My Cringingly Belated Gargamellian Recount of the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival—Weekend 2: April 20—22, 2012; Indio, California, U.S.A.

“Reality is like gravity: It’s almost impossible to escape” – unknown

Thursday, April 19, 2012

   Through the Sonoran in a sun-singed Nissan; ending up on a manicured lawn with tents all around…
           Friday, April 20, 2012

   The first act I saw full complete songs from was Jimmy Cliff & Tim Armstrong [5:10—6 p.m.]. Cliff’s smile was bigger than the hi-def Panasonic screens that went blurry in the sun. He swished around the stage in his Jamaica-colored clothing and looked happy as a clam up there. Armstrong and the band kept up a sturdy backbeat and everyone rolled [omit] when they started “I Can See Clearly Now.” After that I wandered distractedly, forgetting all about GIRLS [5:40—6:30 p.m.]. Luckily I snuck into the crowd just in time to hear the midnight creeper, “Vomit.” The back-up singers sailed away at the end. Arctic Monkeys [6:30—7:20 p.m.] gave a top-notch performance sweating as the sun went down. Alex Turner salted the audience with scrappy English asides. Matt Helders pummeled his drums relentlessly just grinning like a damn chimpanzee the whole time. They’ve evolved into one tough syrupy mother-[omit] rock & roll band. With the sun finally shut out, Madness [7—8 p.m.] put a dancing mood into the air. Pulp [7:50—8:50 p.m.], making another stop on their reunion tour, lit up the main stage. Jarvis Cocker brought his usual swagger, limping over monitors, then leaping into the air and landing in cat crawl. His black hair fell all over and the band played constantly submerged in lights that pin-needled up and down. A great rock show, but my mind was busy and I never heard the classic, “Common People.” Frank Ocean [8:15—9 p.m.] had the crowd whipped into a frenzy by the time I got there. I saw him through outstretched frantic arms and shaky camera phones. He delivered the two best songs off nostalgia, ULTRA: “Swim Good” and the catatonic “Novocain.” The timing was a blessing. Beautiful shit, Frank. Now, at this point, something began to rise up inside of me. Something clawed its way from the meat gates of my mind and I felt its full force walking in to see The Rapture [8:55—9:45 p.m.]. A casual listener from years ago I expected a twitchy rock band, but my legs and feet acted otherwise. The band’s clockwork percussion swarmed my senses and threw my body into never-ending cycles of dance. A consistent flourish of purple and blue lights both heated and cooled the panting audience. The singer had me gawking at his squirrely yelp that zigged+zagged through the musical elements. A true treat—going in with zero expectation I fell out of there fried. I was fried, fried, fried. I remember walking past and seeing the lights of M83 [10:15—11:05 p.m.] trickle out from under the tent, but found an entrancing solace in The Black Angels [10:50—11:35 p.m.]. The tent of psychedelic noir—tying hair to your ankles, pouring pure electricity onto your brain—was filled with fuzz and the bass lines crept up spine-ways. Oh, my word. Left that and just rocket-launched into Refused [11:20 p.m.], who were playing their first reunion show after drawing the curtain in 1998. The crisp Swedish hardcore punk band just blew up. Their presence was alarming and singer Dennis Lyxzén passed along so much gratitude. They brought lightning to the open desert. Swedish House Mafia [11:30 p.m.] was a little after-burner. They camped on the main stage for three hours escalating a smorgasbord of [omit] and blasting perceptions apart with their three-dimensional, Fourth-Dimensional, FIFTH-DIMENSIONAL light show. [help]

Saturday, April 21, 2012

   My only real focus on Saturday was to see Radiohead [11:05 p.m.], but not just see them play some songs, but get up front and center suffering strobelight seizures, flailing and hopping, hopping and flailing, and [omit]. When I got up to the railing it was clear that everyone else around had my same intention. Having gotten that far, a couple hours sun-roasting wouldn’t be too bad, would it? AWOLNATION [4—4:45 p.m.] [omit]. Kaiser Chiefs [5:10—6 p.m.] came out with that British fuck-all attitude, which is always pretty exciting shit to watch. Singer Ricky Wilson shouted out to the beer garden to get him a drink. He hopped off the stage and walked through the crowd—while the band was playing, mind you—and grabbed his beer. He ended up spilling most of the thing on the way back, but did get one solid gulp. Just before Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds [6:30—7:20 p.m.], some guy whom [omit] asked if I listened to the band. I said, no. He said, Oh, you’ll be surprised; they’ve got some great tunes. I showed polite enthusiasm. During the set all I could do was poke fun at it. The next Beatles? Achoo! The Shins [8:10—9 p.m.] would’ve excited me about six years ago. Still I was hopeful and then quickly let down. The James Mercer Clan are a hollow shell of what The Shins, at one point in time, could’ve become. Boring—sorry. If you weren’t in that crowd for Radiohead, then you damn sure were there for Bon Iver [9:30—10:20 p.m.]. They sort of fooled me with their hive-like art-installation set-up and then, yeah, let me down (not purposefully punning, swear). It was a whole lot of moaning with no climax; cell-killing. The best part was that horn section; at least there was that. Which, then, brings us to the main event; the event at which the entire experience is anchored; the centerpiece, smack dab in the middle of it all: Radiohead. Anticipation was high, but [omit]. The fandom within the first few rows approached Trekkie status. Some nerds tried guessing each consecutive song based on the color of guitarist Johnny Greenwood’s pants. Girls born when Kid A was released winced for transcendence. One fan nearby me collapsed. Up above, the band played splintered in chunks of video screen. Everything about it was demonic. Thom Yorke flashed that gremlin grin full aware of his power. Their precision, especially when exploring The King of Limbs, was numbing. The reconstruction of older songs with drummer Clive Deamer was phenomenal. “Kid A,” “The Gloaming,” “Idioteque,” all became thicker, muscular; the zeroed-out isolation still intact. “Staircase,” recently released, was an endless hallway of untold secrets. Ghosts and ghouls crept. They swept through all albums, OK Computer and beyond, offering an excellent cut-in-the-gut “Paranoid Android,” but no new songs. “Lotus Flower” was the point of total emotional domination. The song, off Limbs, just cut a hole right in time and part of me still lingers in that moment when the drums clamped down and Yorke let out his eerie clambering falsetto. “There is an empty space inside my heart where the weeds take root tonight I’ll set you free.” So good, I’m almost down on my knees crying. They created a vortex of magnetism right there in dry Indio and we were all sucked in.

Sunday, April 22, 2012

   And the sun grew three sizes that day, but was easy to shake off with the help of Seun Kuti & Egypt 80 [3:10—3:55 p.m.]. Their rhythms were punctuating and definitive, stretching out into the desert and gathering rivers of sweat from the audience. The horns, the back-up singers, the drums, the guitar and bass, all shared space in each sprawling song. Dancing feet kicked up the dust and I collapsed somewhere shady a few hours. God Bless The Hives [6:05—6:55 p.m.]. They came out in some sharp black suits and riled the slow-sliding zombie crowd into action. The energy their songs release is similar to what collapsing stars release. Coming off like a well-mannered version of the Stooges, they corrupted us with songs like, “Walk, Idiot, Walk,” “Tick, Tick, Boom,” “Hate To Say I Told You So,” and “Main Offender.” Oh what puritanical joy! The festival offered an impressive cast of front men (mostly Swedish), but none as boisterous and self-assuring as Howlin' Pelle Almqvist. He came out, cock’a’the walk, like Jagger’s rebellious stunt double, wearing a top hat and barking declarations of confidence. The crowd was thankful for the jolt. Definitely needed [omit] to enjoy The Weeknd [6:55—7:45 p.m.] more. Saw “Crew Love,” no special guest Drake, moved on. Justice [7:45—8:45 p.m.] didn’t quite slap the bass into me too effectively, but it’s always beautiful to see a giant electronic cross flashing before a massive spinning audience. After At The Drive-In [9:10—10 p.m.] announced they were going to hit a few festivals this year for a one-time reunion, guitarist Omar Rodríguez-López admitted it was all purely for the money—the honesty of which I can respect. However, during the performance, that statement was dreadfully obvious. They played, and they played damn well, but—except for Cedric Bixler-Zavala still exploding all over the place, tossing the mic stand and making gnarled expressions—it was a fairly tame performance. Tame, anyway, for At the Drive-In, one of the most antagonizing, destructive live acts to play. Maybe I’m foolish for expecting, or at least hoping for, total confrontational mayhem, but it was still an honor to see a band almost dead last on the list of reunion possibilities. The second those first notes of “Arcarsenal” and “Pattern Against User” hit, everything was on fire. [omit]! Dr. Dre & Snoop Dogg [10:35 p.m.] performed with a holographic Tupac Shakur—too much. That was the end. [shake, shake]

Key Moments: Frank Ocean performing “Novocain,” and stopping the whole thing after the line, “Met her at Coachella;” the tri-fecta live experience of The Rapture, The Black Angels, then Refused; Radiohead’s performance of “Lotus Flower,” “Staircase,” and “Kid A;” ATDI; seeing Eminem appear, as devil on earth, from under the stage after Tupac was digitally beamed back into existence.