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.