Sean Flinn

We made our first visit in three weeks to the new home site this past Sunday — and man, what a difference! Our friends in the neighborhood had been telling us to drop by, because big things were starting to happen. They were correct.

The exterior looks pretty much done on the front, with the blue-gray color coat now on, and shutters framing the upstairs windows. Our neighbors have their places stuccoed now as well, so we now know what our part of the block will look like.

The back of the house has some initial coating and shutters, but still needs the final color.

Heading over, Katie mentioned that she hoped there would be some drywall up, as that’s the point at which she’d start to feel excited. “It will feel real to me, then,” she commented. Well, babe: it’s real. The entire house — all 3 floors — now has drywall in every room.

Big things we expect in the next couple of weeks: the roof, then cabinets & fixtures (although I’m sure there’s still some detail work to do that we’re not seeing).

We also went down to Vintage Design last week to pick out our carpet, tile and other design elements for the place. We have a couple of variables to work out on some upgraded carpet, but we at least committed to investing in an upgraded carpet pad (lifetime guarantee FTW), solar film on the windows (to make the house more energy efficient and reduce fading from UV exposure) and sealant on the granite counter tops (to prevent staining). Those all felt like good sound investments to us — non-cosmetic stuff that will save us money in the long run and help preserve the value of the home.

These will be some of the last elements to go into the home — you don’t want tradesmen walking over your new carpet to put in your cabinets, I suppose — so I imagine the place won’t look “finished” for quite a while (probably until we hit escrow in August).

So, I’m not the smartest guy on the planet — I freely admit this — but I have done two really smart things in my life: 1) I married my wife; 2) I did so about a week after my birthday, ensuring that I would never forget our anniversary, and that we’d always have cause to make that week unusually celebratory.

This proved remarkably fruitful this year. When the weekend before my birthday rolled around, Katie and I realized that we’d booked ourselves into a trifecta of incredible concerts in Los Angeles: PJ Harvey & John Parish @ The Wiltern on June 20; Femi Kuti & Santigold @ The Hollywood Bowl on the 21st; and Wilco, again @ The Wiltern, on my actual birthday (June 22). Seeing as how we’d planned a big triple birthday party with our friends Jill and Sunshine the following weekend (the weekend of our actual anniversary), we decided to combine celebrating our first wedding anniversary with my birthday, and treated ourselves to something special.

Awww … I love this woman.

We picked out an incredible hotel to stay at — The London in West Hollywood — and planned to spend 3 days lounging by the pool eating & drinking, enjoying room service, and venturing out in the evenings for our shows. This proved to be a phenomenal idea. If you’re a Southern California resident looking for a luxurious local getaway (and want to take advantage of some nightlife as well), I strongly recommend The London. Foodies will note that Gordon “Hell’s Kitchen” Ramsey runs the restaurant at the the hotel. We didn’t eat there, and have heard fair-to-middling reviews of the food. We CAN, however, totally vouch for the quality of service from the staff and at the pool. Both made us feel really welcome and special.

Katie lounges poolside at The London.

The London’s outdoor pool — our “home” for 3 days.

Our suite.

The view or the Hollywood hills out our hotel room window … the infamous Viper Room nightclub is below to the right.

The shows were all fantastic as well. I’m always a sucker for PJ Harvey, and she & John Parish tore through a set of their collaborative material that was far stronger than their records together would indicate possible. Saturday’s show at The Bowl (for which we were joined by our friends Sunshine & Gloria — who brought us delicious food from Greenblatt’s Deli) was flat out amazing … Santigold brought along a full band to accompany her and her two-woman dance team, while Femi Kuti proved he can stand firmly outside his father, Fela’s, shadow as the undisputed king of Afrobeat. And I couldn’t ask for anything more of a treat on my birthday than to eat at LA’s landmark Mexican restaurant, El Cholo with our friends Jamie & Ellen, followed by a 2.5 hour set by Wilco (one of my top 5 favorite bands of all time — and maybe the best band playing in America right now).

Wiltern marquee for PJ & John Parish.

PJ Harvey on stage … this was our first time snagging pit tickets at The Wiltern.

PJ Harvey, John Parish and band.

Santigold on stage at The Hollywood Bowl.

The incomparable Femi Kuti on stage at The Bowl.

Femi Kuti lights up The Hollywood Bowl.

Wilco at The Wiltern on June 22.

Katie and I were anxious to get out to the home site this week, our anticipation on a high after noticing that the building crew had started on the exterior last week. Turns out that progress was fairly minimal: the front of the house does indeed appear ready for color, and the back has a scratch coat of stucco on it. A few additions have been made to the inside as well, but nothing earth shaking. As Katie noted today, “We’ll start getting excited when the dry wall starts going up on the inside.” That will be the point at which we can start taking realistic measurements for furniture and such.

The front of the house looks ready for some color.

Believe it or not, this will be our first hose valve since we moved out of our parents’ respective houses. We are unreasonably excited about this.

Ducts! Oh, central air, how I have missed you.

Katie pretends to luxuriate in what will someday be our master bathroom shower. Off camera, I am hoping that she’s not singing “Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair” from South Pacific to herself.

We are mystified as to what a “fur wall” is. I mean, it certainly LOOKS furry. FURnace? FURniture? Google is of no help here.

No visit to downtown Tustin this week. Katie vetoed my suggestion to hit BagelMe on Newport Ave in favor of a more immediate caffeine / carb fix at a place close to our current domicile. We’ll get back there in late June.

Also, no visit next week, as we’ll be up in Hollywood celebrating our first anniversary & my 34th birthday. London Hotel, The Wiltern, The Hollywood Bowl and El Cholo all on the agenda. I can’t wait.

Not a big post this week. We didn’t get a chance to actually go into the home this week. Our schedules dictated that we swing by on Saturday — rather than our normal Sunday visit — when the workers are on site. We didn’t want to disturb them, so we kept our distance.

However, we did have another special guest star this week: Mom Flinn, who drove out from LaVerne to show us her new puppy (Pippin) and to take a tour of the place. We at least got the chance to show her the building and the neighborhood, and then to walk her through the model home (the folks in the Lennar sales office have got to be sick of us by now … we end up trundling through there a few times a month). So, hopefully she now has a good sense of what we’re digging ourselves into.

We were quite pleased — and a bit surprised — to see that the exterior is already going onto the home. They had the front of the place tented and molded stucco coating had already gone up.

The back of the house was prepped and ready as well … I expect the whole place will be done when we return for next Sunday’s visit.

After the home site visit, we continued our (new) tradition of visiting a new restaurant / shop in the nearby area. This time around, Claro’s Italian Market was our target (we wanted something we could takeaway, so that we didn’t have to leave Pip the Pup locked up in a car for too long). Holy crap, these guys are going to get a TON of our business. You can see by Katie’s Yelp! review that the prospect of fresh sliced Italian deli meats, cheeses and desserts has us both in a constant drool. Highly recommended.

For this week’s visit out to the new home site, we decided to try something new: riding our bicycles from our current place to the new one. Dad Flinn, an avid cyclist, opted to join us. Total mileage, round trip, was to work out to ~21 miles (with a nice break for pictures and lunch at the halfway mark).

Fortunately, Orange County has some wonderful biking trails near our neck of the woods. My plan was to have us ride along the back side of the Upper Newport Bay ecological preserve, then catch the head of the San Diego Creek Trail, which runs from the bay all the way out to the mountains in the east. This would take us through parts of Costa Mesa, Santa Ana, Irvine and Tustin — a nice little Tour de Orange County.

So, with the weather stuck firmly in “May gray” mode — overcast and cool, perfect for biking, we slapped on our helmets and set out.

I will truly miss having the bay so close to our home (which made it a great place for biking and running) — but now I know it’s an easy bike ride away, at least.

Sadly, our riding plans were scuttled at the halfway mark. Dad somehow broke his bike’s chain just as we were riding up to the new neighborhood, necessitating a rescue mission by our good friends (and soon-to-be neighbors) John and Alicia. At least we made it to the house before the mishap, which meant that we were still able to show Dad the home site and take some new pics.

Dad & Katie pose in front of the house. They’ve now covered the front in pre-stucco paper, a step forward from the yellow moisture guard.

We now have actual windows on all three floors.

Sheetrock has started going up in the stairwells … there are giant stacks of the stuff in each room now, so we imagine this phase will start moving along quickly as well.

After we recovered from the bicycle mishap, we hauled ourselves over to downtown Tustin for a late lunch and a beer at the Tustin Brewing Co, as part of our “try a new restaurant in the new neighborhood every Sunday” plan. Good marks on their IPA.

Katie and I set out this morning for our regular Sunday swing by the house to document its construction. We weren’t sure how much would change in a week, but it looks like the builders made some pretty good progress. As our loan application was officially approved on Friday, this trip was all the more exciting: we’re another big step closer to actually owning the place.

The front of the house now has some yellow moisture / mold guard around it.

We spent some time in the downstairs office trying to map out where furniture will go. Katie took a nap on an imaginary loveseat next to the window, which looks out the front of the house.

Electrical and plumbing are going in … all of the outlets have been wired and the kitchen, bathrooms and laundry area are ready for appliances / fixtures.

… and we have a fireplace! Our Midwestern family & friends will laugh that it contains a gas log only. We laugh that California has the strictest air quality standards in the nation.

We concluded our outing by poking around downtown & Old Town Tustin (which dates back to the 1870s … earlier, if you go all the way back to the New World peoples who inhabited the area in the early-mid part of the second millennium). We were thrilled to discover that there are a ton of Indian, phở, mexican, and sushi joints near us, as well as the normal grocery store / strip mall fare. Most important: Trader Joe’s and Peet’s Coffee are close at hand.

Katie and I have known that we wanted to buy a house together since long before we got married. Home ownership was, in fact, the inspiration for one of our first (and only) fights as a couple. I look back on that as simply being an outward manifestation of how passionate we both were about actually owning some property together.

Now, just shy of one year into our marriage (and 4 1/2 years into being a couple), we’re finally ready to take the plunge. About a year-and-a-half ago, some friends of our moved into a great new community in Tustin, built on the old (and now defunct) Tustin Marine Corp Air Station. We looked at the models and absolutely feel in love with the 3 bedroom / 2.5 bath plan. And hey! There’s that blimp hanger across the street — a registered place of “historical interest”!

But, after looking hard at the pricing, our budget and the loan options at the time, we decided it was just too much for us to take on. This was all pre-housing / credit crunch & economic crisis mind you. Heartbroken (and a little frazzled at how much it was going to cost us to become homeowners), we decided to forgo buying for a while and just take it easy. We have a good life as renters — tons of disposable income, a great condo in a great part of Costa Mesa, and next-to-none of the responsibility or overhead that comes with owning a piece of property.

And then the baby fever hit. Katie & I both really want to start a family at some point (not immediately — but at some point), but both feel equally strongly about not advancing to that phase of life until we actually have a house to call home. The longer we put off the one, the longer we’d have to put off the other. So, with biological clocks ticking, the economic meltdown having kicked home prices down a few pegs, interest rates at historic lows and the government (feds and state) both offering tax breaks to first-time buyers, we decided to revive our search.

As Katie blogged a while back, this did not start well. After a fruitless search in Aliso Viejo, we asked our real estate agent to find some laces in our price range in our (current) hometown of Costa Mesa. Again, kind of a bust. The big problem, we quickly realized, was that we kept comparing everything to the first place we’d seen in Tustin. People warned us this would happen. And so what? We’re a cliche.

So, about two weeks ago, we went back to Camden Place in Tustin, took one more look at the model, had the sales agent take us to the actual home site of the last place available for sale in the phase … and we decided to buy. This past Saturday, we handed over THE BIGGEST CHECK I HAVE EVER WRITTEN IN MY LIFE to the fine folks in the sales office and signed a stack of documents about as thick as a phone book. Loans are being applied for and finalized. A CPA is (or so I’m told) pouring over our financial records to tell us exactly how broke we’re going to be once we close escrow and get our keys. It’s all a bit crazy.

Anyhow, pictures! I’ll document the whole process here on the ol’ blog (maybe some other prospective buyers will get something out of it), warts and all. And since the place is still being built, I can post regular shots of it all coming together. Here’s a slide show of what I’ve taken so far, including pics of the fully furnished model. I’ll keep my Flickr Photostream updated week-to-week as I take new pics.

Oh … and after signing the papers and writing the check, we headed up to Memphis in “The Santorum” in Downtown Santa Ana for a celebratory brunch. Our waitress, apparently all jacked up on sugar (she took a bar bet and drank and entire jar of maraschino cherry juice) decided to pour us bottomless mimosas … in which we indulged mightily. Let me tell you: nothing dulls the ache of impending cash poverty like a good Sunday drunk.

According to my (current, and third) Nike+ sensor, I’d put in exactly 100 workouts while training over the past 5 months … 78 hours logged and over 550 miles run.

Workout 101? Sunday, May 3 at the 2009 OC Marathon. Results? I finished in 4:00:11 — just 11 seconds shy of my goal of finally breaking the 4-hour mark at one of these epic, leg crushing events. And after this training season, and with 3 of these suckers under my belt, I think I’m OK admitting to myself that I’m just a 4-hour marathon kinda guy. I did manage to set a PR (personal record) by about a minute … and my I was a full minute under my goal pace at the 1/2 marathon mark.

See? That’s me at mile 12. Looking happy and strong!

Even at mile 20 I was still well on track to hit my goal. Those last 6 miles are truly punishing for me though. This is me at mile 25:

The guy in front of me looks possessed … I look happy but beat.

I’m sure I could have found 11 seconds out there somewhere. Still, I’m content, for now, to focus on 10-Ks and 1/2 marathons. I’m proud to have run 3 marathons … and who knows? Maybe the bug will bite me again someday. For the time being, I’m excited to have my Sundays back.

Some acknowledgments:

My buddy / colleague / boss Todd “Tungsten” Northcutt is the whole reason I ran this race. He completed his very first marathon on Sunday, and did so in spite of phenomenal, near-crippling leg cramps. He has more guts than most people I know. Todd caught the running bug a few years back, and has been a major inspiration to me ever since. We’ve done training runs together in all sorts of places (San Francisco, Austin, Orange County), and he’s always finding new tools to help track our runs, be it DailyMile, or Nike+ or his Garmin Forerunner watch. After I’d run 2 marathons while watching him put in more total miles than me (but not committing to the big race), I finally told him: pick a race, and I’ll run it with you. He called my bluff, and late last year, we both signed up for OC and started training in earnest. I always looked forward to coming into the office Monday mornings to swap stories about our increasingly long Sunday runs. I’ll be forever grateful to him for pushing me to test — and extend — my limits. Here’s hoping we have many more stories to swap about miles earned.

My wife Katie put up with my ridiculous training schedule — which, for the last 2 months or so, has meant losing me for most of every Sunday to long runs. The last 5 weeks, I’d literally be gone running for 2-3 hours, after which I’d often be a total zombie. Katie never complained, and always seemed genuinely interested in how my runs went when I returned, covered in sweat-salt and trail dust. On top of that, she rallied my parents and came out Sunday morning to watch me run, coordinating the best spots to watch me go by and cheering like a maniac when I popped into view. She even organized a small lunch for us and Todd’s family, along with Marla (Todd’s equally patient and supportive wife). Running feels like a very solitary sport — but, paradoxically, you can’t do it alone. Or, at least, I’d never want to do it without Katie as my “support team.”

My parents came out Sunday to finally see me run — and seeing them cheer me on with Katie really lifted me up. They’ve been hearing me blather on about my workouts for years now (after watching me run and coaching me through high school track and cross country), so it was really gratifying to finally have them out there on the course, rooting me on. I live to make you guys proud. Thank for being there!

This will be, by necessity, an epic post — because our trips to the Coachella Music & Arts Festival every year always turn out to be epic affairs, in one way or another. This is my and Katie’s “rock ‘n’ roll vacation” every year (at least until we can afford to go to SXSW too!), four days devoted solely to the endeavor of seeing / hearing as much great music as possible, experienced in a beer, pancake and antihistamine (the allergies get pretty rowdy out there on the Empire Polo Fields) fueled haze with some of our closest friends.

This year’s Coachella Crew: Sean & Katie, Sunshine, Tetsuo & Vanessa, Vahn, Knower & Candice, Adam, Tungsten, Sluggo, and Gorman. This was, quite possibly, the finest round-up we’ve had … if Eric had been able to make the trip, we’d have had a world champion lineup of newbs and grizzled vets alike.

To keep this brief / sane, I’ll try and give a day-by-day summary of the trip, with pics!

THURSDAY: We suffer through an agonizing final day of work for the week, then begin the task of carpooling via rental SUVs and cars out to Indio. We listen to loud music. We eat terrible food (despite Patton Oswalt’s warnings, Sunshine, Adam and Gorman all opt to eat KFC’s “failure piles in sadness bowls”). We laugh like maniacs and drive like bats out of hell. A little before 10 p.m., we check into our trio of rooms at the Ramada Inn in Palm Springs (budget rooms, all the way) and enjoy a cocktail or two before embarking on an annual tradition: poker at the Agua Caliente Casino in Rancho Mirage. Tet, Vahn, Sean, Adam, Todd and Knower play limit poker until 2 a.m., while the ladies proceed to be mildly harassed by old men claiming to be “Canadian Oil Tycoons” at the nearby bar. The night ends around 2 a.m. or so.

FRIDAY: … starts much earlier than expected. 4 a.m., to be exact, at which time Tetsuo and Tungsten stage a home invasion on Sean, Katie, Sunshine and Adam, proceeding to tackle Sean & Katie and jump up and down on their bed. Tetsuo appears to be holding a video camera. Profanities are exchanged. An air mattress is punctured.

Later that day, we embark on the first round of another annual ritual: brunch at the nearby Rock Garden Cafe. Knower grosses everyone out by putting avocado on his waffles. Everyone tanks up on proteins and complex carbohydrates to prep for the long day of walking, jumping up and down, dancing and intense heat ahead.

Getting to the venue today proves to be a chore … we hit the worst traffic of the festival’s 3 days, and it takes us nearly 3 hours to get from restaurant to the gates.

Subsequently, we miss a few cool bands early on. No biggie though — we’re at Coachella! This is my holy place, a temple erected to honor great music & friendship.

The bands: I start things off by catching the first half or so of The Hold Steady’s set, urged to do so by my friend Mike (I think this may be the only band he’s seen live in the past 3 years, so exclusively and enthusiastically does he rep them), and their incredibly upbeat attitude kicks things off perfectly. The highlight of the day for me, though, is easily The Black Keys, who, despite being a two-man guitar-and-drums blues-rock combo from humble Akron, OH, manage to dominate the Main Stage in the hot afternoon sun. They tune / roadie their own gear, and they make a towering noise. At one point, guitarist & signer Dan Auerbach busts out a creeping bass riff while appearing to stealthily stalk his amp stack — I get goosebumps. A brilliant, bluesy way to kick things into high gear. We stick around to catch Franz Ferdinand, tight as always, playing the sun down with a great mix of favorites and more sunset-friendly songs from their new album.

From this point, I make almost nothing but mistakes. We catch Morrissey’s main stage set rather than watching the legendary Leonard Cohen play the Outdoor Theater. Mozzer kicks off in fine form, then literally melts down as the smoke & odor from a nearby hamburger stand motivates a full-on temper tantrum. “I can smell the stench of burning flesh …” he intones, “… and I hope it’s HUMAN.” He then proceeds to mock-gag and choke his way through his next 2 songs, even leaving the stage for a brief time. AT least he didn’t launch in “Meat is Murder.” He barely redeems himself by closing with a brilliant version of The Smiths’ “How Soon Is Now,” leaving 15-year-old Sean very happy. Next mistake: missing dance act The Presets (who, apparently, blew everyone’s minds) to get as close as possible for Paul McCartney’s headlining set. Macca, despite giving everyone a sneak peak at footage from the upcoming Beatles Rock Band game (played as a backdrop while his band rips through “Got To Get You Into My Life”) starts off with perhaps the most mediocre, treacly set of fluff I’ve heard at the festival, ever. When he starts into “The Long & Winding Road,” Tungsten announced his utter disgust and we leave to go reunite with the rest of the crew for The Crystal Method’s Sahara tent set.

The Crystal Method are great, but oddly flat … despite having a catalog filled with plenty of songs with deep breakdowns and dynamic shifts, their set is pretty much bang-bang-bang-bang high tempo material. The one moment of levity arrives with the appearance of MC duo LMFAO, who enter the stage dressed as ’50s robots and proceed to rap, “I’m in Coachella Bitch!” — which gives the crowd a much-needed jolt. Still, we have a blast dancing with everyone. We then exit the Sahara to hear McCartney tearing into “Helter Skelter” on the main stage. Later, we discover that, shortly after leaving his set, he kicked off an epic run of Beatles & Wings classics. Ideally, we’d have skipped the first half of his set to see the Presets, then caught the back half of Sir Paul’s set, skipping the Crystal Method entirely. No lesson to learn here, though … these sorts of conflicts are just part of Coachella.

SATURDAY: More Rock Garden, then a substantially quicker entrance to the festival thanks to a new driving route.

The day starts off with a MASSIVE bang: Bob Mould in the Gobi Tent. The legendary frontman for hardcore act Husker Du and power pop trio Sugar blasts through a set packed with classics from both groups, sprinkled with a few choice cuts from his new solo album, Life & Times. He is devastating — the songs are revved up to slamdance tempo, but retain all of their razor sharp pop hooks and melodies. And he plays all of my faves: At least 5 classic songs from Sugar’s Copper Blue, and canonized fare from the Husker catalog: a blast of “Celebrated Summer” and “New Day Rising” to close (which leaves me literally shaking with happiness). Best set of the weekend, BY FAR.

We follow this up by checking out a snippet of Thenewno2’s set at the Mojave — figuring Dani Harrison would bring some of his dad’s Beatles mojo along with him. He does not. We flee to the beer garden. Things pick up when we sidle over to catch Amanda Palmer tear up the Gobi tent. She plays some solo stuff. She plays a couple of Dresden Dolls faves. And then she opens a can of punk cabaret whup-ass and unleashes a festival classic closing run: a cover of Muse’s “Time is Running Out” with cello accompaniment; an epic Super-man-style crowd surf to the back of the tent (performed to the strains of “Flight of the Valkyries”), during which she crawls right over me and Adam; and a full crowd, to-of-our-lungs sing-along to Radiohead’s “Creep,” which she plays on the ukulele. I have met Amanda before (she was the last interview I ever did for my old webzine), and have always admired her … but she’s a true rockstar now. Legendary.

The day proceeds apace from here … a mellow main stage set from TV on the Radio (wish we’d been closer so the sound would have been better); a phenomenal set by Thievery Corporation (there’s something unreal about chanting, “The people united will never be divided” along with a sea of Mexican attendees, everyone pumping their fists in unison); The Chemical Brothers performing a solid (if not great) DJ set to close with the whole Coachella crew dancing along.

SUNDAY: An odd but still great day for me. Katie and I didn’t spend more than a few seconds together, which broke both our hearts right in two. But the music was absolutely amazing — some of the best in the festival’s history.

Adam, Todd and I pretty much hung together all day. We kicked things off with a pitch perfect set by The Brian Jonestown Massacre. Anyone who’s seen Ondi Timoner’s documentary of the band, Dig! (plus their rivals / compatriots The Dandy Warhols) knows that BJM bandleader is something of a powderkeg, and that the band has a terrible reputation for descending into fights and chaos during their sets. So, when original members Joel Gion and Matt Hollywood — both of whom famously quit the band mid-set in the movie — emerged onstage to tune up and play alongside other band stalwarts … well, we knew we were in for something special, or disastrous, or both. Every slight moment of tension literally had the crowd gasping — but the band kept it totally together, and played an absolutely spot-on set packed with hits. They topped themselves by inviting Zia from the Dandy Warhols (in town to play a DJ set at Coachella’s Sony PlayStation booth that day) onstage to play maracas during “Not If You Were the Last Dandy on Earth” (a song literally about Zia’s band). This was the second best set I saw all weekend.

Following this, we ventured out into the brutal 100+ degree heat to see some oddly subdued sets (for that time of day anyway): Antony & The Johnsons playing a set of ethereal songs from their new album, The Crying Light, specially reconfigured for the festival by Antony and downtempo producer Matthew Herbert. I spaced out … Todd napped. Still good, though. We went from here to catch The Yeah Yeah Yeahs on the main stage. I am sure their set was fantastic — but the heat beating down on that part of the field at near-sunset almost undid me. Thankfully, the sun went down about 2/3 of the way through their set, the temps dropped significantly, and we were able to enjoy the final few songs with more energy. I think I also might have benefited from moving closer to get more impact from Nick Zinner’s slashing guitar, which I always love.

Anyhow, following this, we enjoyed a quick dinner break accompanied by a beer and Paul Weller’s band ripping through The Jam’s “A Town Called Malice” before heading back to the main stage to destroy our ears with My Bloody Valentine’s landmark festival appearance. Holy crap. So, I am one of a few people, apparently, who “get” this band — maybe because I play guitar a little bit, am a shoegazer from way back, LOVE feedback, and also have a deep background in listening to experimental music — but hot jesus, were they good. I love the songs to begin with, but hearing them blasted at inhuman volume (the band has a reputation for playing at extremely high volumes) and actually seeing the band really jazzed me. Thankfully, the volume and syrupy texture of the songs drove a lot of timid listeners away, so it was easy to move center-stage near the sound booth and soak in song after feedback-drenched song, literally feeling waves of sound shake my entire body. Not something I’ll ever forget. Plus, heavy credit to the band’s set designer & the Coachella video crew, who manages to project images of the band plus their graphical backdrops onto the Main Stage’s jumbotron’s screens such that they looked like gorgeous moving paintings — the perfect accompaniment to the music.

We tore ourselves away a bit early from this for one reason and one reason only: to see Public Enemy perform It Takes A Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back front-to-back on the Outdoor Theater stage. I’ve seen PE live before, but not with hype-man Flava Flav in tow, and certainly not limiting themselves to one of their classic (and, without argument, the most important hip-hop album ever recorded). So, my anticipation was pretty high … and they totally delivered. It was part history lesson (Chuck pausing between songs to provide the audience with some context on key tracks), part rave up, and totally incredible. Chuck was flawless, Professor Griff was typically annoying, the S1W tight, and — best of all — Flav managed to validate my claims that he actually makes (ONLY makes) sense in the broader context of Public Enemy (and not as the cracked out solo goofball we see on VH-1).

The gravy on the Sunday roast: Throbbing Gristle’s surprisingly, intensely engaging set in the Mojave, which found them mixing tracks from their first new record in decades with classics like “Discipline,” “United” and the chilling “Hamburger Lady.” Yes, Genesis-P-Orridge’s recent forays into gender re-assignment have left him looking like a Bizzarro-world Millionaire Matchmaker … and yes, it was unnerving to see Coil’s John Balance wearing what appeared to be a bathrobe with a cowhide pattern … but damn! Still! TG continue to be totally original, confrontational, engaging and compelling almost 40 years after they pioneered industrial music and the staging of performance-art-as-assault-on-Pop as a mass media conceit.

The finale: Some of the crew caught French house guru Etienne de Crecy’s Sahara closer with the occasional dabble into The Cure’s epic 3-hour+ set, while Adam, Gorman, Tungsten and I finished things off with Roni Size and the Reprezent crew. Reprezent threw down an insane set of classic & new school drum & bass, complete with live drums and bass guitar, “toaster” and soulful female vocalists — and managed to find energy reserves in us that we didn’t know we had. We all jumped around like mad men, danced like crazy, and nearly had to be swept out of the venue as the lights came back on.

The night finished with an epic “hang out and drink cheap beer” gab session on the sidewalk in front of our hotel rooms that lasted (for some of us, at least) until about 6 a.m. Monday morning. After a few hours sleep, we convened at the Rock Garden for one final farewell brunch, and then said some painful goodbyes. A week later, and I’m still all emotional about it — in intense withdrawal from my friends and the music and the whole Coachella experience.

Only 51 weeks until next year!