In hindsight, I don’t think I was prepared for Coachella at all. We just showed up and went into the concert and then were caught in the wave of a marathon of 50 minute sets. The early shows are best for exploration because they feature little known bands with enough talent that someone deemed them worthy to invite to a festival with such prestige and reputation. The parents of members of The Octopus Project, for example, said the band was stunned and ecstatic when they were called and invited to Coachella. And they rocked the hell out. They were full of energy, performed random acts of gratitude (throwing out stuffed animals and tambourines) and general weirdness (like headbanging in power-outlet masks), and genuinely appreciated the crowd. They suffer slightly from productionism, as reflected in their albums, but I was still impressed and I will be looking for more from these guys. One member even taught herself to play the theremin. A funky instrument, also reportedly used by Fishbone, Jean-Michel Jarre, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Charlie Clouser (Nine Inch Nails), Bill Bailey, Keller Williams, Wolf Parade and Mötley Crüe, works by capacitance between the human body and two sets of antennas. It is also on display at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago and I recognized it from having seen it there last September.

Another early-bird artist worthy of mention is White Rose Movement. Though they don’t appear to be doing much more than your standard brit-rock, they do it well and have a decent amount a variety amongst their songs. And, hey folks, if it worked for the Arctic Monkeys who would abandon the bandwagon?

I’ll just throw out my opinion here and say that you reach the peak of musical quality between 5 and 7pm. These are the hours on both days in which we saw Animal Collective, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, TV on the Radio, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, Wolf Parade, and Gnarls Barkley. After this, we get into the headlining shows, which are great and all if you a) want to be smashed to death by Tool fans, b) enjoy Madonna’s great new-age rock or c) appreciate stardom and popularity and participating in the propagation thereof. I’ll admit that opinion borders on extreme cynicism.

The Animal Collective show started out amazingly with a perfect delivery of Banshee Beat that got everyone worked up by the end. Then they lost about 50% of their audience by playing noisy nonsense for about 5 minutes. Then this guy ran offstage, covered his face in purple goo for the sake of being much purpler, returned and played a rock-out amazing new song that they didn’t even give us the name of. I’m staying tuned. The drums really bring Animal Collective’s sound together. Noise without a thread of consistency to follow throughout the song is boring unless you think it makes some sense. You’ll only think it makes sense if your brain is also convinced that blades of grass are arranged according to a very slight color gradient, or else numbered in very tiny writing near the root. Secrets of the universe veiled by sobriety. Animal Collective lost me again until ‘We, Tigers,’ which is one of their noisier ‘real’ songs and also their last.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah was PACKED. Overflowing. I wasn’t too surprised at their popularity, except that their last song and most ridiculous, ‘Clap Your Hands,’ was the most popular with the whole tent singing along and, indeed, clapping. Pitchfork soundly denounced this song and I viewed the clapping as a subtle protest of this organization’s occasional over-self-importance. Clap Your Hands also played several new songs, including one titled ‘Satan’ that I found to be irresistibly loveable.

TV on the Radio promptly followed Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and played a very impressive show, including some incredible new songs, which have been hinted at on vdov before (Rt. Rev.). They play very well live and I highly recommend catching one of their shows if possible.

This was the first day and protesting the price of water (0.5L=$2), and knowing full-well that leaving the tent would mean that I might never see the stage again, I tried to wait out Ladytron to see Cat Power with Richmond. So I started feeling nauseous and fell twice on my way out of the tent trying to stay conscious. People are really nice and helped me get out, gave me water, and asked me what I’d taken. Ha. I’m just an idiot, actually and probably should eat and drink when in the middle of the desert and standing and dancing in a crowd in the sun for 5 hours straight. So I spent the next half-hour in the medical tent and missed some stuff.

But you should go read the Hollencomium Music Review of Coachella, because Richmond saw some different bands than I did and has a slightly different perspective at times (e.g. at one point my perspective was the ground between my knees).

The only other notable event of the day was that I finally got to see Atmosphere perform (though I was happy to be sitting in the back, in the dark, with lots of water). They are just incredibly talented and improvised a lot of the show—which, to me, said “we’re not just reciting our albums,” and I appreciated that.

Day 2 was much better planned and I spent about $20 staying hydrated (they didn’t allow you to bring your own water in. Is this legal?) There was a nice block of excellent music in day 2: Wolf Parade and Gnarls Barkley in particular. Wolf Parade blew the crowd away, despite technical problems that shortened their show by about ½ hour. Maybe they just put 1 hour worth of energy and effort into a half-hour time slot, but it was incredible. Also they’re insane, after ‘I am my Father’s Son’: “so all those immigrants you guys are going to deport? You can just send ‘em up to Canada. We’ve got plenty of room.” And after ‘This Heart’s on Fire’: “Coachella means people. And we are the people eaters. We eat Coachella.” Excellent, guys.

Cee-lo gets up on stage dressed as a Lion to apologize that Gnarls Barkley wasn’t going to be able to make it and, instead, Mean Ol’ Lion and the Hearts would be covering some of the songs from Gnarls Barkley’s new album. Then they bombed straight into ‘Go Go Gadget Gospel’ and even itty bitty ants were tapping their itty bitty toes (I watched). This was their best-performed song. Oh, by the way, they had an entire band. They had a string section dressed as the flying monkeys, two Dorothys and two Scarecrows singing back-up, two Wicked Witch guitarists, Cee-lo as the ‘Mean Ol’ Lion,’ and Danger Mouse as the Tin Man–without a doubt the best performance of the weekend. But I think they’re tired of ‘Crazy.’ The crowd wanted Crazy, they had signs everywhere announcing “Gnarls Barkley is Crazy,” but Crazy was a huge let-down. The bassline, which is the really the song’s only claim to fame, was barely audible, and the tempo was about ¾ what it should have been. Still, Cee-lo is a very intriguing performer, and the whole ensemble was a testament to the group’s desire to be all about their fans. I really respect this approach and think that that’s the kind of thinking that is going to get you places and bring all of your fans with you, no matter how much hyped-up mass-popularity you build or bandwagon fans you collect along the way.

There is so much more I could cover, but by this point you’re probably about as exhausted from this firehose review as I was during the Ladytron set and to avoid any medical liability I might be building, I will stop here and just tell you that Coachella is overpriced, but in the end worth the $10/hr you’ll pay in attending. If you’ve got the cash, and are in California, it is a great gathering of artists and strange people in a very interesting carnival-style venue. I would go again, given the opportunity. I should also say that this is a pretty poor sampling of the 300 pictures I took at the concert. I put some of the better ones up in my gallery (here).