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.
• Stars - OK.
• Gogol Bordello - Amazingly good. Hungarian genre defying band. All round awesome!
  

• 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.
  

All in all, awesome.

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I’ve recently finished reading Monsters and Magical Sticks by Steven Heller, which has some intriguing ideas in it about psychology, hypnotism, and the way that our brains work. (The editing is a little patchy, like some other New Falcon titles that I’ve read in the past, e.g. Christopher Hyatt books, so there are some really annoying punctuation and grammar goofs…although some of those are I’m sure intentional, as Heller warns at the beginning that he’s going to screw with your head.) A couple of interesting thoughts:

a) The subtitle is “There is no such thing as hypnosis”, which is a phrase that Heller repeats throughout the book. I wasn’t sure what he meant by this until I hit this passage:

“It is my belief that all presenting problems and symptoms are really metaphors that contain a story about what the problem really is. It is, therefore, the responsibility of the therapist to create metaphors that contain a story that contains the (possible) solutions. The metaphor is the message…Hypnosis is, in and of itself, a metaphor inside a metaphor…”

This hit home while watching Maybe Logic, the RAW documentary, in which Wilson hammered on the Reality Tunnel concept for a while, which is really just a specific repackaging of Korzybski’s phrase “the map is not the territory” — we perceive what is real, but between the moment of raw perception to the time that the signals reach our conscious brain (if they do), there are layers and layers of unconscious systems wrapping and simplifying the “inputs” to meet our preconceived frameworks of how the world should work; in other words, when the perception finally registers in consciousness, it is packaged as a metaphor. Hypnosis therefore is a way of bypassing consciousness, and using metaphor to explore and rearrange those subsystems, but it is in itself a metaphor, since it’s just another belief system (albeit one that seems fairly consistent).

Two other quotes related to this:

The first is Wilson, from an essay in Email to the Universe:

“All words transmitted as sonic or visual signals — sound waves or light waves — rapidly become photons, electrons, neurotransmitters, hormones, colloidal reactions, reflex arcs, conditioned or imprinted “frames”, physiological responses, etc. as they impact upon the total synergetic organism.”

The second from the wikipedia article on Erickson:

“Erickson believed that the unconscious mind was always listening, and that, whether or not the patient was in trance, suggestions could be made which would have a hypnotic influence, as long as those suggestions found some resonance at the unconscious level. The patient can be aware of this, or she can be completely oblivious that something is happening.”

b) Another set of ideas worth mentioning are from his presentation of systems. Essentially at any given moment, we have a primary input system, and a primary output system.

The “input” system is active at the interface between the unconscious and conscious (which, to be clear, are not directly equivalent to Freud/Jung’s concepts), and is primarily visual, auditory or kinesthetic. If it’s visual, you are thinking in (creating, or retrieving) pictures; when you imagine something or attempt to retrieve a memory, your eyes will tend to look upwards (to the left for retrieval, or to the right for imagination). If it’s auditory, you are thinking in words and sounds - an inner voice may be active, you may be hearing conversation as it happened, or as you imagine it to happen, you may be hearing music, etc etc; typically when retrieving memories in this system, you look down and to the left. If it’s kinesthetic, you are thinking in feelings; perhaps you are deeply feeling physical sensations, perhaps you are feeling emotion, perhaps you are remembering feeling one of the above. Retrieving memories kinesthetically, you typically look down and to the right, and often memories or thoughts in this system will cause sympathetic physical feedback, e.g. in the posture, facial expression, etc.

The “output” system is about how your conscious thoughts are expressed to the outside world. This can be relatively literal: e.g. if you’re drawing, typically you’re in your visual output system; if you’re singing or making music, your output system is auditory; dancing or gesturing, you’re utilizing your kinesthetic output system. But less obviously it expresses itself in how you verbalize your thoughts. If your primary conscious system currently is visual, you’ll describe how things look (”the beach was beautiful, the golden sand against the deep blue of the ocean”,) and use language like “I see” and “look”. If it’s kinesthetic, you will describe how things feel (”the beach was beautiful, the clear air and the warmth of the sun on my skin”,) talk about sensations, and use language like “I feel”, “get a grip”, etc. Finally, if it’s auditory, you will be talking about how things sound (”the beach was beautiful, the crash of the waves was so relaxing”,) be very wordy in your descriptions, and use language like “that sounds like”, “I hear you”, etc.

Typically (Heller says) a well adjusted person will be using all of the systems every day, as the situation demands, but not unoften people will encounter a problem in one of the systems and either avoid using it, or get stuck in it. These are pretty fundamental to Heller’s methods, his primary applications being gaining rapport with his clients (he’s a working hypnotherapist), and deciding how to present the metaphors needed to explore the unconscious processes.

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Last night, I watched David Lynch’s Dune. I like Lynch’s movies, and I loved the book (at least I did, when I read it 15 or so years ago), so I was doubly disappointed that the film turned into cheesy B movie somewhere in the first 1/2 hour. The plot was good; unfortunately the acting, dialog, effects, pacing, editing and music weren’t. However, there is one peach of a quote in the movie, which is my entire reason for writing this short review. Here it is:

A person needs new experiences. They jar something deep inside, allowing him to grow. Without change, something inside us sleeps, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.

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We came, we saw, we rocked.

Thursday

Arrived at site 9PMish. Parked. Saw huge line at registration, and security checking bags as they were going in, so we made a fairly minimal trip the first time through with just the tent and sleeping bags, and then brought in the rest of our stuff via a side entrance, where the guy was only arbitrarily checking coolers (the person ahead of us in line said that his contained only “cheese and shit”, and was waved through, albeit with vocalized skepticism). Camp site was buzzing; was awake most of the night as there was a drummers circle going full tilt until 4:30AM 50 yards from our tent.

Friday

Woke up at 7:30AM. The tent was 85F inside. Dripping with sweat. Headache. Met tent neighbors, combined camps, and hung out with them all morning drinking coffee, playing cards and smoking (one of the guys was or had been on the NZ Olympic ski team). Heat was approx 105F by midday. Shortly after lunch, went to festival entrance, and waited on line for security check. (Security was annoying and arbitrary; they did a full bag search and pat down; they turfed out a couple bags of trail mix Adrian had on him; threw out pens; let already opened water bottles in; did not check shoes.) Took 1/2 an hour to get through the line (the other two days were a little quicker.)

Went to the dance tent first and caught the start of Terry Mullan’s set; good tunes, but too hot to dance. Walked to the main stage, and listened to some Flosstradamus, who were shit (wigger Black Eyed Peas wannabes, even worse than it sounds.) Then Silversun Pickups, who were great, and Arctic Monkeys, who lacked a little in stage presence but were exceptionally tight and kept the crowd moving.

Got something to eat, and then saw Felix Da Housecat back to back with Benny Benassi in Sahara. Felix was awesome, Benny was mediocre. Quick run for water, and then back for Faithless, who were my personal festival highlight.

Tripped out a little on the Tesla coil sculpture on the way over to the main stage to see Bjork, and then fell asleep listening to her, while sitting on the lawn.

Walked back to tent, and passed out.

Saturday

More of the same in terms of heat, and hanging out with campmates all morning. Line for the showers was ridiculous so I made do with a sink rinse and a baby wipe bath. Saw Steve Aoki (wacky but interesting) and DJ Heather (pretty bad) in the dance tent. Bailed the tent, and saw Jack’s Mannequin on the second stage (solid California rock), and then the first half of Regina Spektor’s set (not my genre, but captivating). Back to the dance tent for MSTRKRFT (lame music, but they know how to throw a party).

To the main stage for Kings of Leon who were great (tight, good tunes, musically interesting, rocked the crowd), back to the dance tent for Justice, who were a little strange but entertaining.

Back to the main stage (tons of walking on Sat) for the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, who I thought were disappointing (phoned home most of their numbers, and only let loose and genuinely rocked for about 5 minutes total). Finally, down to the front for Tiesto, who took forever to come on stage due to technical difficulties with the giant screen/curtain at the back of the stage, kicked off with an impressive video intro, and then produced a competent, energetic, but overall uninteresting DJ mix.

Sunday

First band of the day we caught was Anathallo at the Outdoor Theater, who had an interesting combination of musicians, and played a good set.

Next was DJ Daytona, who was energetic, entertained the crowd, and spun some good tunes, and Trent Cantrelle, who was playing some good records - but we were hungry and bailed. Then to the main stage for Explosions in the Sky, who remind me a lot of Mogwai, and were my second favorite show at the festival.

Back to the dance tent for the rest of the evening for Soulwax (not bad), Richie Hawtin (aka Plastikman, who played an amazing minimal techno live set to an initially skeptical but in the end enthusiastic crowd), Paul van Dyk (the best DJ set at Coachella, blew the roof off), Happy Mondays (Shaun was fucked up and apologetic), and finally Infected Mushroom (who were a lot rockier than their studio records, and hyper-energetic.)

Monday

Woke up to discover that Adrian’s backback, which had my car keys in it, had been stolen from outside the tent where he’d left it overnight. (Doh.) Waited in the parking lot under a makeshift canopy until 1PM for the locksmith that the insurance company sent out to arrive, and then drove home by the scenic route.

Coachella == awesome

This was my first of many Coachellas to come. A new personal annual tradition is born. (The full set of - mostly Adrian’s - photos are here; also, the vids above are not ours, but just representative ones snagged from youtube. If anybody comes across Richie Hawtin vids, please post the link in the comments below).

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I just scored a 32″ computer monitor for free, off freecycle. That’s correct, 32″. It does have the caveat that it only runs at maximum resolution of 800×600, but as part of a triple-head rig it works exceptionally well as the monitor for playing movies on (standard DVD after all is only 720 pixels high). I did a little research on the model, and it turns out to have been a mid-nineties product released by Gateway; the concept was that it was both a TV AND the monitor for your computer (I guess the PC came with a tv tuner card). Because of the low resolution, it really doesn’t work that well as the main monitor on a computer, however, and they now have little to no market value (I saw one on ebay for $25.)

So, my message to you is: if you watch videos on your computer, and can summon up the geekitude necessary to get a dual or triple head setup operational, you need one of these. Set up RSS reader on a craigslist search; set up an agent on ebay; do whatever is necessary.

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