Coachella 2010 Day Two 04-17-10

Coachella Day 2 04-17-10

All arrival and exit complications from Friday were rectified on Saturday. I think I saw more police officers. Pure speculation here: I wonder if Indio’s city council tried to skimp on law enforcement assistance and had to back-down after Friday’s problems?

Saturday was supposed to be the hottest, but the festival was blessed with overcast skies during peak heat hours. It was still warm, but Terrible Sol’s blaring gaze was obstructed. Praise fuckin’ be.

This happened to be one of the best days of Coachella I’ve attended. Not as good as Friday of last year, and not as good as the day The Arcade Fire played in ’05. But after that, probably 3rd best day in six years for me.








I walked-up to the Mojave tent right as John Waters came out. The seminal art house director spoke for about fifty minutes, a hybrid stand-up routine / retrospective lecture on his career. The mix of anecdotes and irreverent cultural jabs were well-received. That is to say, fucking hilarious. I love Coachella’s recent trend of booking speakers.

John Waters’ best lines:

• “You make me feel like Justin Bieber! But I want to be GG Allin for you.”
• “When I was six years old I heard Elvis Presley and instantly turned into a sexual child.”
• Waters offered to program Coachella next year, complete with “Win a Date with Courtney Love” and free porn for all attendees.
• “Who wants the boarding pass of Otis Redding?”
• “I do like poppers and I still do them.”
• “The adult baby community, have you seen these fuckers? Lock ‘em up! I ain’t marching for them!”
• “You can’t date rape a cookie. You can’t hate-fuck a pie.”
• “Divine has limits, too. He said when he met Richard Simmons, he felt homophobic.”

I was going on four hours of sleep and the fields were heating up, so I napped on the cool ground while Shooter Jennings with Hierophant rocked-out. I don’t remember much about it, except feeling 1) it was pretty damn cool and 2) much less Shooter Jennings-esque than I’d expected. The crowd was pitifully small. Shame.



Girls sounded about as good as they do on record, albeit more airy and expansive, less pop from concentrate. They were much more cohesive as a band than I anticipated; I’d assumed the show would be “Christopher Owens and some other guys.”

They opened with “Lust for Life” (their own song, not the Iggy Pop one) to hushed sing-a-long whispers of the crowd. At times the set felt like a guy sitting on a stool playing covers by request. (Virtually all their songs rip-off some pop gem or another.) They actually did play a cover, “All I Have to Do Is Dream” by the Everly Brothers. It all sounded pretty good.

(EDIT: A reader says they opened with "Laura". My notes say Lust for Life, but honestly, I can't remember.)

But then, “Hellhole Ratrace”. Got-dayum. I want to hate this song, but I can’t. It is the defining song of today’s youth culture. Saturday’s performance convinced me of it. When the first chorus hit, chills flew down my back as my knees buckled with every attendee in the tent. When the shoegaze shimmer ripped-out at the song’s climax, the crowd was destroyed into a spontaneous explosion of approval and self-identification.

I was a doubter, a denier of this band but I can’t ignore the overwhelming evidence: Girls is capital-I Important, if not to me and my peers then at least to somebody else.

Putting scenester identity politics aside, Christopher Owens is this hipster generation’s Chris Carrabba. They are the same girl in a different dress; heart-breaking, teeth-gnashing angst in the guise of pretty-sounding songs. It’s easy to mock. It shouldn’t be confused with grown-up music. But it should be respected (greatly) for what it is.

Lastly: someone give Christopher Owens a goddamned haircut.



Overheard from alt-bros at Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros on the Outdoor Stage:

“Man, this guy is so fucked up right now!”

“This band is good. So many pieces coming together, man.”

Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros drew a huge crowd on the outdoor stage. Whatever I might prefer in music, it was clear that people love the Magnetic Zerost. It was like a hippier-dippier take on The Arcade Fire’s legendary Coachella 2005 performance.

As the band took the stage, messianic frontman Edward Sharpe seemed to injure a photographer. Profusely apologetic, he touched the shutterbug on the cheek before removing his sweaty t-shirt and tying it around the photog’s head wound. I rolled my eyes. I’ve always suspected the narrative behind this band was a PR concoction.

By the end of the rousting love fest, I wasn’t so sure. I think Sharpe and his Zeros believe in what they’re selling. Nobody says “One Love!” anymore unless they mean it. Not my bag, but the whole performance could only be categorized as a success.




I sat down and rubbed my feet while listening to most of Tokyo Police Club on the Main Stage. They were perfunctory. I feel like they used to have furious energy, but it sure didn’t seem like it.



You can read my review of Coheed and Cambria’s rocking mainstage performance on Buzzbands.la.

Other Coheed and Cambria Thoughts:

• Claudio Sanchez changes guitars for nearly every song. Yeesh.
  
  
• The band trades a lot of their nuances and cinematic aspects on record for anthemic qualities when they play live.
  
  
• Coheed and Cambria have some of the best fans in rock. Friendly, devoted, and appreciative. Lots of strangers high-fiving each other.

I passed by Hot Chip who had the largest Outdoor Stage crowd I’d seen. (This record was broken an hour later when MGMT played.) It looked like a fun party. I don’t care for Hot Chip on record, but the live show looked and sounded way more legit than I’d have imagined. Less electropop and more straight-up new wave.


A couple times, Faith No More’s set reminded me of concert performances of Broadway musicals. Everyone is in costume (Mike Patton in Nikes and a red jumpsuit), but they kind of just stand there to play their part.

But most of the time, their set was a blast – and I (thought I) hate Faith No More’s music. Mike Patton is a true genius, and he and his bandmates seemed wholly committed to the reconstituted proto rap-rock. They sounded great, crisp and tight.

You may think "Epic" has been played to death, you may think you’re tired of hearing it every hour on the radio, but believe me, you’re not tired of it when you hear it live. It was, frankly, epic.

FNM closed with “Just A Man,” and it was strong as hell. This was the surprise set for me. I should not have been surprised, Mike Patton has a project at Coachella nearly every year and it’s always worth your time to check it out. I walked away with new respect for FNM.



MGMT was really boring. They had a HUGE crowd. That crowd, more than anything, wanted to celebrate the song “Kids” together. Coachella is about memory making and it was a given that “Kids” would be a defining moment of this year’s fest.

So MGMT did the snotty thing and decided not to play it.

Assholes.

They mostly played new stuff. It wasn’t very fun. What a wasted opportunity. That kind of pretentious bullshit isn't going to sell records, and certainly not future concert tickets.



Muse was fucking incredible.

Two of Muse’s albums, Absolution and Black Holes and Revelations, belong on every intellectually honest Best of 00’s list. Muse not only successfully marries prog and glam to a host of obscure musical genres, but they weave into that tapestry themes of oppression, paranoia, desperation, and joy.

Whereas most arena rock shows lend themselves toward dumb excess, Muse’s gigantic displays of emotion, in sound and light, are nuanced and profoundly romantic. Muse is the rightful inheritor of Queen’s legacy, jazz-hands arena rock for the cyber-age.

Their Coachella set lived-up to my expectations and then some. Mathew Bellamy really crucifies himself on stage. His bare, skinless offering of self is what endears Muse to fans. The stage spectacle is representative of the most powerful and overwhelming human emotions, the chemical onslaughts of love, fear, and survival instinct that drive us to act outside of ourselves. Like the best space operas, the fantastic references and motifs in each song fell away to reveal essential, primal truths of humanity’s short and disastrous life on earth.

On top of all of that, every song simply sounded larger and more truthful than itself on record.

Hipsters forget that Muse was a Mercury Prize nominee and, before mainstream rock picked-up on them, Absolution was popular with many of the music elite. (My recollection is that Indie 103.1 was playing Muse well before KROQ latched-on.) They’re a common scapegoat for the indie rock sect, their mainstream popularity an impediment to many to-cool-for-school cats. I suppose prog and arena rock aren’t for everyone. But aesthetic preferences notwithstanding, I find it impossible to deny Muse’s artistic viability, and I struggle to think of a better live band in the world right now.

(Bonus points for Galaga-themed videoscreen graphics and using Harmonica’s theme from Once Upon a Time in the West as an intro to “Knights of Cydonia”.)

I’d like to say Devo or Pavement were the best set I saw at Coachella. But after my emotions cooled, after sleeping on it a couple nights, I have to say that Muse topped the festival.




Following Muse I scurried over to the Mojave tent to jockey for position to see Devo. I caught the last two songs from Les Claypool. Seemed like a fun set.



You can read my review of Devo’s phenmomenal set on Buzzbands.la

Other Devo Thoughts:

• On the side of the stage there was a business-suited man with a Lobot-esque camera face-strap. The band never referred to him or acknowledged his presence.
  
  
• Of all the sets I saw, this one warmed my heart the most. Devo is a formative band for me, and I loved being squished with “my people” to celebrate their legacy.
  
  
• It’s amazing how much Devo’s synthpop dance songs, widely regarded as their lesser material, sound exactly like the new synthpop dance bands that critics love.
  
  
• The second half of the set was markedly better than the first, which is odd, because I always figured Mothersbaugh preferred the synthpop stuff.
  
  
• Set List, according to my notes:
  
  Don’t Shoot
  Peek-A-Boo
  What We Do
  Man Turned Inside Out
  Fresh
  That’s Good
  One You Want
  Whip It
  Planet Earth
  (Narrated Interlude)
  Satisfaction
  Secret Agent Man
  Uncontrollable Urge
  Mongoloid
  Jock Homo
  Smart Patrol/Mr. DNA
  Gates of Steel