What happens at Coachella stays at Coachella

Tim and Travis already gave their takes on Coachella, so let me add some of my words to the mix. You can find Gazebo's best of list here, although I beg to differ on the 'best synth' band (nobody beats DM on that, in my mind).

First, I should point out that I've never gone to any music festivals before, and part of my reason for going was to experience this whole thing. (The fact that Depeche Mode was playing was key. I'm a bit of a fanatic, as anybody who has noticed the occasional spikes of DM-related entries should know. They're my favorite musical artist by a very large margin.)

I am exhausted from lack of sleep, and when pictures get posted, you'll notice that every picture that includes me (to my knowledge) has me sprawled out on the floor in some manner. Also, my throat is stilling burning from all the shit that was smoked in my vicinity. Physically, that being around that stuff just makes me feel awful, and I really wish it were possible to have a festival like this without it. I think my body is far less tolerant of stuff like that than most. During the Tool concert (the last act on day two), I had multiple very unpleasant retching and coughing spasms (and this was not caused by their music, which is awful).

OK, so here are some of my impressions and moments, although I don't remember all the band names or anything:


Day 1

On getting out of the car, among the first thing I noticed was the horse smell and that one of the cars near us in the traffic-jam stretch run of the drive up was parked near us. (This was not the van full of women that seemed to be checking us out on the way up. Sadly, I never even got more than a one-second glance at that car because I was oblivious until it was too late.)

Getting in was very easy for me. I opened up my small backpack in advance (security appreciates this, I think). The guy started to look through my backpack, saw my math journal, and then just said I could go in because at that point it was clear that I was completely harmless. (Go me!)

I heard some bands in the earlly afternoon while waiting for certain bands that were playing at night. Nothing really created a big impression on me in either direction.

I made it a point to go see Ladytron, because their synth-goth style appeals to me. (Most of my favorites bands are synth, so I'm always very happy to find a new one.) While I like some of their songs quites a bit (especially Beauty*2, which they didn't play, and Destroy Everything You Touch, which they didn't play until after I was gone), I found their show to be on the disappointing side. The songs sounded good, but based on where we were in the tent, I couldn't make out many of the words and different songs sounded too similar too each other without having good enough acoustics to pick out further details. (When listening to their album tracks, I do not find their songs to be too similar to each other.) We left the tent because the drugs were killing our ability to breathe (or at least, the ability of Tim and I to breathe). we were going to stay just outside the tent to continue listening (in the hopes of hearing the two songs above, at least for me), but it was necessary to fulfill a prior commitment to meet up at a certain time, so the end of the performance had to be sacrificed.

We went over to see Franz Ferdinand, who I was curious to hear because I had seen critics compare them to New Order (a band I really like). I was not impressed. The comparison was assinine, and the people with me were wondering why a critic would suggest that anyway. I found the comment I had in mind (which was the editorial review of Waiting for the Siren's Call on Amazon.com), which actually states the weaker statement that FF was influenced by New Order (although I couldn't tell based on my listening). At some point, I was really tired and I sprawled on the ground for a bit and almost fell asleep. (I would have except people shifting forward or backward occasionally bumped me.)

After that was Depeche Mode, which is the band I paid my money to see. I saw them in November, and the play list was thankfully a bit difference---sadly, Strangelove, It's No Good, and People are People were still no-shows. They played a nice extended version of World in My Eyes, but the highlight of their show was a stripped-down version of "Shake the Disease," which to my understanding they don't play live all that often anymore. (They have many better-known songs that typically get played, although "In Your Room" and "Photographic" very surprisingly showed up in Saturday's concert.) Anyway, "Shake the Diesase" is a canonical DM song that is extremely dark but musically upbeat. It is definitely one of their better songs and (in particular) one with which I identify very, very much. (I have thought occasionally about which songs would go on my life's soundtrack, in which I am selecting tracks based on appropriateness rather than sheer awesomeness, though there is certainly some correlation involved.) "Shake the Disease" holds a prominent place on that soundtrack, and actually might be the only DM song on that soundtrack (I need to sort this out more thoroughly at some point). Anyway, the version DM played at Coachella was a stripped-down version (with Martin Gore singing it on his own and the synthesizer basically being used just as a piano) that turned the entire upbeat song into a ballad. I like the original version better, but hearing this song played in this manner was simply wonderful and was the song I enjoyed the most at the show. This was the first song in the encore, by the way.

During DM, Cat (a postdoc from applied math) was totally jamming after having previously stood stoically the entire day. I knew he was a DM fanatic just like me, but I don't show my fanaticism with dancing gyrations the way he did. I tend to not be demonstrative with my body motions. Also, we had a running conversation for each song in which we were naming them based on the first note. (Remember the show "Name that Tune?")

After DM, we walked over to see some of Daft Punk. It sounded pretty cool and I recognized some of it at some level.


Day 2

Getting in was comparably easy to day 1. This time, the security guy did ask me to open a second section of my bag (the first day, they checked a small part of the first of three sections). They never even got to the math journal in the first section because this time they stopped at the D & D novel. In the second section, they saw the unlabeled top part of headache medicine (but didn't bother to check it) and waved me in. (I kept all of the dozens and dozens of pens that I have in my backpack because unlike Gazebo, I exude innocence).

I had gotten a bit dehydrated on the first day, so I decided to buy frozen strawberry lemonade at the beginning this time while Travis was buying a t-shirt. (I heard a cover of Alphaville's "Forever Young" during this time, though I only caught it starting from the middle. The group playing it didn't use the requisite emotion of that song, but I appreciated it nonetheless. I went with Travis and his friend Julianne to see Mates of State for a little while. (At this point, my wonderful straight-faced 'blood smoothie' comment from the drive up that day became just slightly more apt than I would have liked because the strawberry lemonade made the part of my mouth that was already sore from Day 1's frozen strawberry lemonade bleed just a bit.) They were ok, but when Tim came, I decided his plan of walking around to see what was up was a better one. I had enjoyed doing that the day before, and Coachella is a great place to people watch (although it's not as good as Dragon*Con, in part because most of the women at Coachella weren't wearing fairy wings). As Gazebo points out, there are also a lot of amusing t-shirts.

After chilling a bit, we found one of the shade tents where we could hear one of the bands a bit (and we later could hear some Hassidic reggae, which was amusing. We crashed for a good hour and a half, and I know that I lost conciousness for at least a short while. There is a nice picture of the two of us sprawled on the ground. (Actually, I'm pretty sure I am sprawled on the ground in some fashion or another in every picture that includes me.)

Just before the chilling, Tim and I stayed for a couple songs in a tent in which a supposedly famous DJ was spinning. I was drawn to it by a new wavy song, and there was lots of shade there. The song after that wasn't so good, so we left. While we were there, the girl in front of me was apparently surreptitiously reading my t-shirt ("Thank God I'm an Atheist"), which IMO was one of the best ironic shirts at Coachella. I never got to see her face and I only found out about this a while later after Tim told me. Sometimes it's too bad that I my perceptive abilities are so small and that I don't notice these things. Another time, I did catch a couple girls commenting on my shirt, but I was preoccupied trying to find the pimp hat (more on that later) and I kept my focus. (It's worth remarking, by the way, that most of the few times I've actually randomly met girls are because they were intrigued by the shirt I was wearing and they went up to me to ask me about it.)

Then we went to Bloc Party, during which I sat and absorbed and didn't do much else. It was fine but not my thing.

After that, we say the first few songs of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. The first song sounded cool but the other three I hear were kind of blah. One thing for which I will give this band a lot of credit, however, is for the tremendous energy they showed. The lead singer and drummer were smiling the whole time, and it was clear that they enjoyed what they were doing. (In stark contrast, it wasn't clear to me that Ladytron wanted to be there. Maybe they were just doing their goth thing, but I would have rather seen more emotion in them live setting.) This is something that I very much appreciated, even though the music wasn't really my thing for the most part. I was partially loathe to leave because I exchanged a look with some girl (or at least that's what it may have seemed to be), but the promise of preferable music beckoned. (I need to do something about my priorities. I keep taking the wrong fork in the road...)

We moved on to Seu Jorge at that point. I listened to some of their stuff (which sounded pretty cool, but sadly didn't include any of the Bowie covers from The Life Aquatic) before making the mistake of going to the Madonna tent. I like Madonna's music a lot, but she gets the lameness award for the two days. She was over 20 minutes late and only played 6 songs before finishing a bit early. Lame! The songs she deigned to perform were good (and she did a good job when she bothered to do a job at all), although 4/6 were from the current album. I wish I had stayed for the rest of Seu Jorge. She did do well when she performed, but other artists were playing for the allotted time or even longer. Other artists made up for any delays at the beginning of their set. And other arists didn't wait until the crowd reaction was sufficiently to their tastes before they decided it was worth going on stage---they were delayed for legitimate reasons. (For example, Tool got delayed for technical reasons, and they made up for the delay with going past the scheduled ending time with more of their crappy music. At least they fulfilled their part of the bargain!)

After Madonna, we met up at the Tesla Coil for Massive Attack. I missed some small number of songs at the beginning, but I enjoyed what I did hear.

Then there was the 15-20 minute (which became longer because of the delay) for Tool, who suck ass as musicians. Five of us completely sprawled on the ground during the break, and we blocked a ton of people behind us from being able to pass us. Major coolness points for us! There are pictures of our barricade, which should get posted at some point. Tim's comment about us sitting before it became cool was classy, and I amused some people with my limbo stick comment as some people did actually attempt to hurdle over us.

When the band started, the lead singer displayed a wonderfully witty sense of humor, and I found myself waiting for the end of each song to hear more of his snarky remarks. Sadly, after a couple songs, he stopped talking. I mostly sat down during Tool, but I kept having to shift around to let people move through. I tried standing, but by this point all the shit being smoked was making me dreadfully sick and it smelled much worse when I was standing up. By the way, at some point, the small bit of room we had got increased because of a handicapped person that needed to go through. (A while later, I made a couple insensitive but amusing comments about getting more space this way. As Tim mentioned, I'm a sweetheart.)


OK, so here are some of my concert awards:

Best performance (group): Depeche Mode (I'm so biased here, but I'm giving the award out anyway)

Best peformance (song): Depeche Mode, "Shake the Disease" (and it's worth noting that they played multiple album songs I like better)

Best dancer after a long period of being stoic: Cat

Lameness award: Madonna

Unfortunate acoustics award: Ladytron (not their fault; we were in a bad spot in the tent; I'll have to see them again to hear what it should sound like)

Most energetic (and who obviously love what they're doing): The Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Saved me from sunburn: A Mexican hat. Thanks, Tim! Our group looked spiffy in our Mexican/cowboy hats and the Pimp Hat.

Best way to get past security: The issue of the Notices of the American Mathematical Society that I had in my backpack.

Biggest hero (see also Tim's awards): Clearly, The Pimp Hat has to win this award. As Tim will indubitably explain in further detail in his blog, this orange-black-white-yellow (did I add/subtract colors?) monstrosity served as a landmark not only for us to find each other but also for other concert-goers to find each other. (The gist of one conversation went along these lines: Here: There's this guy here wearing an orange striped hat that you can't miss; We're near him. There: I see it. I'm coming right over.)


I'll add some more awards later as things occur to me. Also, I'm sure I forgot stuff, some some more things will probably show up later in the comments.