I saw bands and bands and bands
I’ve become awful about updating this thing.
I went to the third day of the Coachella Festival yesterday. jesus H. christ, there were a lot of people there. almost more trouble than it’s worth.
key word is “almost.”
Coachella doesn’t actually take place in Coachella – it takes place in the Coachella Valley, but the venue is in Indio. Indio, and Coachella, are places that I normally don’t stop in when I pass on the highway. dirty and dusty desert towns. just like El Centro, only more like a truck stop. at least this burg has a sense of community.
but the festival, man. I don’t normally go for these kinds of things. like, for the three day pass, I think it cost 300 bucks. plus food and drinks. alltogether, that’s like a 500 dollar investment, at least. that I wouldn’t do. also, I wouldn’t spend eight hours in the car to go and see something like this; maybe to some people it is, but spending 16 hours in a car, and losing a couple hundred dollars to see a huge-name act perform on a stage I can barely see isn’t my idea of a good time.
but I got in free off of Greg’s working of the press angle, and it’s like an hour and a half from here. so, fuck it. I went.
these are the performances I saw, in order: about five minutes of the Kaiser Chiefs, Willie Nelson, a band called the Claxons (sp?), Air, Manu Chao, and Rage Against the Machine.
and all I had to do was get in my truck and drive up here after I watched the Bulls stomp Miami on national television.
Greg was hanging out with some people that his boss put him in touch with from the Valley. every year, they rent a condo and live out of it for the weekend. I only met one of them, but he was an alright guy.the condo was trashed. empty beer cans everywhere, drunk guy in a Mavs jersey passed out on the couch the whole time. didn’t spend much time there.
at the festival, where we adjourned to shortly after meeting up at the condo, he was hanging out pretty extensively with the girls from the campsite next to him, who were in their 30s, he told me. which was odd. because they struck me as much younger. talked like burned-out sorority sisters, which I think they were, but they were cool enough. before we left the campsite for the concerts, they were passing around cocaine and tequila. seriously. to which I say: you’re always young if you’re young at heart, girls!
anyway, Willie Nelson was the shit. he played “Pancho and Lefty.” Manu Chao was chaos, like a cacophony of sound. very festival like music; he was happy, and the crowd really had a good time. and on the next stage over, Air was right where you’d expect them to be, electronic and elegant and very French.
and Rage Against the Machine was odd. they haven’t released a new song in seven years, and when they began, it wasn’t that impressive. de la Rocha started off weak, Morello sounded like he was mailing it in, but as they played they got louder. louder. “down Rodeo” and “testify” were pretty money. they had the crowd in a fucking frenzy, man. and you look around, and it’s a bunch of drunk and high festival undergraduates who know the album version of “bulls on parade” by heart. they’re an odd band, and I wonder how they marry extremely political lyrics with people who either a) don’t understand or b) don’t care. fuck, I’m probably a mixture of both.
here’s something in the same vein: some guy gave me a flier for a film screening that was taking place “later in the afternoon, man, in the campground.” it was for a communist magazine called “Revolution,” I think, and they were going to really touch your hearts and minds. they’re about social justice. I didn’t go, as I like my heart to be cold and dead, but after reading the card all I could think was, what the fuck? it costs about $100 for the ticket to get inside alone. and you’re spending money on preaching communism at fucking Coachella?
whatever. the Coachella Festival was just like college; hyper-liberal, “if we impeach Bush the world will be gumdrops and lollipops” kind of crowd. all killer, no filler.
though, de la Rocha did allow himself one political screed, which was pretty slick:
“if we held U.S. presidents to the same standards by which we judged the Nazis, every one of them from Truman on down, every single one, would be tried and shot for being war criminals.”
or something to that effect.
