WOW!You know, I HATE big festivals. Hate Hate HATE them. But I LOVE Coachella. Yes, it was hot and, at times, pretty crowded, but the crowd is always so good and mellow (must be the weed) and the music so good that I can get over it. It is impossible to see every band and, sometimes, even see all the ones you want to see. But, for 2 days, we did our best without killing ourselves.

Highlights:

Daft Punk on Saturday Night in the Sahara Tent.
Almost a full hour of fantastic, danceable, interesting sounds and a wonderful multimedia spectacular. Watching DJs seems to be the most boring thing on earth, but I have been constantly amazed by many DJ performances over the years.

Franz Ferdinand - Coachella Stage - Saturday evening. \I was almost tired of this band but GD's sister said they put on a great show a few weeks ago so we saw them here. I have fallen in love with them all over again and I want to take every one of those cute Scottish boys home with me. Such great energy and FUN!!!

Massive Attack, Sunday night, Coachella Stage.
Sometimes timing makes things work even better. Sunday was hotter than Saturday and we were missing GD & CP so we weren't as into the day as we were on Saturday. But, the sun went down, the air cooled a bit and Massive Attack played a full hours of perfect low-key, bass heavy, grooving music and it was a spiritual experience. I spent most of the set laying on the ground literally feeling the music surge through my body. Perfect.

Gnarles Barkley, Sunday afternoon, Gobi tent.
The biggest problem was that the smallest venue was WAAAAY to small for this rocking, interesting, entertaining band. This is a band I want to see again.

Disappointments:

Madonna was lame - especially after seeing such a great show by Daft Punk in the same tent. The exodus after 2 songs was immense.

Tosca - I expected a LOT more from Dorfmeister of the GREAT Kruder and Dorfmeister. VERY disappointing.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Saturday afternoon, Mojave Tent. The was one of the most anticipated bands of the festival for me and, they had terrible sound and left after a few songs. I want to see them live, but it wasn't working that day in that place.

There were so many other bands we saw and I may do a list just for my own mnemonic purposes but that will be posted later, if ever. However, the REAL star of the weekend was The Beat Hotel, but that will get its own thread.

Since Madonna was the talk of Sunday's show I thought I'd treat you all to a visual representation of our experience of the Madonna show.

Dang, she's 15 minutes - late, show's been ruinning like clockwork, what's taking her so Long?



Woohoo Madonna! - Oh wait, that's just her album cover on the jumbo tron, no one's on stage yet...



Okay here we go - People are cheering - I think I see something moving up there...



I think those might be dancers - Did she bring dancers with her?



Hey! Down in Front! - I'm trying to see Madonna!



Somewhere, by that shaft of light Madonna is asking us to give her our love...



Maybe if I zoom all the way, lift my camera as high as I can, and point it at the stage - I can see her...



That's It ! There! I got her pic on the jumbo tron - that is here isn't it?

Say what say we get ourselve some Brats and go see Massive Attack?

Reading about Brother Bears winning MA on another thread reminded me of this funny story.

We were trying to find GD & CP before Franz Ferdinand were wandering through the waiting crowd. We walked by a group of very Bearish men. One saw Chris and did a quick second take then shouted HELLO! We had to walk by them once again after we had located our friends and this time the whole group was attentive to my little "Bear Trap".

They had NO idea I was following and cracking up.

For some reason, I was expecting this.

And why did € edit NA's last two posts?

Because my desktop is having issues in a big way. I can't edit in WYSIWYG mode nor can I Yahoo. It took out all of my paragraph breaks and formatting and turned it into one large, unreadable paragraph.

Not having fun.

We left during the 3rd song. Apparently she did a total of 6 songs. 6. six. SIX!

My pics of Coachella are up here.
Including some night time pics of the Beat Hotel:

Thanks for the report and review and the pictures. Gosh but the Madonna thing looked like a total waste and an uncomfortable crush to boot!

I gotta say NA, the DJs sound like a lot of fun. I'm sure the creative juices were really flowing and I would have enjoyed that.

The heat I would not have enjoyed, but that's me! :-)