On Friday Indie Mom and I attended the opening day of Coachella Music and Arts Festival 2009. The festival ends today, Sunday. I will have individual reviews of the bands we saw, but this post contains non-band photos and general comments and observations.
Including two where we did not see the complete set, we saw a whopping nine bands. I can see that the time will come when the physical toll of such a day will be too much for me. My feet will need a week to recover from the hours and hours of just standing, standing, standing. As we walked in the morning from the parking area toward the entry gate, Indie Mom looked around and remarked, “THIS is Stuff White People Like.” All around us, all we saw were (mostly young) Caucasians. Of course, as we got in, we saw people of other ethnicities, particularly Asians and Hispanics. Our crowd shots show an assortment of races and ages.
We saw many references to the Beatles, particularly Alex Kapranos’ (of Franz Ferdinand) George Harrison t-shirt and Petter Stakee’s (of Alberta Cross) “John Lennon Lives” button. I’m not quite sure what to make of the obvious homage to Beatles other than Paul. I was a Beatles fan myself back in the day, but the tattoo of McCartney’s signature on a woman’s back was startling.
Photos: We had both of my cameras, an Olympus SP-55 with 18X zoom and a Canon A720 with 6X zoom, and both performed excellently. Even after deleting the bad ones, I have around 700 photos to go through and choose from.
Click HERE for the photo gallery.
My Coachooser wish list included several bands that were all scheduled on the Coachella stage, including my must-sees, Franz Ferdinand and Morrissey. McCartney was the last act on that stage. I decided on Thursday that my best bet to get a good view of the bands I most wanted to see was to get to that stage early in the day and stay there. That meant bands on other stages fell off the schedule. I was glad I had taken the opportunity to see Silversun Pickups last weekend. I particularly regret missing these:
A Brit band kind of like the Editors and the National.
White Lies: To Lose My Life from To Lose My Life (2009) MySpace | Buy
Los Campesinos!: Miserabilia from We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed (2008) MySpace | Website | Buy
This Brooklyn, NY, group serves up good old 80’s-style shoegaze.
A Place to Bury Strangers: Breathe from A Place to Bury Strangers (2007) MySpace | Website | Buy
My brother rated the Hold Steady at the top of his 2008 Favorite Albums list last year. On some songs they sound to me like Randy Newman fronting the E Street Band, but I wanted to see what my impression of a live show was.
The Hold Steady: Both Crosses from Stay Positive (2008) MySpace | Buy
This band sounds like they’d put on a really fun show.
The Ting Tings: Shut Up and Let Me Go from We Started Nothing (2008) MySpace | Buy
A Star Sighting
My schedule strategy worked. When McCartney came on, we were very close to front and center. We did not stay for the whole set, as I’ll explain in another post. As we literally fought our way out of the packed crowd, which seemed endless, suddenly Indie Mom pointed and I saw, bathed in a moon-glow aura, the actress Anne Hathaway, her huge, dark, liquid eyes focused on the stage in rapt enjoyment. I was close enough I could have touched her, and I thought about it, but realized she deserved to just enjoy the show. I squeezed on through the crowd. I hope that she had a good time.
Everyone asks, “Is she as beautiful in real life as on screen?” Absolutely YES. She looked like you might imagine an angel or a goddess would look among mere mortals. She wasn’t even wearing makeup, or at least not much. My husband said, “Are you sure it was her?” We saw a ringer for Jessica Simpson at a wedding last summer, which caused much pointing and whispered debate among the guests, but I highly doubt that was Jessica. This time there is no doubt in my mind. When you know, you know.
As we forced our way out, I realized that it had been over 12 hours (10 AM to 10:30 PM) since we had eaten or peed. The really scary part of that was that I didn’t even feel like I needed to use the restroom. We had sweated away our body fluids in the desert heat. Some in the crowd had passed out, including one sweet young man right next to us, even after Indie Mom gave him some of our water. The bottoms of my feet felt severely bruised from all the standing, making every step agony. The only way we made it that long and saw so much was that we had smuggled in four bottles of frozen water and sipped them judiciously. I will get too old for this, but hopefully not too soon.
- alt-gramma (370)
- indie.mom (395)
- Uncle T (7)
The same thing happened to me at Coachella a couple years back, I found myself not having to use the bathroom the entire day! Unfortunately, it wasn’t the case and I had to use the bathroom the next day, and it was awful. Consider yourself lucky!
Glad to hear you had fun though! I wonder what if was like for the White Lies since they perform in all black, in the desert sun, soo unpleasant. They are also on the new Josh Schwartz web- only series Rockville CA (www.rockvilleca.com), which was probably a little more pleasant to be a part of, at least I hope the bathrooms were nicer.
April 20th, 2009 at 11:16 am
Airborne Toxic Event were all in black, and their lead guitarist looked pretty wrung out. Last year we saw DeVotchKa on the Outdoor Stage, not only all in black, but wearing long sleeves. The cellist, who was standing in direct sun the whole set, keeled over onstage. Poor girl!
The tent stages might not be so bad if there is good misting equipment for the musicians.
Thanks for reading! We did have a good time, for sure. I hope to be able to add a photo montage when my picture gallery program is fixed, so I hope you’ll come back.
April 20th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
wow. you are one dedicated music fan! i’m not sure i could stand for that long, let alone not eat!
i’m looking forward to seeing the rest of your pictures. hope you got some good ones of moz. : )
April 22nd, 2009 at 1:08 pm
You know, in that way, the heat worked in our favor. It took us about an hour and a half to get out of the parking lot and drive somewhere to eat, so we went about 14 hours without eating, and I was pretty hungry by that time.
Yes, we DID get some mighty fine photos of the Mozz man! And Alex Kapranos of Franz Ferdinand, omg, that boy is TOO cute.
April 22nd, 2009 at 3:33 pm