is press play. It doesn't want your money or your email and it will not give you a virus. You can skip to any song at any time, and it'll play the entirety of each song as many times as you want. It's a fun little gadget (if legally dubious, currently), and I update it with new songs regularly, even if I'm not posting written entries as often.

But it is a Playlist, the shaping of which I (of course) take way too seriously. As in: there can never be more than one track from an artist on there; keep it short and simple; nothing sticks around forever. I appreciate the medium of the Playlist for what it is, but I'm still at heart the kind of old-fashioned music listener who generally purchases and listens to his music by entire album or not at all, who can't opine on one song without relating it to the other tracks before and after it. So, if I want to share my thoughts on albums as a whole, the Playlist on the right is not exactly the best way to do it. But I guess that's why God gave us writin' hands.

With my 3-day Coachella experience just a week away, I've been doing a LOT of listening lately. Trying to familiarize myself with bands who I've always heard about but never heard, etc. And I'll post something about the Coachella Bands to Watch For next week (since nobody else seems to be doing it!), but in the meantime I wanted to talk a little bit about some bands I won't be able to see there, though I really wish I could, and their new or upcoming material. Four albums worth your time:

Dan Deacon - Bromst
The subtitle to this album could be called "Jams Grow Up"; though there's plenty of party still on Deacon's follow-up to 2007 freak-riot Spiderman of the Rings, his sound has clearly matured in interesting and unpredictable ways. Now sporting live instrumentation (with marimbas!) and further musical diversity, this guy has hit the blogosphere sweet spot with a seemingly limitless unspooling of positive reviews and goodwill. You'll probably agree once you give a listen to some of his new album on his myspace page - start with "Red F" and "Get Older".

Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
Instantly fell in love with these guys when they premiered pseudo-first-single "1901", so far the Most Perfect Pop Song of 2009. Seriously, there are so many hooks and payoffs in these three minutes alone that you wonder what they could have possibly saved for the rest of the album. Well, actually, plenty: the nine tracks of Wolfgang are similarly chock-full of exciting gems, from opener and maybe-actual-first single "Lisztomania" through "Lasso" to extended jam "Love Like a Sunset". If you missed their appearance on SNL last week, you can see most of their (three!) performances here.

Metric - Fantasies
Hard to believe It's been four years since the last album from these guys - their debut reissue and 2006's solo album from Emily Haines don't count. It hits stores next week, though it's already available for legal download and you can stream the whole album for free on their site. (I love that artists are doing this now, by the way - it shows a solid amount of faith in their own product, as well as the fans who are eager to support the band but are even more eager to hear new music.) The album has really grown on me over the last few weeks. Metric's sound isn't exactly going to revolutionize the scene, but it's definitely more fun and immediate than most of the other big releases this year. I'm also a bit biased, because I think Haines has one of the sexiest voices in rock and roll right now; she doesn't have the range of, say, Neko Case or Leslie Feist, but she sings with such a confidence and mastery of her own limitations that it becomes its own unique experience. My favorites right now are "Satellite Mind", "Gimme Sympathy" and "Collect Call", but check out the whole thing at the link above.

Cymbals Eat Guitars - Why There are Mountains
I'm a sucker for great cover art, fine - but the debut album from these shamble-rockers has enough glorious freakouts and intricacies to please any Pavement or Broken Social Scene fan. This has already been pegged as the great indie road trip album of 2009, and I hope to be able to verify that for myself in the coming months. Check out opener "And the Hazy Sea" or lead single "Wind Phoenix" (among other songs) on their myspace page.

There are also lots of other albums I've barely had time to digest: Doves' Kingdom of Rust; Japandroids' Post-Nothing; Peter Bjorn and John's Living Thing; The Decemberists' The Hazards of Love (OK, not so hot on the last two yet). And that's not even counting Coachella bands! It's been a great year for music so far, and there's no reason to think it won't keep on keepin' on. To be continued...

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This ain't no pedestrian shit!

Sorry I've been ignoring the Blog lately. I've actually had some very productive days in the last two weeks, getting a lot done creatively (if not in other areas). I've had some great new script ideas and it's been taking a lot of time to shape them, to figure out what works and what doesn't. But it's all been really energizing in that new-idea way. Sometimes when you get the momentum you just have go to with it, because who knows how long it'll last?

I actually made a decision earlier this week to try to change my way of living. (Sounds pretty radical, I know, but hopefully it won't turn my world upside-down right away.) Basically, I need to shift my focus more to the creative, to self-expression. I need to look at areas in my life more as how they would benefit me creatively than how they would benefit my social life or my bank account. Not that I'm going to quit my job, turn into a hippie and throw my TV out the window, but I do feel like a lot of aspects of my life are fairly devoid of creativity - and, in a few cases, actively retard any form of self-expression. So I want to do what I can to reverse that. It won't be easy or immediate, but no permanent lifestyle change ever is.

(Weirdly enough, when it comes to changing aspects of your life, I think the slower the better: ten years ago I couldn't have imagined exercising 2-4 days a week. Now, thanks to a slow immersion into that lifestyle, it's weird if I don't get that much exercise. And technically I should be exercising at least 5 days a week, so there's still room for improvement; again, it's the slow immersion that's key.)

So it's starting off relatively simply. I'm keeping a stack of notebooks around, and am trying to get into a habit of using them to record any flash of a good idea I have. Creativity can't be controlled or predicted; so, if my mind is shooting out random ideas, I have to be ready to catch as many of them as I can. I figure one for names, one for plot points, one for funny stories, maybe a dream journal, and so on. Many, many creative types already do this, and I've known about the technique for a while, but I've shied away from it for so long because God, it's so much more work... but actually, even more than that, my egotism has always convinced me that if Idea X, which occurs at let's say 4:45 pm on Friday, is a truly good idea, of course I'll keep it in the back of my mind until it comes time to fit it into a suitable story I'm writing, whether it's 9 pm on Friday, or Sunday afternoon, or six months from now. Surely my brain will help me and hold onto Idea X for as long as I need it, right?

Well, that's a laugh.

For me, part of being able to improve your craft is recognizing your faults. And it goes deeper than "I don't know much about Science" or "I have trouble writing female characters" or whatever. It's an embrace of the idea that You, Yourself, Are Not Perfect. You are not going to just remember every awesome detail or name you think up on a whim. Your first draft is not going to be flawless. Your grand ideas are not beyond criticism. Most of your "original" stories have, actually, already been told by someone else before you. None of this is a knock on your skills or your drive; it's just an acknowledgment of our shared histories and our very human imperfections.

It's the same in many other fields. Kobe Bryant didn't get to his skill level without improving his weaknesses first. But for us to improve our own weaknesses, we have to be able to recognize them. And sometimes that can only be done through trying new things, a third-person perspective, or sheer, brutal honesty.

Anyway, keeping the notebooks around (or, if I'm traveling, the Notes application on my phone) is a good start. It's admittedly a small step, but hopefully a serious first one on the road to a lifestyle that's more attuned to (and a greater product of) my creativity. Maybe it'll lead me to other, greater ways of harnessing my creative potential. Maybe someday, God forbid, I'll even be that hippie wearing homemade clothes and painting the dog. At least that hippie will also be exercising 5 times a week.

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