Regale us with your tales of rock and roll bliss from the Coachella music festival! Envious Dopers want to know!
Overall experience: good, not great
Music: exceptional, especially Beck, Radiohead, Pixies, Black Keys, …Trail of Dead
Weather: way too hot
Parking: a nightmare, we were covered with dust and grit by the time we walked for 45 minutes from parking lot (and we got there pretty early, about noon or so on Sat.)
Suggestions for future festivals: earlier in the year to avoid heat, sell fewer tickets (at a higher price if necessary) to avoid horrible lines everywhere, keep big-name acts like Beck in the larger venues instead of the small tents, more shady areas, pest control (I saw numerous scorpions and nasty spiders!), shuttles from the remote parking lots
Hamsters ate the first version of this post, but here’s what I remember:
Absolutely incredible. The Pixies were amazingly tight, Radiohead was great as always, etc. etc. etc. I’m in the early stages of writing up a feature article about this for my college newspaper, but here are some highlights that don’t include my traveling companion bitching about everything and spending nearly twice as much money as we expected:
Pleasant Surprises:
…And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead, as I didn’t like them all that much on CD. They rocked my ass live, though.
Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra made me want to shake my white ass.
Bright Eyes - missed most of his set, but caught the last song and was intrigued. Anybody know what it was called?
Radiohead playing “Creep” and dedicating it to The Pixies.
Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips descending from outer space in a giant bubble.
Saul Williams. Props to Coachella for giving him a main stage spot, or otherwise I might not have checked him out.
Belle and Sebastian, who I was passingly familiar with, were excellent live, and great with the crowd. It was one of the moments when I felt that the band could just as easily be part of the audience for the show.
The sense of community. There was an excellent vibe around the whole thing, like you could walk up to any given person and just say “Man, the Pixies!” and they’d say, “Yeah, I know!” Or something like that.
Food and drink prices weren’t all that bad, considering.
Disappointments:
Death Cab seemed a little off, but played a good set. I may be spoiled after seeing them play tiny clubs.
Muse didn’t live up to the hype that I’d heard about them, although they reminded me of SD-era Smashing Pumpkins fronted by a Bends-era Thom Yorke. They were just okay.
Sunburning my head.
BRMC’s technical difficulties. I only caught the first few songs, so maybe they recovered.
Trying to get out of the parking lot the first night.
The Flaming Lips only playing four songs, although it was still a great show. Not so much a complaint as I just wish they’d gone ahead and not worried so much about The Cure, who were 30 minutes late going on anyway.
The Cure’s songs kind of sounded alike after a while, although I enjoyed their set. Note: I am not really a Cure fan, although I like a few of their songs and think “Letter to Elise” may be the single saddest song ever written. YMMV.
The bass from Eyedea and Abilities spilling over into Radiohead’s set like somebody pulling up beside you at a light and rattling their trunk. Except for the whole set.
All the negatives were pretty minor, all in all. Any other accounts?
It was amazing as always. Unseasonably hot though. And parking was a nightmare (I walked to the venue on Sunday). Never had a problem with lines.
The good:
Air playing at sunset on Sunday. Just a perfect meld of music & setting.
Kraftwerk was unbelevable.
Kinky
Crystal Method just blew out the dance tent
2 Many DJs…so much fun
Seb Fontaine
Section Quartet
Ending the festival with beautiful trance by Ferry Corsten & Paul van Dyk
Loma Lynda live in the movie tent
Bike Rodeo
80,000 watt tesla coil
Earth harp
Beutiful location
Great crowd
The bad:
parking
the heat
Beck playing in the smallest tent right next to the dance tent
having Radiohead & the Pixies drain the life out of the rest of the festival
the heat
having to wait another year for the next one
the heat
Regrets:
Missing Mogwai
Missing Basement Jaxx
Missing Flaming Lips
Missing Le Tigre
Missing Electric Six
Air & Kraftwerk were worth the price of admission on Sat. & Sun. respectively. Listeneing to Air as the sun went down after a day & a half of partying was pure bliss.