Where in the hell do I begin? I find myself asking this question a lot this weekend, simply because every time I return to my friend’s house in Indio (I think it’s Indio) and sit down at his computer to write (at 3 in the morning) I get overwhelmed when I try to logically sort out all of the events in the day.
During one song, a giant inflatable astronaut floated above the stage. For another, he had a video of a submarine attacking and destroying an oil rig in a large stadium while his backing singers chanted, “It all makes perfect sense!”
Today, however, I cannot even begin to describe in any decent sort of fashion. But I will try.
After a late lunch at Islands (I had a hula burger with some cheddar fries), we headed for the festival. The sky was slightly overcast, it wasn’t too hot, and a slight breeze was blowing. It was, as my friend said and I agree, “the most pleasant weather of any Coachella we have attended in the past.”
When we pulled into our parking spaces, a bunch of people in golf carts asked us, “Are you over 18?” and “Do you live in the United States?” We, me and four of my friends, replied that yes, yes we were. “Well, congratulations, you just won Carpoolchella!” One of my friends jumped out of the car, jumping around like a man who, barring a better analogy, had just won Coachella tickets for life.
As he did so, a brown streak manifested itself on the back of his shorts. He shit himself he was so excited is what I’m trying to say here. My friend Chance, our driver and my photographer, just stood there flabbergasted, all the blood draining from his face.
If you don’t know what Carpoolchella is (http://www.coachella.com/event/Carpooling ), it is a contest where, if you carpool and put a large sign that says “Carpoolchella” on your window, you stand a chance of winning Coachella tickets for life (and other prizes).
Turns out we won one of the other prizes. VIP passes for the day. (Still, though, pretty neat.)
Because I already had my press pass and could get into the VIP section, I just slipped the new VIP bracelet off (sunscreen, it turns out, makes for a decent lubricant) and gave it to some random person. “Who has narrow wrists and would like a VIP pass?” is what I called as I approached the venue. Well, her wrists were very narrow.
Crowd enjoys the tunes. Photo by Chance Knecht. ©M&C
The first thing I noticed when I got into the Festival was that there were noticeably fewer people there today. Scalpers outside were trying to pawn off their tickets for a paltry 40 or 60 dollars. By the way, you never actually need to buy your tickets in legit fashion: there are always scalpers at the venue trying to get rid of tickets for prices often less than Ticketmaster.
Normally its throngs of people wandering from stage to stage, but today there were large areas completely devoid of people. This absence did not last for long, but it was still eerie.
Deadmau5 was yet another great DJ set that, unlike most others, inspired a lot of fan participation beyond your conventional awkward dance moves and gyrations. There was clapping and singing and call and response at points; everyone was having a merry old time. I think, however, that Deadmau5 was able to have this sway with the crowd because he came onstage and began his set wearing an enormous pink mouse helmet/mask, huge ears and eyes and creepy grinning mouth and everything (and pink!).
The man had practically everyone dancing when he mixed in Daft Punk’s “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” (a lot of Daft Punk, Michael Jackson, and Prodigy got played this weekend, as I’m sure you gathered from the previous days). Eventually he took the helmet/mask off and started mixing in a song that had so much bass I think my equilibrium was disrupted. At this point I decided to leave…
A Look At Deadmau5's Coachella performance (All photos by Chance Knecht. ©M&C):
And go to Duffy! Duffy is this diminutive, pale, blond Welsh woman that can belt out notes like soul singers from the 70’s; which is to say, like there was no tomorrow. Her backing band was funky, and the music was most certainly toe-tappin’.
She ended after playing only a few songs, though, a good twenty to thirty minutes before she was slated to stop (and only about thirty minutes after she had begun).
Someone at the concert mentioned that this had been happening all day thus far, sets ending incredibly early and such. When I went over to see the Field at 4:30 (they were slated to play from 4 to 4:45) they, too, were not playing.
There wasn’t much else to see at the time, so I cruised over to the Outdoor theatre to wait for Autolux. While I was doing so, I struck up a conversation with a group of people sitting on the benches there about who we think should play at Coachella next year.
I told people to suggest bands that had never played, but there was definitely some overlap (and also some bands that seemed totally out of left-field).
Here were the suggestions: TV on the Radio, Kings of Leon, Blood Brothers, The Police, Morcheeba, Smashing Pumpkins, Joanna Newson, Michael Jackson, Jewel, Counting Crows, Rolling Stones, Van Halen (“What,” I said, “Van Halen? Are you serious?”), Offspring, Moby, Prodigy, System of a Down, and DJ Shadow (the person who suggested this did so because he missed DJ Shadow last year, so he says).
Do any of you have any suggestions for what band should play at Coachella? Comment with your ideas! Or don’t, you know, whatever.
This was the third time I’d seen Autolux. I originally heard them open for Blonde Redhead and was blown away (I actually think they stole that show), and then again when they opened for Queens of the Stone Age and Nine Inch Nails. This time they seemed a little reserved as they performed; certainly not as spectacular as I remember them being.
Still, I love the juxtaposition of their discordant and heavily affected (effected?) instruments with the mellow softness of Eugene Goreshter’s vocals. They played some new songs and a few others off of “Future Perfect” (notably “Sub-Zero Fun”) before I left. I think they were playing “Turnstile Blues” as I walked towards the main stage.
A Look At Autolux's Coachella performance (All photos by Chance Knecht. ©M&C):
For Gogol Bordello I put the notepad away, gave my phone and other valuables to a friend, and went up towards the front of the crowd. If you read my article last year, you would know how incredibly blown away I was by this band. Gypsy punks: amazing!
At the very beginning of the very first song, the front erupted into a mosh pit —people smiling and getting jostled about as they were forced to get mouthfuls of other people’s sweat and hair.
In the process of getting shoved around for a while, I wound up next to a bunch of guys (during “Mishto,” I believe. Remember: no notepad) who locked arms with me and started dancing around in a circle, kicking rhythmically and chanting “Oy oy oy” while people would go into the middle, link elbows and spin around (Barynya dancing? Trepak? Help me out here).
When this turned back into a mosh pit, one of the guys I was dancing with turned to me and talked about how drunk he was. In a sort of non-sequitur, I replied, “Have you ever seen the Addams Family? When Fester and Gomez dance the Babooshka?” I’ll cut strait to the heart of this: I danced the Babooshka with a strange drunk man while Gogol Bordello play “60 Revolutions,” and it was awesome.
I then crowd-surfed to the front and rejoined my friends near the sound booth. The band was joined onstage by their usual entourage of girls with large bass drums and cymbals who took turns screaming and being choked by Eugene Hutz (the lead singer who was also an actor in the movie “Everything is Illuminated”).
After they played “Start Wearing Purple,” when Mr. Hutz announced that they were only going to play one more song, I thought, wow, another band is ending early today. Their last song turned out to be a twenty-minute mishmash of a bunch of their songs, including “When the Trickster Stars A-Pokin” and “Undestructable [sic]” among others.
The end of their show was as frenetic as the beginning, culminating with one of the backing girls throwing her bass drum out into the crowd and standing on it while Eugene Hutz rattled his microphone around inside of a red bucket.
A Look At Gogol Bordello's Coachella performance (All photos by Chance Knecht. ©M&C):
Needless to say, after this show I was a little exhausted. On my way back to the Outdoor theatre to see Metric, one of the water vendors was kind enough to let me have a very large chunk of ice which was big enough to fit on my head. I wore this large piece of ice as a hat (more like an ice Yarmulke). Now I think I have frostbite on my scalp.
When Metric began, the lead singer (I don’t know her name) informed us that they were having technical difficulties; just like they did the last time they performed at Coachella. “It wouldn’t be a Metric show if we weren’t fucked!” she said. I only caught a few of their songs, none of which I knew, but they were spacey and fun.
I very much enjoyed her between-song banter. Rather, it was more like between-song rants about how she wanted to “Pop Coachella’s cherry tonight” and subsequently how she wanted to bring back the phrase “popping the cherry” (I never thought it disappeared) and then talking about how handsome her bass player was.
A Look At Metric's Coachella performance (All photos by Chance Knecht. ©M&C):
I regret not staying to see them play some of the songs that I knew of theirs, but I needed to go see why the hell Sean Penn was billed on the main stage.
“What the fuck is Sean Penn doing on the main stage at Coachella?” Sean Penn said, informing us that it was his mother that asked this question. He said he was doing a tour wherein he would do acapella versions of Celine Dion songs, but that, since he had blown out his voice, he was instead going to talk to us about something. “Revolution,” he said, “is a young person’s job.” “My generation fucked your generation,” he added, among other things.
This man was talking about 60’s style activism, and how he wanted us all to get involved. He also talked about the candidates for the American presidency, saying that they were still too similar in their support for the death penalty and their stances in favor of the war (some more in favor than others, I suppose).
He also said that he thought one candidate was better than the others, “and I think you know who he is.” He then asked people to volunteer to spread awareness with a little venture he helped put together called “Dirty Hands.”
Actor Sean Penn talks to the crowd. Photo by Chance Knecht. ©M&C
After he left the stage, I went over to the Dirty Hands booth to see what it was all about. Apparently, Sean Penn, about five days ago, decided it would be awesome if a bunch of concert-goers could pile into a bus with tenting equipment and go on an all-expenses-paid cross-country tour doing volunteer work and protesting, ending up at the New Orleans Jazz Festival. I was curious.
So curious, in fact, that I signed up for it. On the form, it asks if you have any specific dietary criteria (there was a box for vegan, for vegetarian, etc.).
I checked the box for “Other,” drew arrows pointing to the other options, and wrote, “I require all of the meat that these people don’t eat.” Will I get kicked out due to my irreverent (read: assholish) ways? We’ll find out: I leave at noon on Monday.
While I was doing this, I missed most of My Morning Jacket and Love and Rockets (I was upset about missing the latter). However, I’m pretty sure my friend got great pictures of both bands. If they’re up you should check them out.
A Look At My Morning Jacket's Coachella performance (All photos by Chance Knecht. ©M&C):
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A Look At Love and Rockets' Coachella performance (All photos by Chance Knecht. ©M&C):
It was time for Roger Waters. Later in the evening, one of my friends made the comment that, by the intermission of his set, Roger Waters had surpassed all standards and expectations for the top-billed act of Coachella. I cannot possibly agree more (you will see why).
While the stage was being set up a large projected film of someone fiddling with an old radio was shown as old songs like Vera Lynn’s “We’ll Meet Again” were playing.
As soon as he began playing the first song, “In the Flesh,” a cloud of pot smoke appeared over the crowd. My friend made the comment that there were people as far as the eye could see collected around this one stage; I’d just like to add that all of these people were on drugs. Pyrotechnics exploded onstage as Roger Waters shouted that he would have all of us put up against the wall and shot.
After this he played “Mother,” which turned into a duet with his backup singer, each of them alternating verses. “Set your controls for the heart of the sun” was next, and then came my favorite Pink Floyd song of all time, “Shine on you Crazy Diamond.”
I think a single tear welled up in my eye (dramatically, mind you, very dramatically). On the projection behind the stage they showed pictures of who I think is/was Syd Barrett.
Then came “Have a Cigar” (keep in mind that I might have skipped or forgotten to write down a song or two), and afterwards they played “Wish You Were Here.” I locked arms with my friends, swayed from side to side, and we all sung along at the top of our lungs.
I can’t remember what song it was, but there was one point during the show that the projected images behind the band included photos of presidents Bush and Regan juxtaposed with pictures of Stalin, Bin Laden, and Hussein while sometimes flashing to words written on bathroom stall walls that said things like “Democracy bathed in blood.”
I turned to the friend of mine that said earlier this weekend (during the Obama song Adam Freeland played) that he didn’t enjoy being beaten of the head with politics at concerts. “Do you still mind having your head beaten with politics?” I asked him. He didn’t hear me, but I assume the answer was a resounding “No”; Roger Waters can proselytize all he wants.
During one song, a giant inflatable astronaut floated above the stage. For another, he had a video of a submarine attacking and destroying an oil rig in a large stadium while his backing singers chanted, “It all makes perfect sense!”
Roger Waters also played a newer song called “Leaving Beirut,” which is about, he told the audience, this time when he was 17 years old and went to Lebanon and was treated very generously by a family there; an event that has stuck with him. As he played, images in a graphic novel style appeared on the projector showing the story of him going to Beirut and staying with a man with one leg and his hunchback wife while thinking very positive things about them.
He was also joined onstage during this song by a violinist and singer from Los Angeles named L— Hayden (I couldn’t hear her name correctly). During breaks in the story, speech bubbles would appear on the screen with the lyrics to the song (lyrics, if I remember correctly, like, “Don’t let the might of the Christian right ruin everything for you and the rest of the world”).
Then he played “Sheep.” My other favorite Pink Floyd song. I won’t lie, I got chills when it began. “So gangsta,” my friend screamed as they broke into the first verse. During this song, we all noticed a large inflatable pig appear just on the other side of the fence that was then carted around (at one point, right next to us; see the pictures).
This pig had a message on the side that said, “Don’t be led to the slaughter,” and on the underside was a checked box next to the name Obama. As all of this was happening, a plane came swooping overhead (I’m not kidding) trailing smoke and dropping confetti. Large jets of fire on either side of the stage shot up along with more pyrotechnics (seriously, see the damn pictures). At the end of the song, when the pig was released and began to float away, Roger Waters announced, “That’s my pig.”
After this came an intermission, during which time one of my friends asked, “What’s up with all the Obama shit?” “Didn’t you know?” I replied, “Coachella is just a large three-day Obama rally. Besides, a man with his own plane and oversized pig-balloon can tell me to vote for whomever he wants.”
Following the intermission, Roger Waters came back onstage and played “Dark Side of the Moon” in its entirety. I’m not going to say it was a spiritual experience, but it was damn close. This probably had to do with the fact that I smoked pot for the first time in about a year during the intermission. For this reason, the details during the rest of the show were a little hazy. I was blown away when one of the backing singers was able to successfully replicate Clare Torry’s vocal improvisation during “The Great Gig in the Sky.”
And during “Brain Damage” and “Eclipse,” a giant suspended prism was lit up above the stage with a light in one direction flashing a solid white while another light in the opposite direction was separated into a rainbow.
All of the players took a bow afterward, but then came back and encored with “Another Brick in the Wall” and “Comfortably Numb.” This was a spiritual experience, and I will say so. When the show ended, fireworks exploded out of the stage.
Justice was the last band playing on Sunday, and there were no other bands slated at the same time. Literally thousands of people migrated (many full on running) from the main stage to the Sahara tent. Things were still a little fuzzy for me, but I can tell you that the house was nearly brought down when they played songs like “Stress” and “D.A.N.C.E.”
I’ve heard it said that they might just be one of the best electronic groups in existence right now, and when almost every single person in that tent was singing along to “We Are Your Friends,” I believed it. During this concert, an amazingly attractive girl (I’m also pretty sure she was underage) started dancing with me. At one point she asked if I was camping there. I said no. “Would you like to?” she said.
Being the idiot that I am, I replied, in the smoothest way possibly, by shouting, “What?!” “Never mind,” she said. Her friends pulled her away a little while later just as I realized what she was asking me. “Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!” I tried to call, but to no avail. Sean MacIntyre: 0 for 3 this weekend.
A Big Look At Roger Waters' Coachella performance (All photos by Chance Knecht. ©M&C):
When we left, it felt like an exodus of biblical proportions; thousands of people forced through one bottleneck after another. But at this point I didn’t care. This was Coachella. I had just been to Coachella. Have you ever been to Coachella? If not, then you have no idea what I’m talking about; you can’t possibly know what I’m talking about.
This Festival is, I’m pretty sure, a direct conduit between heaven and earth, if heaven had fifty DJs playing over the course of a weekend.
Tomorrow, I get on a bus to New Orleans. Maybe I’ll write a little blog or article about it? Hah. Absolutely not. See you next year. (Sorry about all the grammatical errors!)
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