Damn, it’s over already! (Videos, as last year, random youtubes).
Friday
We drove from Will’s house in Culver City, leaving mid-morning. We got stuck in traffic in Indio for at least an hour due to parking lots overflowing and at least one generally moronic parking attendant who misdirected us. Set up camp, got into the festival. (They allowed carry-in water this year, good policy change!) We spent the first hour or so just wondering around, checking out the art and the layout.
Bands
Slightly Stoopid - No memory of them, except that I thought the name fit pretty well.
The Breeders - they were fun. They screwed up a couple of times and threw sarcastic comments at each other. Definitely rocked it!
Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip - British hip-hop act. Generally cool, but the English accent just doesn’t work as well for rap, for some reason. They gave out hand-held fans with a large picture of Scroobius Pip’s beard on them, and at one point got the audience to hold them up in front of their faces to comedic effect.
Vampire Weekend - Another memory black hole. Did it happen?!
Diplo - Totally rocked the dance tent. At times psychedelic, at times old school rave. Will definitely catch him when next in SF.
Aphex Twin - Holy shit this guy is weird. Moments of genius, moments of total insanity. Gotta love him.
The Verve - “Drugs Don’t Work” and “Bittersweet Symphony” obvious standouts. Some of the album songs were kind of filler, but Ashcroft can sing like few others, and their lead guitarist (whoever) is awesome. So, good show!
Fatboy Slim - Meh.
Jack Johnson - Meh.
Saturday
Goddammit it gets hot there in the morning. At 7:30 it was too hot to lie around anymore so I got up and grabbed coffee, smoothies, ice. Next year for sure I am getting a condo nearby. Apparently (I was out cold) after Prince, a group of pumped up kids got 6 garbage cans and marched drumming on them through the campsite shouting “wake up, wake up, wake up”. Police followed them but didn’t intervene.
Bands
Uffie (featuring DJ Mehdi) - Will wanted to see her out of morbid curiousity. She was fucking awful. Her dancers were a trio of crotch holding 15 year old black guys, who were ten times more interesting that she was.
Dredg - Listened to their set while eating in the non-American food area. Good rocking stuff.
MGMT - I really hate the Mojave tent. It stinks, the sound sucks towards the back of the tent (where we were,) and the lighting is terrible during the day. They did a decent job, but it wasn’t as good as I was expecting.
Cafe Tacuba - A Mexican rock band. I loved them! (As did the rest of the crowd.)
Dwight Yokum - Teresa and Will wanted to see him, so I tagged along. Some classic C&W, not totally my style, but definitely performed well.
Kraftwerk - Such an influential band; they played all of the classics. Great video show too. At one point they went offstage, and 4 robots took their places at the synth/laptop/stands. I think the robots were more animated than the band. Awesome.
Portishead - OMFG! Absolute no doubt about it festival highlight for me.
Prince - I had no idea this guy was such a good musician. I couldn’t help but notice the Jehovah’s Witness inspired lyrics that he dropped in here and there. Also, he was a bit of a pain in the ass in repeatedly asking the crowd to give him “energy” (i.e. to keep clapping; his set ran over 2 hours, and the crowd seemed tired, but whatever). Those complaints aside, unmissable. I think his cover of Creep was the standout.
Sunday
Was going to brave the shower, but the line was already 45 minutes at 8am. Oh well, thank TFSM for baby wipes. Teresa’s feet came out in a rash, apparently (according to the first aid guy) due to some pesticides that had been used in the camp site. Ugh. Another reason not to camp.
Bands
Grand Ole Party - OK.
Perry Farrell - this guy has taken far too many drugs.
Manchester Orchestra - super loud, super rockin’. My eyeballs were vibrating from the bass.
Spiritualized - They had sound problems and kept stopping during the first two songs, so we bailed and went to…
Danny Tenaglia - I remember DT from his gay-house show on Radio 1 in the UK back in the late 90s. He’s 10x better live/now. Definitely will catch him when he’s touring again.
Modeselektor - Caught the start of his set. Good stuff!
Roger Waters - The Big Event. I caught the first half hour. The video/pyro/light show were spectacular; the surround sound effects were cool. But the whole show was totally un-spontaneous, so I bailed and caught the last song by…
Murs - who was pretty cool…
Chromeo - by freakish coincidence I bumped into Will behind Sahara tent, and we hung out for the first half of this set. But we were both dead on our feet by this time, so we skipped on Justice and bailed.