Some more Coachella reviews

Posted on May 14th, 2004.

There are some reviews for Radiohead’s Coachella performance of May 1st. Spin Magazine have a couple online here. The Oregon Daily Emerald has a review as well. You can also check the Orange County Register if you’re not bored yet. [thanks Cristina & Kenton]

An oasis gets overrun
More people are discovering that Coachella is the nation’s premier music festival, but the capacity throngs have detracted from enjoying the event.

By BEN WENER
The Orange County Register

This tale should have ended ’round midnight. Sometime just after the last gasp of the first (mostly great) day of the fifth Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival but well before the first flush of the second. Allowing wiggle room, of course, to account for the usual twist-and-crawl out of the ad-hoc parking lot outside the Empire Polo Field in Indio.

But, oh, that twist-and crawl. Or should I say flat-out stand-still?

Instead of this tale ending at an hour befitting all but vampires and tireless teenagers, it is now 1:39 a.m., and I am still trapped in that parking lot, waiting in an unmoving line to reach the exit. I will be here for at least another hour, actually, finally making it back to a packed-and-partying Best Western up Monroe Street at about 4.

How did this happen?

Coachella has become the victim of its own rapid success. After four formative years, during which the festival found its purpose - bringing together the best acts from outside the mainstream - Coachella has reached critical mass, attracting attendees from as far away as Japan. Apart from Tennessee’s Bonnaroo festival, which draws more people but for a specific sound (jam bands), there is no more respected and anticipated gathering in the country.

This year’s lineup certainly lived up to that reputation. Saturday sported Radiohead’s only North American gig this year, a Pixies reunion, a rare sighting of Kraftwerk and about two dozen indie-rock darlings.

No wonder the weekend sold out for the first time ever, amassing 50,000 (it felt like more) to broil under the desert sun each day.

But here’s where I sound like a whining fanboy upset that everyone else has discovered my precious pet: So far this is not the Coachella I know and love. Oh, it looks like the same Coachella, and the updates in the venue’s layout were welcome improvements.

Yet thus far it hasn’t been nearly as pleasant an experience as the last two, mostly because the day was overrun by crowds. Until nightfall, when most everyone settled in at the main stage for Radiohead and the Pixies, everywhere you went you faced a crush of humanity, leaving you to snake through it, forming conga lines with strangers who rarely seemed as friendly as they used to be.

Forget roaming in hopes of catching as much as possible. If there were acts you really wanted to see, you had to stake out a spot at least a half-hour ahead of their set time - at the Mojave tent, maybe an hour, if you could bear suffering through the sweltering stench inside.

I’m making it sound like it was a miserable experience. Blame the ride home. The reality is that it was far from awful. I just fear it will never be as perfect as it once was.

The day as it unfolded:

12:40 p.m. – The Section Quartet greets early arrivals with instrumental versions of Jeff Buckley, Led Zeppelin and the Darkness. Over at the second stage, L.A. buzz band Dios is coping with technical glitches that won’t be resolved for hours. Already it feels like too many people.

1-1:40 p.m. – First cursory lap of the tents, and the realization that today is also a quest for new dance music - which comes in the oft-repeated form of arty dance-punk. The Rapture will do it better after sundown. But even now Erase Errata is packing Mojave with a Sleater-Kinney-like spin on the concept. Next door at Gobi, Juana Molina is creating lovely acoustic tunes.

1:45 p.m. - The Sounds on the main stage, playing to their biggest West Coast crowd so far. It brings out the best in the Swedes, but I’m still unimpressed - it’s still nothing more than a jagged Blondie.

2 p.m. - Howie Day sweetly coos that “it’s the perfect time of day.” He’s nuts. My brain is melting. And the bustle has grown so that the only quiet refuge where no one will trample your belongings as you sit and chill is the beer garden.

2:12-3:30 p.m. - Kinky, taking over the main stage, emerges as the day’s first great act. Within three songs, including a churning “Mas” that’s as fast as the sun-saturated can take it, the Mexican dance-rock quartet has me cranked up and moving despite the fact that even my eyelids are sweating. For some, however, it goes down about as well as Santana at a Warped Tour stop. Meanwhile, on the second stage, the desert acoustics are weirdly flanging the Stills’ sound in a way that enhances their moodier take on cacophonous arty dance-punk, now clearly the most popular groove going. But I’m only buying so much of it. And you certainly can’t dance to it. Stand and stomp or bounce or even pogo, sure. But not dance.

3:50-4:45 p.m. - It’s too hot and bright to deal with the pummeling force of Trail of Dead, and the overly trebly mix makes it worse. Stellastarr sounds like urgent U2 outside Mojave, and if I could get in to see what’s happening, I bet it would be one of the day’s big discoveries.

5 p.m. - Leave Gobi when I realize (like thousands of others packed outside) that I won’t be able to see or hear Beck’s acoustic set. A good idea on paper, to have Beck make a surprise appearance as a consolation for the absent Wilco. But sticking him in a tent was disastrous.

Besides, over at a suddenly roomy Mojave, Junior Senior is tearing it up like an electro Sha Na Na, zipping through sample-supported rock ‘n’ soul that veers from “Twist and Shout” to “Push It” while caked in white noise. Body-jolting stuff. This is dance music.

5:45-7:20 p.m. - Retreat to beer garden not for beer but for sanctuary. Listen to Death Cab for Cutie struggle then click on a clutch of softer tunes from “Transatlanticism.” Suffer through Sparta, which still does nothing for me, despite its politics. Shift over to the Desert Sessions, to see whom Josh Homme has brought along. By the third song, he’s back to “Hangin’ Tree,” and it’s nowhere near as good as Queens of the Stone Age. I split to settle in for the Pixies.

7:20-8:20 p.m. - And the Pixies are amazing, the first real saving grace of a trying day. Pudgier and less manic than before but far more fiercely powerful than they ever were on record, the quartet, reunited after a decade apart, offer a potent reminder of its influence on a great many bands, spanning Nirvana to Weezer to Radiohead to most of the indie-rock bands on hand for this weekend. (Later, after wrapping up a rare airing of “Creep,” Thom Yorke will dedicate it to them, saying “when I was in college, the Pixies and R.E.M. changed my life.”)

The set focused heavily on tracks from the first two Pixies albums, “Surfer Rosa” and “Doolittle,” including a revival of “Here Comes Your Man,” a song that, if I’m not mistaken, they hardly ever played live when it was a minor modern-rock hit.

Everyone in the band had a chance to shine - Black Francis (better known now as Frank Black) howling and screaming, Kim Deal singing huskily and keeping the flow fluid with drummer David Lovering, guitarist Joey Santiago toying with shades of fuzz. As with the Stooges last year, this is a grand opportunity for Alternative Nation to give the Pixies their due.

9:05-10:45 p.m. - Radiohead.

People will be talking about this show for years to come. It felt that historic as it was happening.

Given that it was so strong after a week of gloomy speculation just made it that much more incredible. Early in the week, reports had come out of Australia, where Radiohead had canceled a gig, stating that Yorke would cause irreparable damage to his voice if he didn’t get several days rest.

If he was ailing, he fought it off so valiantly that it was impossible to notice. Occasionally Yorke altered his approach (lowering the tone of the shouts at the end of “2 + 2 = 5,” for instance) and let overpowering emotion crack his voice. But he nailed even his highest notes on “Idioteque,” on “Sail to the Moon” and especially on the dramatic conclusion of “Creep.”

Why this performance will be remembered, however, is its context. When a band as intelligent and informed as Radiohead plays its only North American gig in a war-divided election year, you can bet the set will make a statement. But unlike last year’s Beastie Boys, who hit people over the head with their politics, Radiohead took a more subversive tack, leaving the audience to decode the message.

Some parts were easy: The audience cheered loudly during “No Surprises,” when Yorke sang, “Bring down the government, they don’t speak for us.” Other parts were subtler. For “Karma Police,” a threatening change of verb tense: “This is what you’ll get when you mess with us.” Most resonant of all: “Paranoid Android,” a staple that has never made as much sense as it does now that it has a highly visible target in this country.

Through it all, the rest of the band matched Yorke’s possessed monkey routine, pushing him further on freaked-out rave-ups like “I Might Be Wrong,” blasting out true arty dance-punk for “Myxamatosis,” instinctively locking with Yorke’s brewing energy and tremendous voice. They provided monumental sound for this, surely one of the greatest performances from what is unequivocally the greatest band alive at the moment. This alone made the three-hour wait in the parking lot worth it.

10:45:11:39 p.m. - I gamely make one last lap of the grounds. Realize I’ve completely missed out on the second stage’s hip-hop. Check in for “Tour de France” and “Autobahn” from the German electronic music pioneers of Kraftwerk, who disappointingly aren’t making the most of Sahara’s technology - thus, they look even more like robots from afar. Stroll over to Gobi where Phantom Planet is treating the faithful to a late-night romp through edgy Costello punk with undercurrents of ska and the new New York scene.

End of first missive. Day 2 and the promise of an equally ugly parking nightmare after the Cure beckons.

Day 2: New strategy, but still sweaty
Arriving at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival late Sunday yields an appreciation for great performances by the Cure, the Flaming Lips, Basement Jaxx and others.

By BEN WENER
The Orange County Register

A correction first. Well, a clarification, really.

After Day 1, when I said that I feared this cherished musical oasis might never be as perfect as it once was? Clearly I was writing under duress, brought on by a horrendous traffic ordeal that I bet grew uglier Sunday night once the Cure finished. Thankfully, I wouldn’t know for sure; I split as Robert Smith led his mates into “A Hundred Years” and never looked back, not even to hear what sort of frantic fury Le Tigre might be unleashing on the second stage.

Mind you, had Saturday night’s three-hour wait to get out of the parking lot not happened, my assessment of the day wouldn’t have radically improved. Just means I might have reached this conclusion sooner: Of course Coachella can work for 50,000 attendees as well as it can for 35,000.
You just have to rethink how you approach it, that’s all.

In case you’re just joining us, allow me to bring you up to speed. The event: the fifth annual Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, considered the premier extravaganza in America, offering about 80 of the finest bands, DJs, dance titans and rappers in action today. The place: the verdant Empire Polo Field in dusty, scorchingly hot Indio.

Saturday was topped by a tremendous Radiohead performance and a remarakble Pixies reunion. It also was undermined by poor planning in the tent region and a constant crush of humanity.
Sunday, however, was Coachella as its creators always must have imagined it could be - a massive carnival as peaceful as its predecessors, and featuring equally excellent performances, yet also capable of accommodating a capacity crowd. All the joys I worried would soon disappear from this paradise after Saturday’s sun-baked grind - the ability to waltz into the thick of side-stage or tent happenings without much delay, for instance - that was all magically restored come Sunday.

How that came to pass is a matter of adaptation. If 15,000 more people than usual show up at your party, you have to embrace the change and cope, lest the party be ruined.

Necessity, then - shaped here by a lack of sleep, looming deadlines, limited space and an inability to clone myself — meant a revision in my typical tackle-everything gameplan via two new rules.

Rule No. 1: Arrive later in the day, not at noon. Reason: Less time in the grueling heat equals more energy once the sun goes down, a crooked smile for the guy who nearly broke your arm pushing his way to the front and a happier experience overall.

Sure, I lost out on a few: Elefant, Pretty Girls Make Graves, especially Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra. And I would have liked to report something more than “I heard the tail-end of Broken Social Scene’s set from afar.” Yet I suspect all but Antibalas are better heard in a club, anyway.

Rule No. 2: Stop trying to see as much as possible. Instead, stay and watch all of what’s apt to be great; should such selections turn bland, then go hunting. Invariably you’ll have more time for fluke discoveries than you think.

Thus, I strolled in Sunday somewhat refreshed at about 4, felt as though I had missed nothing and, rather than heading straight into a series of laps of the entire Coachella circuit, narrowed my focus instead and enjoyed a lengthy run of highlights and very few duds (like one-dimensional Thursday, from whom a small dose goes a very long way).

Honorable mentions go to Cursive and B.R.M.C., and my apologies for missing the Sleepy Jackson, Mogwai, Ash and anything going down in the Sahara tent. But these are the acts I’ll remember:

• The Thrills – Melodic Irishmen with a predilection for California tunes and imagery, playing in the Mojave tent, the only tent I entered all day, as it reeked of horse manure and sweaty teen spirit. The quintet played some new stuff; sounds a lot like the old stuff, but it’s so catchy, who’s complaining?

• Belle and Sebastian – Wistful classicists who lent an air of Monterey Pop to the proceedings. Led by the charmingly fey Stuart Murdoch, who greeted the Scottish band’s minions with “I pity you.” It wasn’t clear if he meant it e they’re wilting in the heat or because the temperature was bound to warp the group’s varied instrumentation or because he knows B&S makes precise mellow music that really plays best in theaters.

It hardly matters. After a few quiet numbers (too quiet, that is, to drown out neighboring thump) as well as a valiant but rocky run through “Step Into My Office, Baby,” B&S began to click superbly, giving front-and-center fans a treat with two from years ago - a rollicking “Judy and the Dream of Horses” and a flawless rendition of “The Stars of Track and Field.”

Overall, it isn’t my dream B&S set list - I’d have at least left off the one in which they sound like Tom Petty doing the Kinks - but the performance is a delight all the same.

• Bright Eyes and Dizzee Rascal – Who are facing off at 7 p.m. at the side stage and Mojave, respectively. Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst gets intensely anthemic first, then starts dabbling stylistically, maintaining his quavering voice while veering from country-rock to something quite Cure-like. Nothing from the second stage has sounded so aesthetically pleasing, and only Basement Jaxx will sound better.

But I leave halfway through his set to see about Dizzee, partly because the English rapper is highly touted, partly because I’ve short-changed hip-hop all weekend. By numbers alone, Bright Eyes won by a landslide; Mojave was half-full. But Dizzee left me starving for more, especially after his masterful rapid freestyling over the audience’s naturally created gospel soul clap. It was potent enough to make a doubter like me listen to his debut again.

• Air – Beckons me at nightfall with glittering lights and the opening strains of “Sexy Boy.” Up to now I had been grazing on the grass, staring up at the spotlight point in the sky while spacing out to this otherworldly electro Pink Floyd from France. Once I check in up close and personal, the duo (plus band) is hip-deep in the improvisational jam of “La Femme d’Argent.” It’s my third highlight in a row, and played so well it offers proof that Air should be invited to the next Bonnaroo.

• The Flaming Lips – Easily the weekend’s greatest spectacle, introduced with Wagnerian fanfare. The usual sidekicks in furry costumes are the least of eye-grabbers. To start (and it was a late start), jovial frontman Wayne Coyne seals himself in a giant plastic bubble, not unlike Peter Gabriel’s from his last tour, then rolls himself out into the audience for a spate of bizarre crowd-surfing before returning to the stage for “Race for the Prize.”

Affable Coyne, however, spends so much time imploring the crowd to unite in a wave of proteset and vote out the president come November (culminating in a rally cry of “stop Bush, stop Bush!”) that the Lips run out of time for their plans. They never get to “Do You Realize??cq - which is cool in a weird way, as they opted instead to lead the huddled masses in a chorus of “Happy Birthday to You” and dedicate it to former tour pal Beck and his new love, Marisa Ribisi, who is expecting.

It’s an infectious, nutty, wildly colorful performance that, brief though it is, clearly tickles Coyne, who departs praising the audience to the hilt. Much as Coachella itself has reached critical mass, so have the Lips and their fractured but beautiful music. This, then, was some kind of celebration of their warped glory, one sure to be stronger come Lollapalooza.

• Basement Jaxx – Knocked ‘em dead at the second stage, yanking tent dancers out into the night air with a relentless set that, among other things, established them as the new Chic, capable of bringing a thousand wallflowers bouncing to their feet. A masterful meshing of the White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army” bass riff and 50 Cent’s rhymes from “In Da Club” proves exactly how mash-ups can be an artform. But it’s the most invigorating Jaxx tracks, like “Red Alert” and “Where’s Your Head At?,” that whip fans into a frenzy. Given the Cure’s late start and sluggish opening, I wish I had stayed here.

• The Cure – Twenty minutes late and opening with a new song, which is a gutsy move before a festival crowd, most of whom have been panting for this return for months. Despite a few missteps (Robert Smith seemed to lose his way at the start of “In Between Days”), the band plays with passion and precision. But the sound mix leaves much to be desired, as Smith’s guitar workouts are rarely heard as clearly as his voice. The whole thing simply isn’t loud enough.

Considering the fatigue evident everywhere you look, compounded by a set built on as much new and obscure material as staples, the crowd seems nowhere near as ecstatic as it might have been. The faithful get plenty of morsels, though: “Charlotte Sometimes,” “Just Like Heaven,” several off “The Head on the Door” and “Disintegration.”

Lethargic (as opposed to merely mopey), apparently daunted by the surroundings, staying lean and lacking the oceanic feel that can engulf their devotees, the Cure leave me with mixed feelings. On the one hand, you take what you get: Who knows when next they will surface? On the other, why bother if you’re not going to sound as strong as you can, or offer more hits?

That said, I’ve come away so exhausted I hardly care. Maybe it’ll seem better after 48 hours of sleep.