A full week after the event, still depleted from my endless dancing bootcamp, I just now can pick up my laptop and reflect on all the sweat, all of the comings and going, friends, foes, moments of bliss and abomination, struggles, payoffs, ripoffs, freebies and all the beautiful music that all comes together to form Coachella with every spring that arrive. Amazing as to what can happen when you throw tens of thousands of kids together with little or no supervision, a habitat you can easily die in & some of the greatest bands and dj’s to walk the earth… People from LA may view it a little different than I do, being so close. But a midwestern city kid like me would liken the whole experience to space exploration before I’d call it anything normal- whatever that is.

The highlights for Friday are a little sparse. I wasn’t able to make it to a lot of the opening acts due to all sorts of reasons. I missed Sebastian, Busy P, Dan Deacon, Cut Copy & Vampire Weekend because of delays. Feel free to enlighten me on your experience if you were lucky to see any/all of them in my stead. The comment box is all yours! I did see Goldfrapp though, and they delivered well beyond the 2 minutes of patience that many fans had for their sound. I was excited to see that they were added to the lineup along with Aphex Twin, and man did “Strict Machine” come across well live. A wonderful closer. Here’s a Youtube video of the spectacle- be sure to click “watch in high quality” link right under the view counter. Sidenote: I’ll post more follow up videos once people have uploaded them. I’m sure that many have yet to be edited..
Goldfrapp (photo by Toni Francois)

From Goldfrapp I headed over to the Sahara tent until the festival was over. The dance tent looked great this year. Goldenvoice always manages to one-up themselves from the previous installment in terms of sound/visuals. I missed Datarock so that I could get a good spot for Pendulum during the Aphex Twin set that was right before it. Though I’d never seen Pendulum before, I knew that the potential highlight for the whole festival would be the Prodigy remix of theirs. I was very arguably correct. The crowd in the center of the floor got viscious- at one point, I would say there were about sixty people running around like crazed lunatics pushing and hollering, laughing, dancing, falling, screaming. I almost lost it. The aftershock of their set was something of a fall out for me and my friends, collected on the floor in amazement. Very memorable. Still shocked, we anxiously waited for Fatboy to come on and close us all out.

Fatboy Slim came out with a wonderful little introductory video production, clipping sounds and reel of Willy Wonka together across the stage with himself standing in the center, a nice little prologue of the journey to come. My favorite track of his was “Kalifornia” considering the geographic setting and the mind bending atmosphere of the tent itself, not to mention the raving fans. Alongside the well known classics, Fatboy remixed his own house blend into the set, also throwing in the more well known anthems of House of Pain and even “Love is in the Air” at the very end. All in all, it was a great closer and something that I felt lucky to witness. People were dancing all the way out the exits into the campsite afterwards. Morning came hours later with the brightest sun in the world melting away my eyelids into the daylight.

Boys Noize (photo by Caesar Sebastian)

Booze in the desert never sounds like a good idea to begin with. My friends and I camped out, and we played drinking games all Saturday morning until the gates opened, skipping the showers and getting breakfast burritos that made me thankful I brought a little hot sauce bottle with me. Our first show on Saturday was Kavinsky. I skipped MGMT in order to see the whole Boys Noize set that followed afterwards. Check out a little sneak peak of what’s to come from his direction- I lost my lid when this banger came on- Project Raven, this summer’s anthem, no doubt. Next up was Erol Alkan, shredding in in all different directions, standing on stage with Boys Noize sharing in the glory of ’07’s electro fanaticism. Throwing down up Sebastian’s “Motor” and Justice’s new “DVNO” remix, among other more recent Ed Banger standards, Erol raised the bar for the rest of the acts to come. “Motor” might have been the most played song all weekend, understandably.

Hot Chip was one of the more anticipated sets in the dance tent. As expected, it was wall to wall with people cramming in to see the set, leaving little room for dancing and me rather put off by the whole ordeal. Some kid was putting pot into balloons and writing ‘nug inside’ and sending them off into the crowd. It was pretty funny to watch. Hot Chip’s set was pretty solid, not unlike their performance a year before, as well as a few weeks prior at the Vic, here in Chicago that I was able to see. Did it deserve the hype? Ehh… not so sure about that. But they did deliver. Heading over across the yard to Portishead, I was confronted with one of the more intense performances of the festival. Ten years since we last saw them, too.. NME said that they had to cut five songs from their set in order to make way for Prince, who seemed to take forever to start it all up, but nonetheless, Portishead delivered well beyond what I could have possibly imagined. The acoustics were wonderful and the crowd was stunned. Prince, as expected, delivered his classic funk infused rock & roll with a little bit of old, and a little bit of new. Highlight? When Prince covered Radiohead’s “Creep”- WOW. I called it after the first bassline, and had goosebumps the entire track through. (I would link it, but all videos have been removed due to copyright..super lame). “From now on, this is Prince’s house!” he declared. No one was ready to debate him on that one. Huffington Post even pressed an article detailing the amazement.

Deadmau5, (photo by Caesar Sebastian)

A few hours later I woke up and started it all up again for the last day. This time I was determined to see the dance acts that I had planned for, unlike the few previous days. So instead of drinking, I found myself getting there early as to catch Holy Fuck. The best way I could describe that group would be to classify them as an electronic jam band. Their performance was quite possibly the best of the festival when you consider that I had no idea what I was getting myself in to. “Lovely Allen” was a moneyshot closer, and left me smiling as I journeyed over to Deadmau5. If you’ve been a long enough reader, you know my adoration of Deadmau5’s style & sound. His technical skill is overwhelming, and his style mixes everything typical of older dance standards with a modern enlightenment that sets him apart from many others that try to do much of the same. As expected, the crowd ate up his Fatboy Slim, Daft Punk & Bloc Party remixes. He should have had a night set, really. Gotta love the mouse head he sports, too. What a performer…

This next segment was my favorite little window of the night- the Booka Shade & Modeselektor sets. Booka Shade sure knows how kick a solid vibe through a dancefloor. Though I was tired, I still couldn’t stop moving to all of it, and now that I put it all in perspective.. I’m super excited to see them this summer at Lollapalooza! Super excited. It’s hard to pinpoint a favorite song out of the hour performance, but if I had to choose I would pick this one. The sunset hit right afterwards, setting a mood that was perfect for the seedy little rave that was to follow. The previous day, all the way up until the set before, I had been telling people to see Modeselektor. I even stopped some people in their tracks on the way to other stages and told them “Modeselektor will be better!” It was. I’m sure of it. So sure that I’d take the pepsi challange to just about any other set on the planet. Modeselektor was that good. This clip is of their track “Hasir” and was one of my favorite tracks they played, among many many others.

SMD, (photo by Ryan Muir)

Alright, I’m gonna get it out of the way already. I missed Roger Waters.. Voluntarily. I knew that I was missing quite a spectacle, one that I probably would never be able to see again, definitely not in that venue at least, but I was determined to stick it through in the Sahara tent. Simian Mobile Disco came out on a rampage, this time fully utilizing the electric light staffs that they had during their set at Empty Bottle a few months back. Judging between the two performances, it’s safe to say that SMD are ready to rock any size audience that you put in front of them. Check the finale out… Wow! From my take on it, I think they were trying to emphasize a self destruction sequence. I’m surprised I’m not blind and deaf from it all. Chromeo had a daunting task of following it up, and in my opinion they didn’t really deliver. I can understand why they would have their time slot based on all of the hype and success they had in 2007, but after seeing so many amazing dj acts consecutively, it’s damn near impossible for an electro funk band like Chromeo to finish where all their predecessors left off… Chromeo is more stage entertainment rather than a dancefloor spectacle, if you catch my vibe.

Justice was the grand finale of the entire festival, and as the Roger Waters viewers tapered off from the last of the Dark Side set it became instantly clear that everybody knew who Justice was. What was so intimate and dedicated about the Sahara tent fanbase always vanished somewhere into the night. I had fallen into the back row by then, exhausted by the entire weekend where I was able to soak in the entire scene one last time before it all faded back into the reality that I had escaped from only days prior. Last year, I remember falling asleep during the Rage Against the Machine show because I was so exhausted.. To say Coachella is a vacation is one thing. To say that it is leisurely is another.. I remember in ‘07 wondering why Justice hadn’t headlined that year. At the time I had yet to see them live and I was very excited. However, having seen them three times in the last nine months, I already knew what to expect. As for the set, the highlight, much like the show a little while back at the Vic was the “We Are Your Friends” segment. I also really enjoyed the “DVNO” mixup. That one always resonates well with me, especially when it’s the culmination of the most insane weekend you may have ever experienced. I may need therapy after all of it, really. All in all, it was an appropriate ending to the festival when considering the recent lean towards the electronic genre this year. And soon it was all over, and now I’m left counting down the days until next year’s comes round again- or at least until the lineup is released early ‘09.

Who’s coming with me to Lolla? =P

Justice, (photo by Caesar Sebastian)