Sunday, April 29, 2007

Coachella: Day 1

Or as I like to call it, Revenge of the Parking Lot... but we'll get to that later.

Coachella can be overwhelming to the senses. Hundreds of bands, tens of thousands of people, art displays, the sweet smell of pot, excruciating heat, and of course, these guys:



I started off the day with The Noisettes, which heated things up in the Mojave tent. I stood motionless watching the show in the shade, but sweat was still dripping off my body from every pour. Good set.

I took a seat in the Gobi tent to watch part of the Comedians of Comedy show. The headliners, Patton Oswald and Brian Pusehn, were great. I was amazed at how many people turned out for this portion of the festival. Maybe it was a chance to sit in the shade.





I caught the first part of Tilly and the Wall.







They are a fun band to see live, and I wish I would have stayed longer instead of heading over to...

Of Montreal. A great band, but I feel they are better sounding on CD than live.





Back to Gobi for Amy Winehouse's show. Wow, she's a spunky little performer. Fantastic voice too.






Ran over to the Outdoor Theatre so I could get a good spot for Peaches. Watched the second half of Stephen Marley and Jr. Gong while I waited. They put on some killer reggae.



Peaches was likely the most spirited show of the day, to put it lightly. Ron Jeremy did the intro:



Jon left for the Jesus & Mary Chain show after two songs. I wanted to go with him, but since I had previously seen them at Lollapalooza, I decided to stay for the Peaches show. While I regretted missing Scarlett Johansson helping out with Just Like Honey, I at least got to see Jessica Alba watching Peaches from the side.





Wow - standing next to Jessica, Peaches looks like she got hit by a cement truck.

Here are a few pictures I snapped from the crowd. This band is not for everyone.






From there I checked out Peeping Tom who wasn't really doing it for me, so I wandered over to Brazilian Girls.



They weren't as good as I hoped either, so I caught up with Jon to watch Sonic Youth. The time I saw them at Lollapalooza was so much better than tonight. They played lesser known songs and went off into their trademark distortion jams.

We ended the night with Bjork, who is always entertaining, except that she played more of her recent stuff which I am less familiar with, so I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would. We left before she ended, hoping to get a jump on the traffic.
Boy were we mistaken. It took 3 hours to leave the parking area. We moved half an row in two hours. It was a total nightmare. Bed sometime after 3:00 am.

Jon has a better camera and has taken some awesome photos. When he gets them uploaded, I'll post some on my blog. I mixed in a few shots from across the web above. If it's really clear and close up, odds are it's not my handiwork.

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