Music Features

Coachella 2010 – Friday - Jay-Z, Them Crooked Vultures, Echo and the Bunnymen

By S.P. MacIntyre Apr 17, 2010, 15:09 GMT

The sun was pouring in as I walked up to the gate. People were dancing, screaming, thrilled at the prospect of being in the proximity of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts festival even though they still had not entered the grounds.

This is the first year Coachella has required people to pay for all three days, making them exchange their ticket for a wristband that allows them to go in and out. All along the powdered dust walkway that takes people from the parking lots to the entrance, people were desperately asking for tickets, offering to pay $500 or more for a wristband.

One girl said she paid $320 for a ticket, only to find out, when she went to use it to get her wristband, that it had already been scanned.

S.P. MacIntyre

People were required to first enter an outer security checkpoint, where people would have bags checked and could exchange tickets for wristbands. This allowed entrance to the campgrounds, which are always bustling with any number of illicit and sordid acts of depravity, and a second checkpoint people could pass through to get to the concert area.

Once inside, it’s just sprawling grass field filled with people and art, the five stages posted at the edges of the field.

Main Stage, Outdoor Theater, Gobi Tent, Mojave Tent, and Sahara Tent are the five stages, but there are also pockets of performance throughout at places like the DoLab.

The weather wasn’t bad at all - the grass was still damp from the night before and held on to the cool air.

A look at life at Coachella Valley Music and Arts festival. ©M&C Photo by Chance Knecht:

The first band I saw was Deer Tick at the Outdoor Theater. The lead singer, John McCauley, came out wearing a summer dress and a green cowboy hat that looked better suited for a St. Patrick’s Day parade.

They were a sort of blues-and-grunge influenced kind of rock and roll that one might hear in a diner off a highway somewhere (maybe the 111…).

At one point, they had the drummer lay down a beat, the lead singer saying, “Denis, make it count.” After that they jammed for a bit before breaking into a song with a great organ line.

A Look At Deer Tick's Coachella performance (©M&C. All photos by Chance Knecht. ):

On a recommendation from an acquaintance of mine, I went and saw Iglu & Hartly. They’re a pair of keyboard-playing rappers/singers with a backing band (the backing band was definitely not bad). One of the lead singers bears a jarring resemblance to Iggy Pop - though that may just be me.

I can, however, see the both of them pinned up in a 15-year old girl’s bedroom. At one point one of the two lead singers said that this was their “first time playing a major American festival.”

At another point, the Iggy Pop-looking singer said, “I’ve always wanted to say this: where da weed at?” Then they played “Violent and Young,” which had synth lines that sounded like they were straight from an 80’s movie soundtrack but certainly got the crowd excited.

Walking to the Sahara Tent to see Perry Farrell vs. Steve Porter, I met a man named Alex who said, “Of course Perry Farrell is performing, he owns 80% of Goldenvoice. This is his festival.”

Inside the tent, the set began with Steve Porter playing a conventional DJ set, plenty of build ups and break downs; people danced. Then Steve broke it down to a simpler beat and he was joined on stage by a guitarist, three dancers, a backup singer in a white thing that might qualify as being a dress if it actually did the job of concealing her breasts and crotch, and Perry Farrell.

He came out with plenty of flair, garbed in pink pants and announcing his presence in that nasally voice I can rarely stand unless it’s saying “Jane says…”

As one of the people near me said, “He’s a manager now. He needs to stop singing. Forever.”

Even though I do generally dislike Perry Farrell, the music he played with Steve Porter was actually fairly decent. Relaxing and enjoyable for a warm afternoon in the desert. It reminded me of Thievery Corporation a little bit.

Crowd loving the music. ©M&C. Photo by Chance Knecht.

After that, Proxy came on the stage. I wasn’t really paying attention to the music: a man wearing an Australian flag as a cape was having a dance-off with a man wearing a Jamaican flag as a cape. Let me tell you: captivating.

Jamaica annihilated Australia. There were a few points during Proxy’s set where I felt like he made a few sloppy transitions, or maybe brought in an element that just didn’t quite fit.

As I alluded to, I love people-watching. And if this is a pass-time you enjoy as well, Coachella is the place to be. People arrive in the most bizarre and impractical attire: Indian headdresses, vinyl pants, stilts. People have a tendency to look wild-eyed, either dazed or perpetually surprised. And there is an absolute plethora of scantily clad people with really, really awful tattoos.

While I was relaxing in the Sahara Tent, two of my friends met up with me after having seen the band Hockey, who they saw strictly because of their name (ahem, Kings playoffs!). I asked them how they were. One said they were a “worse Maroon 5.” The other then said, “But more likable.”

One of my favorite things about the people at Coachella is their approachability. It’s possible to strike up a conversation with nearly anyone. Stopping to eat food for a period of time, I met a couple, Wendy and Byron, who talked to me a little bit about Street Sweeper Social Club and a band I hadn’t seen, Calle 13.

Byron said they’re a political band heavily influenced by reggaeton. He said that they were very good, put on a great show.

We also talked about the rumors that had been spreading all day that a number of performers would not be playing this weekend because the volcanic ash hovering over Europe was preventing flights.

Street Sweeper Social Club is one of the very many side projects that Tom Morello is juggling, and when I meandered over to the Main Stage to see them they were all attired in similar communist military-ish outfits, red stars in all possible places.

The rapper/lead singer looked familiar but I couldn’t place him - at times he seemed almost to be trying to sound like Zach de la Rocha. At one point, playing a guitar that had “Arm the Homeless” written on it, Tom Morello did a pretty impressive solo by changing the pitch of his guitar using the tuning knobs instead of the frets.

After the fourth or fifth song, they played about the plight of the working class, the evils inherent in a capitalistic society, and the abject necessity of a revolution, I turned to my friend and said, “Y’know, I think they might be socialists!” It was funny at the time. Regardless, I certainly wanted to “Fight, Smash, and Win” after I listened to their music. At the end of the set Brian Wilkes from Rage Against the Machine came in and played as a guest drummer.

A Look At Street Sweeper Social Club's Coachella performance (©M&C. All photos by Chance Knecht.):

Now Dillinger Escape Plan…I certainly didn’t know what to expect. It was an explosion of noise, fast drums, fast guitar licks.

Musicians flailed about the stage, pulling off Pete Townshend-like stage moves (climbing up the amps and doing the “rock leap”), or leapt into the crowd. In fact, the lead singer leapt into the crowd within the first ten seconds of the first song.

Before breaking into another hard and fast song with some amazing drumming, the lead singer announced that he was intending to “spray some poser repellant.”

There were a few technical difficulties, and the sound quality wasn’t that great because the volume was up so high, but the DEP put on a hell of a show.

A Look At Dillinger Escape Plan's Coachella performance (©M&C. All photos by Chance Knecht.):

After a few short stops along the way, I went to the Main Stage to see Them Crooked Vultures, a super band consisting of Josh Homme, Alan Johannes, Dave Grohl, and John Paul Jones (“John Paul fuckin’ Jones,” as Homme said, who could “play every instrument known to man”).

They played an absolutely incredible show. In fact, they rocked my god damn face off. In a band with so many huge names, it stands to reason that each person would get a solo (they did) and that they’d jam (they did so…and it was brilliant).

Jones seemed to get the most stage time: he played a prolonged bass solo, rocked the organ on the song “Caligula,” and then played by himself a bluesy piano composition (Josh Homme just sat down on the stage and watched).

There were some points when the cameras for the stage screens zoomed in on Jones facing Grohl, and Jones had this curious smile on his face. He looked like a nostalgic old man reliving something fun and wonderful and beautiful that we can never, ever know.

Them Crooked Vultures rock the crowd. ©M&C. Photo by Chance Knecht.

This might just be my experience, but it seems that, in the late 90’s, disaffected, angsty teenagers gravitated towards The Cure. With songs like “The Cutter,” vocals that seemed to perfectly match the singing style idiosyncratic to that era, equal doses of 80’s cheesiness and emotional gravity, I’m surprised Echo and the Bunnymen didn’t experience a similar surge in popularity.

Or maybe they did and I was just too busy slitting my wrists and listening to The Cure at the time.

But I have to say, Echo and the Bunnymen put on a pretty great show. Chandeliers hung from the ceiling and the lead singer almost never moved, but it was still neat. In the middle of certain songs they would shift into a cover song: Roadhouse Blues, The Midnight Hour, Take a Walk on the Wild Side.

Then they would seamlessly shift back into the song they were playing before. In fact, the most interesting part of the show was the lead singer - sunglasses on at night, mumbling incoherently between songs. Occasionally, though, I could understand what he was saying.

At one point he said, “Pity Gary Numan couldn’t make it. I thought he could just fly himself under the volcanic ash. Or take one of his cars.” Before “Lips Like Sugar Kisses,” he said, “Knock Knock…[who’s there?]…Yorrick…[Yorrick who?]…Yorrick Hunt.”

And after playing “Take a Walk on the Wild Side,” he told a story about Lou Reed making him order a $1000 fish dinner at a restaurant. He also kept demanding that the concert techs keep the show dark.

At one point he said it was because the next song was “the greatest song ever written,” subsequently breaking into “Killing Moon.” “Cutter,” he said, “is the second or third greatest song in the world.”

A Look At Echo and the Bunnymen's Coachella performance (©M&C. All photos by Chance Knecht.):

Imogen Heap showed up a little bit late, saying she was “stuck in shitloads of traffic.”

She then proceeded to play a quiet, intimate, and certainly brave show. Brave because, due to constant technical problems, she had to pause for long periods between songs or sing songs a cappella, eliciting help from the audience.

Watching her run frazzled about the stage, which had a white tree with fiber optic branches, trying to set up loops and melodies was like watching a mad and beautiful process of invention.

A Look At Imogen Heap's Coachella performance (©M&C. All photos by Chance Knecht.):

Every year Coachella has one, maybe four or five bands that make veterans of the festival go: What? Why are they playing? Madonna had this effect several years ago.

So when Jay-Z was billed at the top for Friday, a lot of my friends and fellow concert goers said “Cool. Weird, but cool.”

But Jay-Z is certainly big enough - as I’m sure he’d readily attest - and has enough of a following among those who are ardently interested in remixes and mash-ups ever since his Black Album was mixed, famously, with The White Album by DJ Dangermouse and, not so famously, with a number of other bands from Radiohead to Metallica).

Still, walking to see Jay-Z even though I was only familiar with his work mixed with other artists was a bit of a weird experience.

This immediately dissipated when Jay-Z rose from an elevator in the center of the stage. He had a full backup band, a DJ and a horn section. For certain songs he would bring out another rapper to help him sing - the two of them switching off vocals so quickly and perfectly it was like one voice singing in two timbres.

Every other song Jay-Z called on his audience to “bounce,” though I don’t think this demand was entirely necessary: for most songs there wasn’t a single stationary person in the crowd.

One of my favorite moments of the concert was the DJ playing Oasis’ “Wonderwall” with the band playing along, and instead of singing or rapping over it Jay-Z had the whole crowd singing along with Oasis’ lyrics.

Towards the end, Jay-Z started to lose his voice. Still, he called upon all his fans “who’d been there since the beginning” to help him sing a medley of his early songs. At various points, he’d almost start “Big Pimpin’” but stop it, saying the crowd wasn’t ready for that just yet.

When he finally did play that song, every person I could see had their hands in the air. After that he pulled off his glasses, put the lights and the cameras on the crowd, and called out individuals by the things they held or wore and thanked them personally. Then he brought Beyonce out on stage to help him sing “Forever Young,” the climax of the song coinciding with a fireworks show.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t make it in time to see deadmau5, but there are plenty of pictures of him that my photographer was able to get for your viewing pleasure. And I completely skipped LCD Soundsystem to eat overpriced pizza.