Coachella 2010 - Day One

Day one of Coachella officially began with me waking up in a hot-as-hell tent, sunlight beating down on my tent wall, silhouetting quickly moving figures whipping by, chasing a small round shadow bouncing close to the ground. In my hung-over stupor, it took me a minute to realize that my hispanic neighbors decided to start their morning with a friendly game of soccer. Most mornings, like most of my white brethren, I prefer coffee. But days like this morning when I am hung over and dehydrated, I'll take a gatorade.

I laid in my tent for a little while longer, attempting to catch a few more winks but only able to hear the sounds of the game right outside my tent and to feel the air temperature climb steadily in my tent as the sun ascended slowly in the sky directly in front of my hiding eyes. You see, the best part and worst part about Coachella is the camping. The best aspect of this being the retreat-like experience it makes for. The worst, being that you cannot rest enough. My friend Spiderman was helpful enough to warn me that sleeping in would be nigh impossible in any semi-normal state. I thought it unwise to get faced and/or pull an all-nighter the first night, and so I went to bed with just a buzz around 2am. However, this meant I was in a sensitive enough state to be called to battle with the sun as soon as it rose at around 7am.

I refused to give in right away, but was finally chased out by the heat of my tent around 8:15am. I immediately gained an appreciation for our campsite. While the air outside was not as hot as the air in my tent, the sunlight itself was more direct. Out of the frying pan... But this is where it paid off to be with the veterans. Our large square canopy provided the perfect sanctuary for a haven of protection from our planet's unwavering source of life.

Spiderman was the only one awake. He had gotten up with the sun to beat the crowd to the showers. I myself decided to check out the situation. Befriending fellow dirty sudseekers along the way, we were shocked to discover a line at the shower trailers almost a block long, with reports that the wait was at least an hour and a half.

I'll keep my dirt and BO, thanks.

The rest of the morning was pretty chill. We hung out at the campsite, eating bagels with peanut butter, fruit, and granola bars, pretty much my standard meal of the weekend. Our hispanic hosts arose eventually and introduced us to their other friends who arrived in the middle of the night after my friend and I went to bed. It's only the morning of the first day, and already everyone is exhausted...

Late in the morning Spiderman and I decided we were ready to really begin our day, and we grabbed beers and headed out to the car camping lots in search of some work friend of his. After a lot of wandering we found his friend and her two sisters. Samson was also at their 'tailgate', and it was nice to talk to him while we exchanged our plans for the day with the three sisters. We all exchanged numbers since our interests somewhat lined up, but it turned out that would be the last we saw of them that weekend.

Still, I was grateful to talk to Sam again, and we stopped by home base once more, rendezvousing with our friends and grabbing beers before heading into the festival around 1pm.

The security at the fest wasn't completely lax but wasn't hardcore either. I didn't even bring my flasks to Cali, but I immediately regretted so, because it would be trivial to get them in via my back pockets. Not only would it have been nice to save money, it just would have been practical at the festival. See, like Lollapalooza and most normal festivals, beer must be purchased with a wristband. However, unlike other fests, here you had to remain inside a beer garden (i.e. compound) with your drinks.

I basically decided not to drink at all until the evening. I used this strat the first time I went to Lolla, being afraid of getting carried away and missing/forgetting the headlining bands later or worse. Besides, after talking to Samson I usually don't feel the need to anyway.

So the first thing I did in the festival was take a shower-- that is, walk through the mist station at the Dolab, which was this theatre/stage that featured, above all, repeat performances by a ridiculous dance/stunt troop. More on this later...

Already Spiderman and I decided to split. He had his mind made up that he would be staying at the Sahara tent all day, and even knew exactly where in the tent he would be hanging out. The Sahara is the biggest of the three tents at the fest, and is in the furthest corner because it is pretty much all DJs/electronic music and LOUD AS FUCK. Spiderman being the huge DJ fan that he is and all-around hardcore partier, was content to spend most of his time there. I'm such a fan of so many styles of music, I had to spend more of the weekend bouncing around and catching as many acts as I could. So while he immediately gravitated toward his true home for the weekend, I started my weekend of music with P.O.S. at one of the small tents. I've always enjoyed this guy's last album, which amped me when I would jog last summer, but live his emceeing skills really shone. No lip-syncing, no tripping over rhymes, no mumbling, just sick, sharp, bangin rhymes. The vocals are backed up with rock-heavy instrumentation. The instrumental style ranges from punk to modern "99-problems" style rock-hop. But I couldn't have been more pleased with the emceeing, and P.O.S. (most commonly expanded to Pissed Off Stef, Stefon being the emcee) actually wielded the axe for at least one song as well.

There was some time before I planned to catch Sleigh Bells, which is also where I hoped to unite with fellow blogger Angel Raper, who was driving in from L.A. for the day to catch his favorite acts. Meanwhile I decided to find Spiderman at the Sahara. The vibe was starting to pick up there already even though it was the middle of the day. Not the kind of energy yet that Day Zero had, but still an overall enthusiasm to be there and zeal for music and life was what I learned was ever-present in the air in the best tent at the fest.

I can't recall who was playing when I first got there, but after that unmemorable set finished, I was treated to the most bizarre act of the entire festival. Known simply as DJ Lance Rock, this exuberant skinny black dude donned an outfit that was a hybrid of a bright orange jumpsuit and a marching band drum major uniform. His music seemed prerecorded (if anything, DJed by someone offstage), because he simply sang and danced all of the songs in the set... which could have been pulled from any morning children's television show. Songs with chorus topics such as "Wash Your Hands", "Shake the Sillies Out", "The Name Game", and my personal favorite, "Party in My Tummy", made you feel unbelievably retarded, but if you didn't get into the party and dance along with the hokey-pokey like instructions, you'd be the only one not "hopping" and "skipping in circles"... (Note: I finally did the research and so I just learned that this DJ is the host of a legit popular kids' show called Yo Gabba Gabba, which has actually hosted appropriate noteworthy musical guests such as MGMT and of Montreal).

After this I left to go to an equally unique and only slightly less juvenile set by Sleigh Bells. It turned out Angel Raper got stuck in a huge wait to get into the festival and missed this intense act, which paralleled the feel of Crystal Castles but with a little more raw noise a la HEALTH and less video game/80s synth electronica. After this I went back to Sahara to catch the end of Perry Farrell's set, who embarrassingly was rocking out onstage to some sort of remix of the Entourage theme (yes, Perry, you are cooler than "Johnny Drama", but not by much at the moment...). During the break I moved up to find Spiderman and we got the closest spot I would enjoy in the Sahara tent all weekend (maybe 10 feet from the front rail), for the dirty electro/techno young DJ Proxy. He started out slow, but the visuals already foreshadowed the subtle aggression and ruthlessness in his music with black and red imagery of tanks, missiles, and machinery, bringing to mind impressions of war but especially with the color scheme, the USSR in particular. Turns out I wasn't the only one sensing the aggression, as quite nearby I witnessed the first mosh-pit at an electro show that I probably will ever see. We were so close that we were even IN FRONT of the solo crowdsurfer, who also might be the only one I'll see at a DJ show (barring Girl Talk, which is another realm entirely, of course).

I really dug the set though, which I stayed to hear more of than I was planning, since there was an overlap with Yeasayer at the tent next-door. When I did decide to cut over there, there was a sizeable crowd that made it difficult to even get inside the smaller tent, which sadly diminshed the sound and experience overall. Nevertheless, I got to hear Madder Red, my favorite track on the new album, as well as solid numbers Ambling Alp and O.N.E. Angel Raper finally made it to the festival towards the end of the Yeasayer set after waiting in the car line for two hours and the front gate line for one (so glad I camped), and from then on we pretty much hung together for the first day.

The rest of the day was mostly bands. Saw Passion Pit from a modest distance who sounded great on the smaller open stage. My third time seeing them, and third time still not giving them as much attention as I give most acts (first time was Lolla where I wasn't familiar and walked out due to the extremely annoying and bewildering excitement from the packed crowd of high-schoolers/high-schooler wannabes, second time was a free show at Logan Square Auditorium where I was first more interested in partying, and then later in hunting down a dude that spilled my drink at first and then bumped me again later... who I somehow lost after he ducked into the bathroom... seriously, I was about to get ugly). We then returned yet again to the Sahara to catch a good chunk of Aeroplane's set, who rocked a lot of DFA-style disco-ey poppy remixes.

The rest of the night was then spent finally at the main stage. First we caught all of LCD Soundsystem, who I was pretty excited to see since I have never seen them before and I had just previewed the new album just two day prior. I forgot how long some of the tracks were and how slow-burning some of them were. And maybe I was used to the continuity of the DJs at Sahara, but I was ultimately not as thrilled as I expected for the set. Still, maybe I simply had false hopes. After all, thrilling isn't probably the foremost concern of James Murphy. Don't get me wrong, he's excited to be performing, but as he says so himself, he wants every band member to be in control. This helps make the live tracks tight, but somehow I wanted more energy. From the band and the crowd, who were thinning out to check out Benny Benassi or some other less ironic witty NYer whose ultimate goal seems to be to perfectly marry typewriter rhythms with clever and coolly delivered lyrics to equally honor disco enthusiasts and aging hipsters alike. It was an enjoyable but short set. It was great to hear Losing My Edge and All My Friends, but there was so many more old songs I wanted to hear and less of James Murphy being sentimental and playing the lesser and longer of the new tracks. I had much anticipation for a long set full of classics and a more hyped up crowd, but maybe these expectations were misplaced. But instead I got the feeling that not only will I hear almost all of these songs again at Pitchfork and possibly the Metro this summer, but that those shows might even be longer and more exciting since they will be headlining. In retrospect, I kind of wish I had gone to see some of Benassi to get my "satisfaction"...

After LCD there were no more options in the night. I've heard the hype behind Deadmau5, the last headliner for the Sahara tent, but as much as I would have liked to see him, there was no way I was going to miss any of Jay-Z. There was a pretty long break before HOVA too, but I decided having a couple drinks and a decent spot would be more satisfying than booking it across the fest and back just to catch a little bit more of Sahara action. So after pounding a few straight rums in the Beer Garden, Angel Raper and I posted up near the sound tent for my most anticipated entertainment of the weekend.

It was a long wait (including a 10 minute digital clock countdown), but when J finally rose to the stage through a hole in the floor, it was on. From the full backing band which had everything from rock and rhythm to a horn section, to the NY skyline backdrop that doubled as a screen to host different patterns and images for each song, the stage was a spectacle itself as much as a musical medium. Jay played everything from 'Izzo' to '99 Problems' to 'Empire State of Mind' (which still tugs on my emotions when I hear that stupidly simple but hopeful chorus), and weaved his set together like a perfect mixtape. Not like old hip hop albums with dumb skits or common big-egoed rockstar performances with BS banter, the only non-musical breaks and were short and groomed to act as vocal segues ("You guys are at about a 10, and I like that. But I need you to turn it up not to 11... no, no. I need you all to turn it up to 99". Cue '99 problems' and pandemonium). If it were anybody but Jay-Z, it would have been poor salty overkill, but because it was Jay-Z, it was great salty overkill.

I lost Angel Raper towards the end of the set, who ended up ducking out early to beat the rush, and so after the set I decided to wander around a bit as the festival was not completely done for the night. I found myself drawn to the Dolab, where the aforementioned dance/stunt troop were doing their routine for the last time that night. What I stumbled upon seemed like a highly choreographed rendition of a feast/orgy from ancient Rome or even Sodom or Gomorrorha. Men and women in tattered clothes and wild make-up alternated from Thriller like dance steps to pon-de-floor style raunchy 'dancing', to simply feeling each other up and spanking each other on stage. Meanwhile, three scantily clad devotchkas would swing in a circle from a triangle of rope swings right above the heads of the crowd, only to be followed up by a shirtless ripped acrobat who not only could do rope tricks but also did them with a female companion who wielded some sort of flaming instruments. Furthermore, I was distracted nearby by some hippie dude and chicks who were so inspired that they were instigating their own forbidden dances right in front of me ("The show is not on stage, the show is right here!" the hippie dude exclaimed). I was sort of just in a trance at this point, but I have to admit, it was all kind of hot. If only I had had the kind of help that the hippies (hopefully) probably had to loosen them up...

The night ended pretty chill, for it was a long day and I was pretty tired. I made my way back to the campsite soon after the Dolab performance as everything else was pretty much wrapped up. Had a couple drinks with the rest of our camp, most of who 'raved' about the Benassi/Deadmau5 sets, and retired again comparatively early in order to get some much needed rest.