My Weekend Was Probably Better Than Yours: A Coachella 2006 Report Card

And I only include the word "probably" in there because someone in the world might have been having sex with, like, the entire Swedish Bikini Team. And even then, that guy didn't see - well, I'll get to that in a bit.

DAY ONE

Head Automatica: Let's put it this way: the most indelible image from their entire set was some shirtless dude in the audience uncaringly displaying his ass-fro (ass-fro, n.: a patch of pubic-esque hair stretching up from the beltline into the lower back region) to the world. I mean, the band was fine and everything and they nailed "Beating Heart Baby" which, I suppose, is all I can really ask of them, but argh the ass-fro. Such a monstrous horror. Brian reacted like he woke up to the sight of his mother blowing him, which really does sound about right. C-

Celebration, "Foxes": People, I cannot make this explicit enough: if Celebration ever shows up in your town to do a show, GO. I mean, I'll admit that the album as a whole hadn't really held my attention with quite the strangling grip I'd have preferred, but that probably has something to do with the fact that it doesn't really have a clear-cut single and it tends to take a single to get me looking into an album's virtues - if their live show has anything to reveal, it's that there's certainly nothing wrong with the music they actually play. They're just so strikingly determined to get All That Music out of them; I doubt I'll ever forget being close enough to the stage to see lead singer Katrina Ford wailing away on the tambourine ferociously enough to raise legit bruises on her legs, to say nothing of the one dude playing pedal bass with his feet and lead guitar with his hands. In other words, they're not some studio band - they're actually able to sound that shambolic in real life, which, when you're dealing with the levels of shambolicitude that we're talking about here, is worth pointing out to everyone with the kind of force usually reserved for newly-converted evangelicals. A (Click here to order Celebration from Insound)

White Rose Movement: I mean, I don't want to act like I didn't have a good time doing The Angular Neck-Snappy Dance to "Love Is A Number" or "London's Mine" or, well, anything they played really, and I certainly don't want to give the impression that the white-hot enthusiasm I had for them has dipped even a little bit, but I have to admit that White Rose Movement were probably the biggest disappointment of the weekend. To be fair, most of this has to do with them being on the business end of an insanely shitty live mix (seriously, if there's ever a band that's going to suffer from synths being mixed too low, it's WRM), but it'd be dishonest to throw all the blame in that corner when Finn Dyke kept bombing out on the high notes and I kept thinking "Man, all those whooshy effects really do make these songs a thousand times better on the record". Like I said, I still have faith that they're a good band since they really do shred that hard and they certainly didn't disgrace any of their songs, but this just wasn't their afternoon, I guess. C+

The Walkmen: Shockingly good. I mean shockingly. I mean, literally my only reason for seeing them was to hear "The Rat" and "Louisiana", but every single song they played was utterly worth every second of attention I devoted to it, which is really all you can ask for from a band. Obviously, most of the credit for this has to go to lead singer Hamilton Leithauser, the man who may have more of a grudge against his diaphragm than anyone else on earth; his infamous yowl sounds just as tortured live as it does on the record, but I gotta believe he's going to end up paying for just launching into it the way he does - it's like dropping your car from fourth gear down to first. It's also worth pointing out that all the stuff from the forthcoming album sounded pretty great, although predictably enough I only really remember the set-closing "Louisiana" and the mariachi section they brought out. Good shit. B

Animal Collective: I was actually able to drag about four of my friends in attendance to see Animal Collective, and I'm sure I'll never hear the end of it as long as I live. Speaking for myself, of course, I loved it; I didn't recognize anything off Sung Tongs (easily the source of most of my familiarity with Animal Collective), but I'm a really big fan of the way AC train you to appreciate their song-based stuff via Noise Assault, and boy did they ever bring it here, in unadulterated fifteen-minute doses no less. B+

Kanye West: I can't imagine how furious the people who made the trek all the way out to Coachella just to see Kanye must have been when he played something like six songs in thirty minutes (although I doubt they were one-third as mad as the people who flew in from all over the world to see Madonna, who apparently didn't even play that much), but I for one had a blast, possibly because I was able to see it less as "Kanye West Is Performing Music For Eighty-Five Thousand People" than as "Kanye West Enjoys Music In Front Of Eighty-Five Thousand People". I mean, fuck, he only took time out of his set to do the Carlton Banks dance to A-Ha's "Take On Me"; anyone expecting all the gravity of a Cure show after that deserves all the disappointment they reaped. I should also point out that his self-radio-editing of "Gold Digger" to ward off eighty-five thousand white people from dropping the n-bomb was something majestic to watch, or at least majestic to watch everyone in the audience deal with; you'd have thought Mister Rogers was refusing to put on a sweater in front of a bunch of kids. B

Sigur Ros: Meh. The difference, I think, between Sigur Ros and Animal Collective is that the latter makes you work to figure out why you like it, whereas the former just sounds so pretty that there's not really a lot of need to figure anything out. Which is fine, of course, but it's pretty hard for me to take challenging music seriously when there's not a whole lot of actual challenge to it, y'know? D+

The Juan Maclean: I'll admit to being a little pissed at The Juan at the time for burning thirty minutes of his set time to get all his equipment set up correctly, but it took about two seconds of "Give Me Every Little Thing" to shut that part of my brain totally off; they may have only gotten twenty minutes to actually play music, but I sure squeezed about four hours worth of jackassedly dancing into 'em. Being someone raised on incredibly melodramatic dance music, I never really warmed to Less Than Human the way other people did since it's pretty much the definition of an album that lays all its cards right there on the table, but damn is it ever irresistably enjoyable when you can't miss that propulsive low end for all the tea in China. I mean, I walked away bopping and hopping around like crazy, which is really the best possible way to set yourself up for: B+

She Wants Revenge: I kid, I kid.

Daft Punk:




A++++

DAY TWO

Infadels: Yet another in a seemingly endless string of bands that sound way better live than they do on the record, although there isn't a recording format in the world that could have adequately captured the amount of energy these guys had; they just seemed so grateful for the chance to play to such a big audience and decided to show it by rocking the fuck out. They're kind of hampered in my mind by the fact that they basically take aim at the exact same dance-rock aesthetic as MSTRKRFT - a truly unscalable peak - but lord knows they got me throwing my arms around way more than I ever would have expected possible on a day when I'd been woken up after about four hours of sleep by the most oppressive heat of the year. I have a sneaking suspicion that they're about nine thousand times as fun in a little club, too - if they ever come back to LA, I'll make sure to find out. B+

Phoenix: I've been waiting to see Phoenix ever since I lost the ability to open a single thread on any messageboard discussing them which failed to make reference to the immaculately high quality of their live shows, but they just didn't have it. Admittedly, most of this had to do with their keyboard up and dying about two songs into the set - after all, an awful lot of what I love about Phoenix has to do with the cleansing warmth of those keys - but I still couldn't shake free of the impression that they were just kinda up there going through the motions, which is the kiss of death ordinarily and the kiss of Patient Zero coming mere hours after one of the best, most responsive musical performances that I could even imagine. That being said, they did double the length of "If I Ever Feel Better" by adding on a thrashed-out jumparound second half to it, so it wasn't a total loss or anything. C

Jamie Lidell, "When I Come Back Around": I will admit to having been more than a little suspicious of Jamie Lidell before seeing him live; I thoroughly enjoyed Multiply like, y'know, anyone else with functional ears, but I had a hard time shaking free of the thought that he was really just making music for white people who don't want to admit that they don't really like any music made by black people (q.v. the Black Eyed Peas). As usual, of course, I was quickly revealed to be an idiot; regardless of however Multiply may be consumed, it's pretty transparently obvious that Jamie Lidell absolutely has the spirit flowing through him. I mean, even setting aside the insidious accuracy with which he replicated the album both singing- and programming-wise (incidentally, there may not be a more impressive sight to see live than someone recording and sequencing their own loops), it was just impossible to ignore how much fun he was having onstage - the shit-eating grin he couldn't have possibly wiped off his face, his constant and hilarious interaction with the prop dude who kept putting ridiculous hats on him and adorning the stage with oversized cutouts of microphones, his incessant acknowledgement of the audience, peaking with the moment when he actually handed the mic off to some dude in the audience to sing the climax of "When I Come Back Around" (and, to the dude's credit, he took a hammer and nailed it)...yeah. Really really really really really really really really really really fun shit. I have a feeling that he's going to steal more than a few shows from Beck when he opens for him this summer. A (Click here to buy Multiply from Amazon.com)

Sleater-Kinney: I have to admit that I enjoyed Sleater-Kinney more than I thought I would; of course, that still doesn't count for too much being as that I would have previously preferred to push a porcupine through my pee-hole than knowingly listen to 'em. Again, my frame of comparison has to be Animal Collective, who make the same amount of dissonant noise but don't confine it to any song-based boundaries - they're there to make a racket, not a point. S-K, on the other hand, had Points To Make, even during their seventeen-minute closing jam (the point of which, I guess, was "Hey, we can jam too"), which is fine of course but not particularly interesting. That being said, there were absolutely more than a few moments of legitimate rockingness; I even caught myself enjoying "Doll Me Up", for the love of God. I mean, that's remarkable. C

Yeah Yeah Yeahs: I have to admit that I bolted midway through their set once "Gold Lion" failed to play out as the summer-camp singalong extravaganza I'd been anticipating - I mean, hey, it'd been a long day and I wasn't really in the mood to get nudged to death by the dude in front of me's backpack (seriously, what the fuck could you possibly need to bring to Coachella that requires nine cubic feet of backpack space? A dutch oven? That guy from Ocean's Eleven? Two dutch ovens?). What I did catch, however, was pretty damn great; watching them play live, you really get the feeling that they didn't become rockstars to be cool, but rather that the world made them rockstars for doing something they happen to find incalculably satisfying. Karen O. in particular benefits from this like you wouldn't believe; I've never seen a single image of her that left me one-one thousandth as attracted to her as the vision of her strutting around live on stage did. It kinda leaves me wondering if I'd get the same thing from a Gwen Stefani show (I mean, seriously - same story, ten years apart), although as much as I loathe "Luxurious" I doubt I'll ever find out. B

Mogwai: Here is how badly I wanted to see the Scissor Sisters: I consciously went to see Mogwai, very possibly my least favorite band working today, in order to get better positioning up front. And BOY did I pay for it, because Mogwai really is about as infuriatingly boring a band as I'm likely to find without actually listening to the Mars Volta; at least Sigur Ros' songs have a dynamic that goes beyond softLOUDsoftLOUDLOUDLOUDsoftsoftsoftLOUDend. The absolute gold standard of tedium, apart from being afforded the admittedly hilarious sight of hippies trying to dance to it. F

The Go! Team: I'm starting to think that the Go! Team may just be Belle & Sebastian for a happy-footed crowd; their live show can basically and completely reasonably be described as "frantic preciousness", from the palpable thrill they kept taking from such a large and responsive audience to the way they kept shuffling on and off stage in various combinations to make sure everyone knew who deserved attention on which song. That being said, I'm one of those people who likes Belle & Sebastian for their virtues more accurately compared to the Monkees than to Leonard Cohen, so it probably shouldn't be too surprising that my reaction to the Go! Team was probably about one-fourth the enthusiasm level that it would have been for, say, the Avalanches. I'm also pretty sure that I would have enjoyed their set about a thousand times more if I hadn't been standing behind The Most Obstructive Guy In History (literally a foot taller and wider than me) and right next to the most self-consciously participatory dickweeds at the show, but HEY: whatever. B

Scissor Sisters: So. I make my way almost to the very front for the Scissor Sisters and find Joe Lia, literally the first person I've seen from the group that dragged me to this hootenanny in hours and hours, and immediately and completely accidentally make a conquest of this exceedingly cute chick standing nearby. I literally have no idea how this stuff happens; all I know is that one minute I'm warning Joe that he's about to discover his two very favorite entertainers on earth in the form of Jake Shears and Ana Matronic and the next minute I'm locked in rapturous flirting with this adorable girl who immediately starts doing The Hand Thing, The Head Thing, and The Looking Over And Grinning Every Two Minutes Thing. I mean, even setting aside the potential to make history by becoming the very first hookup between straight people at a Scissor Sisters show in history, this is pretty cool just for the two-outs-bottom-of-the-ninth aspect, especially having spent the weekend having seen every single other girl that I'd attempted to talk up (all two of 'em) drop the fiancee bomb on me in short order. And fortunately, the Sisters failed to make me look like an asshole by just destroying everything, I mean fucking destroying it; Jake and Ana hopped out in matching gold lame get-ups and immediately started launching into all manner of synchronized dance routines and breaking out a couple of new, exceedingly awesome songs off their forthcoming new album for which I now cannot wait ("I Don't Feel Like Dancing" in particular was an early highlight - it's a near-perfect ripoff of Erasure's "Victim Of Love" in the best way possible). And this girl is just loving it, sidling off from the dude and his girlfriend she was there with in order to come stand by me and just bask in the sheer awesomeness of it all, and I'm having a hard time keeping from beaming like an idiot at the ease with which I'll actually be able to ask this girl for her number after we shuffle off after the show...and then the dude decides to pull her and the other chick away, presumably to catch Tool. I swear to God, if it hadn't been for the Sisters immediately breaking out the schaeffly grandeur of "Kiss You Off" (and I really don't want to live in a world that doesn't eventually see Richard X remix it) and then about five more solid-gold nuggets of flawlessness, heads would have rolled. But hey, this is arguably why we have the Scissor Sisters in the first place, innit? Because Tool utterly sucks and it's time for a band to play music that's actually fun? A-

So yeah. I had The Fun. Count me in for next year, wherever it ends up being held.