04.23
Deadmau5 at Coachella. Source: LATimes
LA Times 2010 Coachella Photo Gallery: Click Here.
After taking a few days to recover I figure it’s time to post my thoughts and recollections of Coachella. A recap of my favorite performances, with youtube proof:
Muse
These guys totally blew the top off of Saturday. Granted all the headliners got huge crowds and energy which raised the level of their performance even more, Muse just rocked it! From beginning to end they blew through all their classics and popular new songs including favorites such as Uprising, Hysteria, Time is Running Out, and Stockholm Syndrome. There was a little US national anthem guitar solo action thrown in for good measure as well as plenty of jumping around, thrashing, and rocking out by the band members. Muse is a band that sounds a lot more peaceful on record than they do live, which is always a good thing. They added a lot of solos and energy to all of their songs that made them very enjoyable and not just re-creations of album work.
Muse was definitely the highlight of Saturday night, but only 40 minutes after came on the man, the legend…
Tiesto
Tiesto came on promptly at 11:40 PM, starting off with his track Kaleidoscope with Jonsi. It all went nuts after the first beat dropped about 5 minutes later. Tiesto played 90% of his own tracks, mostly from the Kaleidoscope album – Escape Me, Feel it In My Bones, etc. He also played one of my favorite new remixes of his – The Editors – Papillon; that was a pleasure to hear booming through those huge speakers. Tiesto also dropped Calvin Harris’s Weekend and his remix of I’m not Alone, as well as Tiesto’s new track with Diplo – Come On. Overall, Tiesto’s set wasn’t vastly different from what he played at The Shrine in November, just a condensed version. As a big Tiesto fan, I was somewhat disappointed that he didn’t get more creative with his set, but of course I can understand his point of view. If you are a DJ who is about to play to thousands of people that may not have heard your music before, you of course want to play mostly your own new album tracks, like most other bands at the festival did. And thousands of people there were – I later found out that the outside stage next to the main stage was also full of Tiesto listeners who couldn’t get to the main stage but watched the video and heard the sound from the next stage over. That must feel good for a person who mixes CDs of his own music together for a living! One track that I was REALLY hoping Tiesto would play was his remix of Muse’s Resistance, but I guess he didn’t feel it was appropriate. He went out with Adagio for Strings followed by the amazing and intense Feel it On the Floor Dub Mix (seems he ended Miami’s Ultra that way as well). Tiesto also got on the microphone a couple of times which, as I always say, is a great thing for a DJ to do (as compared to 9 hours of Armin van Buuren at TAO without a single mic shout-out).
Gorillaz
I have been a huge Gorillaz fan since high school – I still have two of their posters on my wall back home. This live performance simply blew me away. It was Sunday night, the last night, and everyone was definitely coming down from the epic debauchery of the entire weekend. The best way to end that was Gorillaz – a hip-hop fueled, calm yet inspirational performance with plenty of guest stars (no Del though!) and musical breakdowns. Most tracks played were off of the Plastic Beach album but a few Demon Days tracks were featured as well as the iconic first Gorillaz hit – Clint Eastwood. All of the band members were dressed up like Sailors and Damon Albarn sang and danced his heart out.
Thom Yorke
After playing the first track, Thom Yorke got on the mic: “Hi, we’re called Atoms for Peace, and we’re about to play the entire Eraser album”. And they did. The performance was vastly different from the album itself, which was produced by Yorke on his laptop. The live version features Flea on bass and Thom on guitar, so the audience was treated to plenty of epic solos and intense buildups as the band went through every track on the album. Favorites included a fantastic Flea solo during Harrowdown Hill and a beautiful lulling feeling during Cymbal Rush. The visuals were great, the crowd sang along, and Thom danced as if he had some sort of muscle disorder. Just what I expected! As always, Thom did an encore and this featured an acoustic version of Airbag and Everything in Its Right Place. Definitely appreciated by this huge Radiohead fan. Hoping for a summer tour!
Side note: Thom’s mic was continuously overpowered by the noise of the crowd – this did not happen at any of the other performances that I saw. The power of Radiohead 
great solo at ~4 min mark of this video
Other Notables
Other notables included Jay-Z on Friday, whose entire set I did not hear. He had a huge live band carrying the energy through most of his songs, and although Memphis Bleek was on stage to back Jay up, the man did actually sing most of his songs on his own. This is compared to other rappers who need 5 other guys on stage to finish each lyric. As a live rap performance, it was all it could be and although I missed Beyonce coming on stage later (youtube), I still enjoyed it.
I also really liked the music of Phoenix and Vampire Weekend but do not know much about either band so thanks to Coachella I will now be checking out more of their music!
As far as Deadmau5, I heard from a lot of people that his set was great. Unfortunately, my friends and I were in the back of the stage where the sound was bad because it was echoing off the front, so I didn’t enjoy the music as much as I could have. However his stage setup was awesome, and his mask glowed all sorts of different colors. I’m sure wearing it was a pain but it was still awesome to see.
It's 6PM and Dirty South is rockin the Sahara Tent Source: Tweetphoto
Dirty South and Wolfgang Gartner both threw down floor shattering sets in the Sahara tent, getting everybody moving during the day, but I would have to say my favorite Sahara performance was Kaskade. It was my first time seeing him play live and during his set there were about 15 beach balls bouncing around the tent and lights going off everywhere. The energy was high and the music was awesome – Kaskade’s trancy house style really matched the feel of Coachella – chilled out in the desert mixed with intense beats.
The Vibes
And lastly, I just want to touch on the aura and vibes of Coachella. They were good. Oh so good.
Note: I am mostly comparing these to massive events in Los Angeles such as EDC or TAO. Compared to these, besides the variety of music, the crowd took on a vastly different feel. There were considerably less people visibly messed up on drugs. Sure, there was certainly drug use going on but it wasn’t as celebrated and out there like it is at raves. People weren’t just passing out left and right, asking you for more drugs, or anything like that. Again, to the naked eye, there wasn’t much shady business or bad decision making going on. Most people kept to themselves and did their own thing – and that is what I like. At festivals people are sure to do things I wouldn’t, but if it doesn’t affect me I’m not going to protest it too much.
Furthermore, thanks to the variety of the music, there were a lot of different people in there. Instead of different kinds of ravers, there were ravers, punks, goths, europeans, etc. all coming together and appreciating different music together. For main stage performances – the crowd between Muse and Tiesto basically switched out 100% and all these other different people came out to enjoy some music. That is the beauty of Coachella – thousands of people from all over coming to enjoy a variety of music and each other.
One downside of Coachella was the organization. You thought standing in lives at raves was bad – I would say this was considerably worse. First off, there was a serious lack of police presence on the streets, so huge lines of traffic were formed just because of one silly red light or stop sign that was holding everyone back (and this is the middle of the desert… you gotta drive). Furthermore, the parking situation wasn’t always perfect – it took us about 2 hours to get out of the parking lot the second day, and that was after they let us into said lot after it was basically full. We barely found a spot. As some people may know, the first day the organizers ran out of wristbands and the ticket scanners were broken. So after sitting in traffic for a couple of hours, some festival-goers were treated to a nice 2 hour line in the sun because of a lack of preparation.
That was essentially the only downside to the whole thing. Water was 2 bucks, food was kind of expensive but what can you expect, and everything else was awesome!
My friends and I have already decided to go back next year and if reading this review either made you feel the same or made you want to go for the first time… see you in the desert in 2011!!!
© 2010, M Silin. All rights reserved.