After dissing the Coachella hype a few days ago, I was trying to find something to write about on Friday night, and everywhere I was looking it was Coachella, Coachella, desert fever, heat and music exhaustion, Coachella… so I decided to go to the live broadcast on YouYube to check out some performances going on. Isn’t it the best way to enjoy Coachella? No crowd, no heat and first row. I watched snippets here and there…
Cee-Lo Green was very late, ’I have just landed’ he said, he was at least 20 minutes late and did only 4 songs, a sloppy set, all pissed off, and they cut him just after his mega-hit ‘Fuck you’, as he was starting another song!
Ariel Pink was, well Ariel Pink, a little odd, a little feminine, a little shy and low-fi, doing his thing, but I was not really into it, he needs to be seen live otherwise all you see is the weirdness.
I can’t believe Ozomatli, the LA fusion band, was on the main stage! Good for them! I saw them many times in the past in LA and hadn’t checked them for a while. Their hybrid rhythms, mixing Latino cumbia, jazz, funky beats, even Arabic jams with urban hip hop, use a fantastic horn section, sax, trumpets and percussion, and are always a crowd pleaser… when you manage to make people jump with a 95ºF oppressive heat, you know you’re not too bad. James Fearnley from the Pogues – yes the Pogues! – joined them on stage for an accordion-ed version of the fun ‘Como Ves’. And they never missed their exit, making their way through the crowd, like a musical Mexican carnival, while keeping jamming for a long time … Ok it may start getting a little old for those who have seen them form their start, but at least Coachella couldn’t cut them off, and Cee Lo could have learn the trick.
Switching channel for a little while before Interpol, Cold War Kids were on channel 2 at sunset time, rocking hard and playing their biggest hit ‘Hang me up to dry’.
But back to stage 1 for Interpol…. Paul Banks was wearing a large watch and had a short mullet, did I miss something, is it trendy again? The vocals for once were very distinctive and I thought they were speeding up through their set, Banks sounded aggressive as if he wanted to eat everyone with his killer look and depressive monotonous vocal chords. From ‘Slow Hands’, to ‘New Yorker City’, to ‘Barricade’, to ‘Evil, to ‘Lights’ to ‘Heinrich Maneuver’, their evil darkness has no equal, and but what are they planning to do with David Lynch again?
Shit, on the other channel they were broadcasting a earlier performance of Titus Andronicus and I missed most of it, weird to go back to the sweaty sunshine, but the intensity of the band was as I remember when I saw them live, a punk E-Street band doing an explosive set with this shifting energy and these triumphant drunk victories chanting ‘You’ll always be a loser’, while Patrick was advising the crowd to stay hydrated and to stay tuned for Kanye West. Oh one of their last songs almost sounded like one of the Pogues’, with much more reverb guitars.
There also were Lauryn Hill who was wearing way too many layers for this temperature, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez with some shredding violent bluesy guitars and his weird moody and unexpected vocals (it looked painful), The Palms of Being Pure at Heart, who played a song that sounded like The Cure, all going on at the same time. I skipped ‘Kings of Leon’, the headliners of the night (but I did some back and forth) to watch an early performance of Tame Impala and their pseudo-psychedelic druggy young-old sound, a little hypnotic after a while. And Kings of Leon? Very predictable, soon, very boring, and there are no pigeons at night.
The last band I watched before going to bed was the always excellent Black Keys, although they did actually played before KOL.
I just wonder why they don’t broadcast all the bands? Why no Sleigh Bells? No Robyn? And the many other bands I don’t know?
Overall it’s a good way to get into the Coachella mood, but, of course, nothing replaces the live experience. However, I doubt I will be doing that all weekend!