Coachella 2007-Day 3

These are my entries I wrote after each day of
Coachella. Some of them are long, so if you get bored, then I'm a lousy writer (definitely possible). The pictures were all taken by yours truly.

Day 3
No fanfare in the morning, no fanfare here. Let’s get into it.

We showed up really early, beating the crowds.

Fair to Midland-I have this good friend from college named Grant. Grant is a drummer, and a good one. In college he was always trying to defend bands like Disturbed, Godsmack, Nickelback, Creed, and the like. Because of this, we started to call all music like this GrantRock. Fair to Midland is GrantRock.

Grizzly Bear-The blogs love Grizzly Bear. Grizzly Bear is fucking boring.


Explosions in the Sky- I was curios about Coachella’s choice to put EITS on the main stage in the middle of the day. Not that Explosions wasn’t able to play to a big crowd from 50 feet in the air, they just shouldn’t be expected to. Well, all of my fears were laid to rest for good as they absolutely rocked what little crowd was there in the blazing sun at 4:00PM. The music was cranked up loud, and they were fantastic.

The Roots-The Roots are a total anomaly in the hip hop world. They play instruments, have socially/politically aware content, and have spectacular live shows. This may explain why they can’t really gain much of an audience in their own demographic, but are huge in the festival circuit. The audiences at festivals appreciate a well polished live show, and the Roots certainly have that. The highlight was undoubtedly an interpretation of Bob Dylan’s Masters of War, which included the music of the Star Spangled Banner. **?uestlove introduced the tuba player by his real name, than saying, 'AKA, Tuba Gooding Jr.'

CSS-I love CSS. They are completely ridiculous, and they’re from Brazil. The singer looks like the love child of Bjork and my friend Lucy, but in a purple shiny onezie. They ended with their hit, ‘Let’s Make Love and Listen to Death From Above 1979’. Nuff said. Also, Paris Hilton was there. Start the clock to demise.

Manu Chao-This guy is the biggest music star from Mexico. He absolutely rocked a crowd that could not wait to see Rage Against the Machine.

Rage Against the Machine-Though most of the kids in the crowd were 10 years old when Rage broke up, it appears that they have learned how to mosh. 60,000 of them doing so can be a bit scary.

So on the way home, after 3 long days on my feet, my ears ringing, my legs burning, my back spasming, this is what I had to endure:

Yeah. That just happened. Amanda and Liz will not be forgiven.

Stats:
Celebrities Seen: 3
Paris Hilton (at CSS)
MTV’s Rob Huebel and Aziz Ansari
Urinations: 2
Defecations: 1
Meals eaten: 1
Bottles of water: 10+
Pair of boxers ruined: 1

Weekend Wrap-up

Most Surprisingly Satisfying Set:
Manu Chao

Most Disappointing Set:
Ghostface

Holy Shit I Am Glad I Went To That:
Peeping Tom

I Was So Tired Before This Set, and Now I Am Soaking Wet But So Happy:
Girl Talk

This Set Rocked, but I Have No Interest in Seeing This Person Again:
Mike Relm

I Danced My Ass Off Despite 100+ Degree Weather:
!!!

I Kind of Wish I had Seen That:
Bjork/LCD Soundsystem/Ratatat

I Went to this Set Beyond Despite Better Judgement, But I Am Glad I Did:
DJ Shadow

Best Overall Set:
!!!

Way to go guys!




Have to rest up for Coachella 2008

Coachella 2007-Day 2

These are my entries I wrote after each day of
Coachella. Some of them are long, so if you get bored, then I'm a lousy writer (definitely possible). The pictures were all taken by yours truly.



Day 2 begins with a whimper for Mike

Coachella Day 2
No soiled appliances today, just some fine fine music. I woke up early, at around 930, and immediately felt like I couldn’t get up. My back hurt, my knees hurt, and I suddenly felt as if I had aged 40 years overnight. I almost considered going back to sleep, but I realized that if I did I wouldn’t get up until the late afternoon. I went and got everyone breakfast, and shuttled us out the door by noon. We arrived on the grounds at around 230, and the day formally began. Here are some highlights:


Pharoahe Monch- We only got to see around the 2nd half of Pharoahe’s set, but it was nice to see him back in action. I couldn’t help but notice the swath of white people enjoying a set by the man who famously said, ‘I buttfuck MC’s’. I guess white people just love the hip hop music. ‘Simon Says’ did tear the house down.

Chuck Dukowski Sextet- Only four people, not a sextet. Mike commented that it appeared they had gotten together via Craig’s List. A kid from my Boy Scout days recognized my camp t-shirt and I talked with him for a while. It is wild to see these kids for the first time in 9 years. It reminds me of how old I am.


Hot Chip: These dudes rock. Their music is fantastic, and it is brought to life even more by the fact that they look like the five guys in your PE class who never participated. They are either very fat or very skinny, they all have glasses and their attire is ridiculous but believable. Plus given their age, it looks like they just turned the D&D club into a dorky Devo tribute band, then decided to write original material. They played a fantastic version of ‘And I Was a Boy From School’



We took a small break to eat, and while Peter Bjorn and John played, Aaron Mike and Andrew got some food and a beer. Well, Mike got the beer, I stared at this guy in the beer garden who I swear was on my study abroad program in 2002.



!!!-Jason Goldman chastised me for wanting to see them, given that we are going to see them in New York in May, but I couldn’t resist. Mike, Andrew and I weaseled our way in way up front to be with the kids who dance. I overheard someone behind me talking about Capitol Garage, a small venue in Sacramento (home of, among other things, !!! and me), and when I struck up conversation, it turned out the two girls were the sisters of !!! guitarist/LCD Soundsystem bassist Tyler Pope. Small world. Oh yeah, !!! were amazing, and I haven’t had that much fun at a show in a long time. They had the most energy of any band so far. A great show with a 10 minute finale of ‘Intensify’

Ghostface/Arcade Fire-I wanted to see Ghostface, but it was garbage. I don’t think it was Mr. Coles’ fault, hiphop shows at venues like that are difficult. The sound was terrible and he had a crew of hypemen, which was annoying. Mike and I ate Indian food, Andrew had something Asian. We went over to the beer tent and listened to most of the Arcade Fire’s second Coachella set in 3 years. They were completely solid, as usual. They are a great live band, and even sounded good from about 400 yards away.

Girl Talk-Everyone loves Girl Talk. Party kids love him because he keeps all the songs familiar and never stops. Hipsters love him because it gives them an excuse to dance to all the Top 40 hits they secretly love. Paris Hilton loves him because, well, he’s just hot right now. Unfortunately her presence onstage with him may have signaled his saturation point, but the show was fabulous. Balloons, confetti, kids dancing on stage, all of our favorite hits from yesteryear, and today’s radio mixed together for an amazing party.
Notable Quote: “Are you ready, Coachella? This is the best time of our lives”. If only life were that simple.


Mike Relm-Since I had just seen LCD Soundsystem 2 weeks ago I decided to check out something new, on Dave’s recommendation. Mike Relm is a sort of audio/visual DJ. He scratches well, plays familiar beats and songs and also scratches DVDs for added effect. A favorite skit was the scratching of the notorious ‘Oh face’ routine from ‘Office Space’. Some of the clips he chose didn’t really fit, but it’s originality was great, and the show was very enjoyable.



The Black Keys/The Rapture-Musically, the night closed with these two acts. The Black Keys were great, but I am not sure the venue was right. Their 2 man blues rock would certainly fit a lot better in a dive bar somewhere in the Midwest. Great stuff though, and I am glad I saw them. I also caught the last two songs of The Rapture’s set, which was nice. The crowd had emptied out as the final acts on the main stage grabbed most of the people.

I had to wait out the last 20 minutes of trance DJ Tiesto’s set. It sounded like one song. One long, boring, repetitive song. With keyboards. Annoying.


Day 2 Stats
Celebrities Seen: 3
-Human Giant/UCB comedian Rob Huebel
-Paris Hilton on stage dancing with Girl Talk
-The big guy from Parker Louis Can’t Lose and ER

Urinations: 1
Defecations: 0
Meals: 3
Bottles of Water: 10+

Coachella 2007-Day 1

These are my entries I wrote after each day of Coachella. Some of them are long, so if you get bored, then I'm a lousy writer (definitely possible). The pictures were all taken by yours truly.

Coachella Day 1: Intro



The adventure began for us long before we entered the Coachella gates. I arrived at the Ontario around midnight and was sort-of-promptly by my good buddy Mike Cassell and we took off on our way to Palm Springs.

I was excited to arrive at the house, but upon entering I discovered something somewhat terrible: not only was there no electricity, but opening the refrigerator revealed that there had not been any for quite some time. An indescribable stench emanated from the fridge. I mean it when I say indescribable; the best I can do is to say that it is something like the inside of a camel’s rectum smothered in rotten peanut butter. Of course, because I was the discoverer of said mess, I was responsible for cleaning it up. But not tonight. The group of us, Mike, Jay, Andrew, Dave, Amanda, and Liz, had a few beers and went to bed around 3:30. Mike and Andrew slept outside, to avoid the hot temperatures, and I slept in all of my clothes in the bed once shared by my grandparents.

Day 1

I woke up around 9:00AM on Friday morning, jived and ready to go for the first of three exhausting days of Coachella. It is always important to remember that a festival like this is a marathon and not a sprint. Enough metaphors. Let’s get down to business. I had a holocaust of a fridge to clean. I got to work with Mike, and we emptied it, and cleaned it. It took me about 2 hours, and it was horrible. The mold, the water, the rotting fruit…I am pretty sure the cure for several diseases were in there, and are now gone. The fridge only smells mildly putrid now, but it will have to do. Thanks, Uncle Barry.





After the fridge incident of 2007, I tried to cleanse myself in the chlorinated waters of my grandmother’s pool, then a shower where I cleaned my hands will steel wool and I was ready for breakfast. We went to a satisfying but expensive meal at the Manhattan deli, and took off for the show.

The drive in was miserable. It appears they are trying to get all 60,000 people into one entrance, and that creates problems. Both Amanda and Liz took multiple naps, and Mike invented some new curse words. The anticipation made it even longer, but we got in around 3:30, just to catch the last 20 minutes of the Tokyo Police Club. At that point it was Mike, Amanda, Liz and myself. After about 5 minutes of TPC (oh yeah, we’re tight like that), Amanda and Liz split to find water. Sissies. It was only 98 degrees that point. In any event, Mike and I began to wander around after Tokyo Police Club, and found ourselves watching a band called the Satellite Party, which we were stunned to see was fronted by Perry Farrell. The band sounded exactly what you would think a Perry Ferrell band would sound like: a bad version of Jane’s Addiction mailing it in. We waited around for that to finish, and watched the LA band the Silversun Pickups with our old college friend Erik Slemon.

Erik enjoys a tasty beverage
They put on an enjoyable enough show. They have two great songs that are catchy, and the rest sounds like low rent Smashing Pumpkins. Not completely memorable, but not a bad way to spend the afternoon. After their show ended, Mike and I realized that we hadn’t eaten anything since 10AM, so we decided to quench our hunger.
Understandably, in the 100+ degree heat, Mike had a hankering for lamb, so we found a proprietor of Greek food. He had a lamb gyro, and I had a veggie gyro. What is a veggie gyro you may ask? It’s a pita with lettuce and tomato. It really filled me up.




Not.




We relaxed in the shade for a bit, and by 6:30 were back at the main stage for the highly overrated set by the highly overrated Arctic Monkeys. Lame. It was either them or Stephen Marley, and after listening to half of a song we were having flashbacks of freshman year of college and returned to the Monkeys. After their set we tried to wait for the beginning of Peaches, but she decided she didn’t want to show up on time so we went to see The Jesus and Mary Chain. The set included two things that did not seem to belong together:

The completely brilliant 80’s song ‘Head On’

Scarlett Johansson singing backup.




Good set, especially for a bunch of old dudes.

The true surprise of the evening came in the form of Mike Patton’s new band Peeping Tom. After a strange introduction by Danny DeVito, the band, including Dan The Automator, took the stage and Patton soon joined, wearing a bullet proof vest. The show was spectacular. Screaming, yelling, swearing, the throwing of obscene gestures…it had everything.



By now it was 9:30, and I was hungry again. Mike, Jay and I got a burrito and listened to Sonic Youth rip through a set while waiting for DJ Shadow. I know many people got angry when I told them I was planning on skipping Bjork for Shadow. Keep in mind, I have seen Bjork several times, and truthfully, if you’ve seen a Bjork show, you’ve seen them all. They are all a little bit different, but she plays the same hits, wears a goofy costume, and has an entire middle school’s worth of girls with sun dresses crying at the sight of their Icelandic queen. For me, Shadow was the way to go.

Despite his short set, he did not disappoint. His video show was great, and the added material he has gives him an even better ability to remix his own tunes live.



It was fantastic. It is now 1:30AM, and I have been on my feet since 1:30PM. I just arrived home and it is 3:15AM. We have to be up in several hours to go back and do it all over again.
Celebrities Seen: 0
Urinations: 1
Defecations: 0
Meals eaten: 2
Bottles of water: 10+
Pair of boxers ruined: 1