Coachella 2009
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!
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