Coachella 2009!
The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival celebrated its tenth anniversary of Los Angeles’ Most Hip Youngsters Yearly Outing To The Desert To Sit In Horrendous Traffic And Listen To Really Fantastic Music Festival. I attended my first Coachella on Friday. With my Mother. (Who, by the by, I can guarantee was cooler in her twenties than any of the young concertgoers there…..AND was the one who drove us back to the house at two am…..AND survived far better the next day on two hours of sleep than I could ever hope to survive.)
Interspersed throughout the very young (i.e. high schoolers from the Inland Empire, San Diego and Orange County) the college kids, and the very ‘with it’ (i.e. various industry types in town for work, the pool-bar parties in Palm Springs, or a combination of the above) were baby boomers who sported grey hair, straw hats and long shorts. I’m guessing this was more to see Paul McCartney and Leonard Cohen and less for Girl Talk and Franz Ferdinand, but one can never be too sure.
The pleasant surprise of the experience, was the ‘art’ portion of the ‘…music and arts festival’ title. Peppered throughout the grassy polo grounds which houses the festival, are large-scale art installations. They were awesome! One, named ‘Dobi,’ even went so far as to provide shade, a DJ spinning house music, and a cool mist for the warm temperatures. Others used hundreds of LED lights and lit up when the sun went down. It gave visual artists opportunity to show their work to 160,000 or so complete strangers. Go, artists!
(Thanks to my good friend, Scotty Warren for the following galleries of iPhone pictures!)
Traffic SUCKED
Ooo! It DOES take place at a polo ground!
Though Coachella is the kick-off to music festival season, I definitely did not attack the day with the vigor that (I PROMISE, I SWEAR) I will attack at upcoming festivals. I eased my way in; there was a lot to see, especially to a newcomer. Frankly, I had way too much fun with the art, and at times forgot I was there to hear bands.
Golf carts are pretty commonplace in Palm Desert, but not fantastic lil’ art-carts such as this:
There are three tents set up at Coachella, aptly named for deserts; Gobi, Sahara and Mojave.
Tents By Day
Stages By Night
In my quest for iced coffee and my friend, Alex Rose, (found both…both were worth the search) I heard The Black Keys. The band was darn good, but not as great as I wish they would be. Oftentimes, when bands perform, you can see their potential for the next step, whether it will actually be realized in the future, or not. Watching The Black Keys reminded me that they really are just two dudes killing it on instruments. There could be potential for other things, but for now (or maybe ever, we’ll see) that’s it. It’s raw, dirty, rock and roll. I keep expecting/wanting them to tour with auxiliary musicians on backing vocals and keyboards, to embellish the live show as the most recent album was embellished to great effect….and I can want all I want; it’s two dudes, and two dudes only.
Leonard Cohen performed in his signature way that is pristine sound mixed with vinegar. His set included “Dance Me To The End Of Love,” “Bird On The Wire,” “I’m Your Man,” and his infamously famous, “Hallelujah.” (You know, the one Jeff Buckley covered, as did Rufus Wainwright….and you can hear it in ‘Shrek’ sung by John Cale….oh yeah, and the original cut is in the background of the –infuriating– sex scene between Silk Spectre II and Nite Owl II in “Watchmen”) Given that we were in the environs of a festival, where top acts are constantly pitted against one another, time slot-wise, in opposite ends of a field, race track, polo ground or park, the crowd does tend to shift from here to there to catch pieces of sets or entire sets. Cohen played “Hallelujah” towards the end of the show. As the song finished, about half of the crowd very obviously vacated. I couldn’t decide whether the thought process was that they could tick “hearing Leonard Cohen play that ‘Hallelujah’ song that I like” off the list, or people were racing to hear something else.
The fun surprise of the day was the strip of time I had between Leonard Cohen and Paul McCartney. I didn’t think I’d be missing much by missing Morrissey (and was told by others that this was a correct inference) and instead at the urging of Scotty and his girl, Rebecca, headed over to one of the tents to hear Girl Talk. Girl Talk is the master of the art of the mash-up, while simultaneous turns wherever he is into a joyous dance party. I had no idea what to expect, since I, apparently, did not know this kind of fun existed in modern music….but it does! Definitely check him (Girl Talk and his laptop, but it’s soooo much more than just “being a DJ”) out, and join the party.
Sir Paul McCartney
Paul McCartney began his set at 10:22pm, twenty-two minutes after he was scheduled to play. He didn’t finish his encores until almost 1am. Needless to say, I think everyone forgave his tardiness (except for maybe the festival’s promoters, who were fined $1,000 per minute for any artist who went over Indio’s midnight noise curfew…) because the show was AMAZING. When he entered the stage, he paused for a few moments and walked from one side to the other, taking in the crowd. Being that this was McCartney’s American Festival Debut, AND he was the ‘cute Beatle’ rather than the ‘cool Beatle’ like John or George….I think he was a little out of his element by the crowd, to tell the truth. While certainly no stranger to playing for crowds of upwards of tens of thousands of people this was: 1) not in a contained space, like a sports arena; he looked out to a spilling-over sea of bodies and 2) filled of the very, very, young and very, very trendy….many of whom held up signs which said that their parents had seen him in (city name here) in 1964 or 1965.
When greeting the audience in between, he seemed……a little out of it. Some of our impressions were….Stoned? Tired? Drunk? And a general, ‘what is his problem?’ A few songs in, after playing a moving version of “The Long And Winding Road,” Sir Paul told the audience that today was the eleven-year anniversary of the death of his wife, Linda, who had died of breast cancer at their ranch in Tucson. He went on to comment that it was a hard and emotional day for his family, who were in attendance, but that it was a good one, too; because “…Linda loved music, she loved the desert, she loved rock and roll.” From that moment on, it seemed to justify his behavior; I can only imagine that playing for us was simultaneously unbelievably difficult but also unbelievably necessary for him as an artist and a person still experiencing the process known as grieving, to pay homage to his love through music. From that point on, as cheesy as this sounds, and believe me I know it does, it was as if her spirit came to Palm Desert, and sat with us for awhile. And Linda brought George and John with her. McCartney played his ubiquitous cover of “Something” first on the ukelele (George’s favorite instrument) and then added the swell of his electric band to the rest of the track which put a lump in my throat that his since stayed, even days later, trying to put words onto paper. He played “A Day In The Life,” and after the insanity of the bridge, segued into “Give Peace A Chance.”
Wings’ hits were well-represented with “Jet,” “Band On The Run” and “Live And Let Die,” which set off fireworks, timed to its instrumental breaks. McCartney sprinkled in tracks from his new Fireman album, as well as past solo track, “Flaming Pie.” There was a sing along (as I’m sure you can imagine…tens of thousands of people ‘nah nah nah-ing’) to “Hey Jude.” Other Beatles highlights included “Eleanor Rigby,” “Got To Get You Into My Life,” “Drive My Car,” “Lady Madonna,” “Paperback Writer,” “Birthday,” “Yesterday,” “Back In The USSR,” “Let It Be,” “Blackbird,” “Can’t Buy Me Love,” “Get Back,” “I’ve Got A Feeling.” His final encore was apt; “Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band” which then turned into “The End.”
My Mother, who is also named Linda, and is a twenty-plus year survivor of breast cancer, got emotional (and rightfully so) at the evenings’ set choices, and McCartney’s words of love for his wife. She mused that she saw The Beatles when she was younger than me, and yet is old enough to have an adult daughter, and when remembering the past, it doesn’t seem like there has been any passage of time. I think that is a part of what is so great about music; it brings it all back into place. Like George Harrison said, “…and to see you’re really only very small, and life flows on within you and without you.”
Let festival season begin!
