Strider Posted April 15, 2011 Share Posted April 15, 2011 I realize this is a mostly UK/Euro-centric board, but I'm still surprised nobody's started a Coachella thread...especially given how "international" the attendance usually is. At some Coachella's in the past, I would meet more people from abroad than Californians during the weekend. Alas, I am not going this year(this will be the third Coachella I will miss), as with the move up to mid-April, the festival conflicts with both the Film Noir Fest at the American Cinematheque that I attend yearly, and with Record Store Day on Saturday. Plus, they make you buy the whole three-day pass now, instead of allowing you the choice of picking which day you want to go, or buying a weekend pass. So even though my brother's band is playing, I will skip it this year. Anyway, here's the schedule for this year's Coachella Fest, April 15-17: The Do Lab Friday 11:45 GoldRush 1:45 Michele Bass 2:55 RLS 4:10 SaQi 5:25 Govinda 6:40 LaReda 7:55 Lucent Dossier Experience 8:35 Jupit3r 9:50 KRADDY 11:05 Freq Nasty 12:20 Lucent Dossier Experience Saturday 11:30 The Ianator 12:45 Sammy Bliss 2:00 Jesse Wright & Lee Burridge 4:05 Patricio 5:50 Ana Sia 7:40 Lucent Dossier Experience 8:20 Emancipator 10:15 NitGrit 11:15 Lucent Dossier Experience 11:55 An-ten-nae Sunday 12:00 Karim So 1:35 Timonkey 2:50 Gladkill 4:05 Siren 5:20 Sugarpill 6:35 Stephan Jacobs 7:50 Lucent Dossier Experience 8:30 R/D 9:45 Paper Diamond 10:55 Lucent Dossier Experience Heineken Dome Friday 11:00am Milo 12:30pm Mr. Smith 2:30pm Toy Selectah 4:30pm DJ HeavyGrinder 6:30pm Donald Glaude 9:00 Bunny (video suit set) Saturday 11:00am Milo 12:00pm Mario Dubbz 2:00pm M-3 3:30pm Michael Anthony 4:30pm Fred Everything 6:30pm Kevin Kind 8:00pm Dirty Vegas Sunday 11:00am Milo 12:00pm Little B 2:00pm DJ Frances 4:00pm Scooter and Lavelle 6:00pm White Noize 8:00pm DJ Dan Plus Live Painting all weekend by: Claudio Ethos Herakut Shark Toof Aly Kourouma Freddy Sam There's some good ones: PJ Harvey; Wire; Animal Collective; Suede; Scala & the Kolacny Brothers; Erykah Badu; Gogol Bordello; The Strokes; Mumford & Sons; Black Keys; Phosphorescent and lots more...most of whom I've already seen recently...or who will be touring on their own soon. I HOPE! I would like to know if there's anyone here that is going and hope you give us a report on your experience. There's also a webcast channel for those that can't go...you can watch it on your pc or whatever: Coachella 2011 webcast Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Virginia Posted April 16, 2011 Share Posted April 16, 2011 Some great bands there; unfortunately it's just too far for us. Which is your brother's band? That's really cool! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Strider Posted April 23, 2011 Author Share Posted April 23, 2011 THANK YOU VIRGINIA for being the one person to respond to the thread...as big and important a musical event that Coachella has been for some time now, it's puzzling there wasn't more interest on this board. I've seen Coachella threads on many other band message boards, but here, squadoosh. Oh well, no matter...I didn't go anyway. But for those like you, Virginia, who couldn't go but maybe have an interest in what happened...here's a round-up of various Coachella coverage from the L.A. Times: Coachella 2011: The rise of a new generation No Roger Waters or Prince this year. Instead, the festival got its star wattage from acts that came of age in the aughts. By August Brown and Margaret Wappler, Los Angeles Times April 18, 2011 As the U.K. folk-revival quartet Mumford & Sons, all of whom are in their early 20s, stared out on the 70,000 people or so gathered to watch their set at the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival on Saturday night, they couldn't help but remark on how much had changed for them. "In 2008, I was a punter sneaking in here for Rage Against the Machine," one of the Mumfords' string players cracked in disbelief. That a kid could go from sneaking in the side gate to playing the main stage at nightfall in a span of three years says everything about this year's iteration on the 12-year-old desert bacchanal, the first in recent memory to draw its star power mostly from artists who formed, grew careers and scaled to the peak of their profession within the 2000s. And taken with this year's new emphasis on keeping out gate crashers, easing transportation in and out of the grounds, and keeping those inside entranced with stages and light sculptures, the weekend felt like it was competing for the long-term loyalties of a generation that considers endless sensory stimulation a necessity. In fact, Coachella's been operating long enough now that it's helped rear bands from buzz act to featured attraction. Arcade Fire expanded its fan base tremendously during its first two Coachella appearances, in 2005 and 2007. In February, the Montreal group shocked many Grammy watchers with an unexpected album of the year award — but for most who had caught the band on the Polo Grounds in years prior, such pomp was a forgone conclusion. "There is a communal feeling here, backstage and out front," said singer PJ Harvey, who performed at Coachella for the first time Sunday night. "A combination of the two is needed, young and old. Everything informs each other. The great artist's parcel gets handed down." Whatever you think of Kings of Leon's blustery Tarzan rock, Arcade Fire's gang-chorus earnestness or Kanye West's ambitions for hip-hop and high-end furniture blogging, this much is undisputed about Coachella 2011: Roger Waters was nowhere in sight, nor was his flying pig. There was no Paul McCartney set (well, save for Macca's brief piggyback cameo with the dance producer Afrojack). While sitting on the grass during British art rock band Foals' electric set, Jazz Brice of Laguna Beach underlined pages in a textbook for a paper due Monday. The Pepperdine student described herself as a "Mumford & Sons enthusiast" who had already seen them four or five times this year. "This year's lineup is really strong," said Brice, 22. "It always seemed a bit off to have Prince or Roger Waters. I mean, it's cool, but this feels more generational." Other second-billed acts such as the Black Keys, Bright Eyes and the Strokes all caught their headwinds in the aughts too, and the hottest-tipped (but ultimately fraught) set of the undercard came from the L.A. teenage rap posse Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All. But it wasn't milk and honey for everyone. While many of the festival's logistical problems had been eased (microchip-embedded wristbands discouraged wanton counterfeiting, and shuttle buses eased some of the infamous traffic snarls), an unexpected new one emerged as faulty video monitors and squelching feedback brutalized otherwise powerful sets from R&B experimentalist Erykah Badu and blues-adventurers the Black Keys. But those problems didn't take away from this year's distinctly more relaxed energy. A festival that can rely on a crop of young bands to do its heavy lifting is ensuring its own growth as much as it is paving the way for increased album sales or new discoveries. "I think it's a healthy sign," Guy Garvey, frontman for England's Elbow, which performed a Saturday sunset slot in the Mojave tent, said of the sprightly lineup. Though the band plays arenas back home, where it won the Mercury Prize for "Seldom Seen Kid," Coachella affords Elbow an opportunity to make new fans in the States, where it is still not as well known. "It's a curated festival where not every choice is based on record sales," Garvey said. "It would be a shame if you knocked that out and only went for the biggest game." Of course, the emphasis on youth and Internet-era fame can make some wonder about the big picture. Is Odd Future in this for life? Is Kings of Leon's "Sex on Fire" our "Light My Fire"? Maybe, maybe not. Regardless, the weekend made an impression that's bound to remain as the years pass. "It's its own utopia," said 24-year-old Lauren Mosenthal of Boston, who came for the adventurous disco of Cut Copy and Crystal Castles and the tent-revivalist energy of Arcade Fire. "The natural surroundings of the mountains and perfect weather, the constant visual stimulation from the art installations, the fashion and mind-blowing sets and lights make you forget about the outside world." august.brown@latimes.com margaret.wappler@latimes.com Coachella 2011: 'When I stand on the stage, I want to give the truth,' says PJ Harvey By Margaret Wappler April 18, 2011 During PJ Harvey’s Sunday night set, one of the repasts offered by Coachella before festival headliner Kanye West commanded the main stage, a fan waved a homemade sign that got caught on camera. “PJ Harvey,” it read, “is the REAL closing headliner.” The crowd cheered, the sentiment validating the feverish loyalty Harvey’s listeners trade in, the kind that almost feels sealed by blood oath. Outfitted in a white dress corseted at the waist like a parlor-bound Victorian wife, her sculptural feathered headpiece shooting back from her obsidian hair, Harvey looked ready for the Wild West’s dreamscape, ready to hitch her covered wagon to the trash-strewn grounds. Cradling an autoharp in her arms, Harvey, in her Coachella debut, assessed the crowd with a benevolent gaze that seemed as if it could snap into menace if provoked. Harvey played with her old pal and frequent collaborator John Parish at her side, and her set marched out war-scarred testaments from her latest album, “Let England Shake,” and a few older songs, such as “The Sky Lit Up,” played with more chug than the original, a sense of certainty replacing the near-hysteria. “When I stand on the stage,” Harvey said, in an interview earlier in the day, “I want to give the truth.” We were speaking in her cavernous artist’s trailer on the Polo Grounds, about how she tried to avoid repeating her work. Over the course of eight albums, Harvey has cut a snake’s trail through heartsick alienation, and now with her latest, a nation’s embattled history. “It wouldn’t be honest of me,” she said, “to keep drawing from my past.” With songs such as “Rid of Me,” Harvey whispered and screamed a message: It was acceptable to be difficult, brutal even, in love. But it’s a feeling that’s distant to her now. “I still love that song, but I wrote it many years ago,” she said. “There are other things I want to play now.” Has she moved away from writing personal screeds? “I would hesitate to say that any of my work is personal… you step into characters.” For “Let England Shake,” two years in the making, Harvey was drawn to the characters of her country, particularly voices lost to time or the patriotic machine. “I wanted to use human language,” Harvey said, “not overt political language. I wanted to inhabit the lives of those who have been affected, not the political leaders.” Onstage, she affected even more of a commonplace kind of tone to her singing than on the album, a nasal kind of twang that gives a mantra like “What if I take my problems to the United Nations?” an even richer sense of doomed fallacy. The line is an echo from Eddie Cochran’s “Summertime Blues,” one of the few samples, including a Kurdish love song and the chorus from the classic reggae song "Blood and Fire," woven throughout the album. No matter what kind of diplomacy her songs may call for, at her heart, Harvey will always be a vigilante. Near the end of her set, her eyes were glittering and she stalked the stage more. Her lips screwing into a snarl, she exclaimed, “I want a pistol. I want a gun!” from “Big Exit.” Had Harvey been saying the same line on the same patch of desert 200 years ago, something tells me she would’ve run anyone off her land. Photo: Singer PJ Harvey performs during Day 3 of the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival in Indio. Credit: Frazer Harrison / Getty Images. Coachella 2011: Kanye West doesn't play it safe as he closes the Indio fest By Todd Martens April 18, 2011 Kanye West said little to the audience for much of his festival closing set. There were no grand guest stars that West brought to the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival in Indio. There was little in the way of special effects. Accompanying musicians were there, but they were off to the side. Arrogant, forthright and disarmingly open, West's songs unfold like mini-monologues, and this was a high-concept concert as one-man-show. As theater, West's Coachella set veered toward tragedy, with a song cycle that began with the artist drunk with power, followed him through heartbreak and concluded with a eulogy. As entertainment, West's set was captivating, a festival performance unlike any other, and one that often showcased the artist and the artist alone on a minimal stage. Though rumors of an all-star set were the talk of Coachella, any guests, be it Rihanna or Jay-Z, would have felt crowded in this set-up. This was not, in short, the kind of set one typically sees from one of the world's biggest stars. West came to Coachella to work, to do away with any sideshows, and instead to get straight down to business. It was a brave statement -- a take-me-or-leave-me-type assertion with a carefully laid-out set list. This was far from playing it safe, as the Strokes had earlier done with a set that was heavy on past hits. Coachella 2011 in photos: 360° Panoramas | The acts and scene | The faces Before West appeared, the audience saw what was largely bare stage, although one with a movable staircase that led to a giant painting that echoed Greek mythology. It wasn't there simply to placate West's ego, as he never really got to close to it. Instead, he emerged from the crowd, significantly away from any of his dancers, and stood alone on a crane that slowly led him to the stage. As for West's back-up dancers, of which there were easily more than 20, they were not used for show-off choreography purposes, and instead served as a Greek chorus, following the star's command, or writhing on the floor from song to song. Sometimes they disappeared from the stage entirely, emerging when the emotions of the songs called for added emphasis. They moved in fear or panic of West during the tense "Power," and later were seen gripping their heads in pain. By the time the set got to "Runaway," West found himself with a group of wayward ballerinas, seemingly caught in some sort of magnetic push and pull from the artist. For the first 20 or so minutes, there was no acknowledgement on West's part that he was headlining Coachella. There was no breaking of character as he went from the plea to find faith that is "Jesus Walks" into the forceful "Can't Tell Me Nothing," in which West masked the vulnerability in bravado. The dancers were gone for the song, and it was just West, stalking the front of the stage and putting the audience on defense. "Monster" went even darker, with West finding redemption only in sex. Indie rock singer/songwriter Justin Vernon, known to many as Bon Iver, stood off in the fog-shrouded distance. If not quite West's conscience, Vernon's verses foreshadowed doom, and the artist's straight, matter-of-fact delivery were not there to pass judgment. The set's most harrowing moments came via a brief block of songs from "808s and Heartbreak," when West finally broke the wall between artist and audience after "Say You Will," a song in which the backdrops appear to capture the sound of a life-support system. West declared this Coachella performance his "most important" since his mother died and said he had dreamed of performing "Power" on the Coachella stage as he was writing it West appears to work as if he's always the underdog and is carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. He said he was humbled to "be able to close the show and see you love me after everything I read and saw on TV said the opposite." He then rewarded the crowd with touches of some of his biggest songs -- "Gold Digger" and "Stronger" among them -- before disappearing under a giant cloth only to reemerge with "Runaway." West stood stage center, and tapped at a snyth. It was only one note, but it was loud, and it echoed, giving the song an added coldness. This wasn't a happy ending, of course, but it was a resolution of sorts, as the artist found peace only in celebrating his faults. Things got chaotic again, though, with "Lost in the World," in which the backup dancers rushed and moved around the stage as if they were dodging city traffic. From there, the set went to "Hey Mama," a love letter written to West's late mother. It's a song full of broken promises, and one that closed the set in a similar manner to which it had begun, with West standing alone. Little else was needed. Photo: Kanye West. Credit: Getty Images Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times Sorry about the lack of photos...for some reason it said the image extension wasn't allowed on this board when I tried to cut and paste the photos from the articles. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Virginia Posted April 23, 2011 Share Posted April 23, 2011 It sounds great; I would have loved to attend if I were younger and lived closer Thanks for the follow up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Strider Posted April 23, 2011 Author Share Posted April 23, 2011 Since I assume you live in Virginia, any chance you are going to Bonaroo, which is a tad closer to your environs? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TypeO Posted April 23, 2011 Share Posted April 23, 2011 THANK YOU VIRGINIA for being the one person to respond to the thread...as big and important a musical event that Coachella has been for some time now, it's puzzling there wasn't more interest on this board. I've seen Coachella threads on many other band message boards, but here, squadoosh. Oh well, no matter...I didn't go anyway. Apologies, Strider - I definitely meant to respond to thank you for the link. I kinda forgot until late Sunday evening, but I managed to catch Duran Duran doing Girls On Film, and a band my 16 year-old son turned me on to that I like - Ratatat. They had a short set but it was definitely enjoyable. Flipped through the 3 channels until almost 1:00 a.m. Eastern, but it was a work night, so I had to give it a break. But definitely, thanks for the awesome link. I only wish I had remembered to check it out earlier. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Strider Posted April 23, 2011 Author Share Posted April 23, 2011 You're welcome TypeO...hey, you seem to be from the South as well...are YOU by any chance going to Bonarroo? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silver Rider Posted April 23, 2011 Share Posted April 23, 2011 I've never attended any event at Coachella. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TypeO Posted April 23, 2011 Share Posted April 23, 2011 You're welcome TypeO...hey, you seem to be from the South as well...are YOU by any chance going to Bonarroo? Ha, I wish. Little too rich for my blood. I still get to a few single shows, but major multi-day events are too expensive, as well as not able to stay gone that long with kids and such. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Strider Posted April 23, 2011 Author Share Posted April 23, 2011 I've never attended any event at Coachella. Is the reason financial? Geographically challenged? Lack of free time? Or an aversion to the bands scheduled? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jahfin Posted April 23, 2011 Share Posted April 23, 2011 THANK YOU VIRGINIA for being the one person to respond to the thread...as big and important a musical event that Coachella has been for some time now, it's puzzling there wasn't more interest on this board. I've seen Coachella threads on many other band message boards, but here, squadoosh. As you've probably noticed there isn't a whole lot of interest in new music on this board and for some it's actually an aversion. Plus, there's the Facebook factor. This board used to be a whole lot more active prior to it's rise in popularity. I like many of the acts playing Coachella but attending was out of the question for me this year. I have a friend that was planning to attend but I haven't heard from her since the festival ended. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silver Rider Posted April 23, 2011 Share Posted April 23, 2011 Is the reason financial? Geographically challenged? Lack of free time? Or an aversion to the bands scheduled? Personal Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spidersandsnakes Posted April 23, 2011 Share Posted April 23, 2011 I'd go to see PJ Harvey, Black Keys and Kings of Leon!!:) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Virginia Posted April 23, 2011 Share Posted April 23, 2011 Since I assume you live in Virginia, any chance you are going to Bonnaroo, which is a tad closer to your environs? I do live in VA. On the one hand, I would love to go; last year's lineup at Bonnaroo was ideal for me, but I didn't seriously look into it. I think I'm probably past their target demographic and wouldn't want to be one of the old folks I did watch several of last year's acts live streaming on the internet. (Wish there had been similar festivals when I was in my 20s; I remember one out in TX in the late 80s, name escapes me, but there was nothing on the east coast). Oh, duh, Lollapallooza!! I must be too old if I'm having these senior moments Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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