Tag Archives: Coachella Festival

Artists from the UK such as Joss Stone, Paolo Nutini and James Morrison giving new meaning to the term blue-eyed soul.

Air horn blasting through M.I.A’s set on the main stage.

Henry Rollins giving anger a good name. The former Black Flagman lashed out with a funny, life-affirming 45 minutes of well-intended venom.

Amanda Palmer delivering thoughtul, tough-as-nails rock that managed to transcend her goofy discount-cathouse outfit.

Booker T proving that you CAN rock forever.

The joy of performing that Tinariwen, the group of nomadic people from Saharan North Africia, shared with their audience.

—Fielding Buck
–fbuck@PE.com

A giant light up “K” is on the stage with the Killers, who took the stage 20 minutes late.

They opened with new single “Human” and followed it with “Somebody Told Me,” off their first album.

Flowers greeted earth, the United States and Coachella. It was kind of like the reverse order of McCartney last night.

Then we got all weird in song number three.

“Love-it can start very quickly and very easily,” Flowers said.

It’s too early to get sentimental. Apparently love is fleeting is the message. Wait, he talked about breathing fire. Fire is cool. Where are the pyrotechnics?

The band sounds really good, I have to say. Flowers is in top form.

With the lights, it’s like the Killers brought an arena show to the desert. It works.

Flowers also just asked the Coachella crowd to put on their dancing shoes. It looks like some of the crowd is already trickling towards the exit.

OK, I have to say, I was a little underwhelmed by M.I.A. It seemed like such a strong star, with the flashbacks to the blacklight scenes in “Wake Me Up Before You Go Go,” but then it went downhill.

Props to her for getting audience members on stage and for venturing out into the crowd for the closer, “Paper Planes,” but I honestly have a headache from the constant use of the air horn.

Air horn is not like cowbell–you don’t need more and there is no fever that can be cured by more air horn.

M.I.A. claims that her next time at Coachella, she wants to go back to the tent.

I’m wishing Amy Winehouse had behaved.

M.I.A. is going big on the Coachella Stage, in her third appearance at the festival and her first on the main stage. She said that last time she had six songs for the crowd. Now she has seven.

Also, just because she did the Grammys doesn’t mean she sold out, she said.

She is shimmying much like she did at the Grammys, but without that unborn kid weighing her down.

Her cadre of dancers took the stage in blacklight fluorescent colors not seen since Wham!’s “Wake Me Up Before You Go Go” video from 25 years ago.

She came out dressed as a dictator (or a police chief?) and started rapping at a podium that was set up like a press conference with a ton of microphones.

She also hasn’t had DJ Blackstar stop playing this REALLY annoying air horn.

About three songs in, it seems she has technical problems and asked for a line check.

“Thanks for having me on the main stage,” M.I.A. told the crowd.

“They tried to make me do the Oscars and I said ‘No,No No,” she sang, referencing Amy Winehouse’s “Rehab.” M.I.A. replaced Winehouse after the tabloid queen couldn’t get a visa due to assault charges.

By the way, I haven’t seen this much neon since my closet in 1989.

We’ll be blogging from Coachella here at the Audio File blog, but I’ll also be doing even more updates on Twitter.

Follow along.

Band of Horses sounds great!

They are two songs in on the Outdoor Theatre stage and I think M.I.A. is about to play at the main stage. I’ll probably mosey over there in a few minutes. But Band of Horses sounds so good I don’t want to leave. And I can actually hear them, unlike Fleet Foxes, whose harmonies were drowned out by Thievery Corporation.

Mastodon, possibly the hardest band playing the festival, is playing the entirety of their new album, “Crack the Skye,” tonight.

I sat down with Brann and Bill today, thanks to Rick from Warner Bros., and they were really nice and seemed to be a little puzzled as to how they ended up on the bill.

They compared the new album to a bottle of wine or some aged cheese, two years from their last record. They were joking. But they did say it’s a little wiser.

It’s one of the best albums I’ve heard this year so you should definitely pick it up.

Oh, and their gift from the Coachella organizers was a Mastodon painting with the band’s name written in black lace and painted.