Coachella '09 [--yawn--]

So this will be the sixth year that my friend Brian and I have done the full Coachella experience. [Well, without the drug use and camping and desert dust and so forth.] And while I'm sure my opinion will be different in a week's time, right now it looks a little underwhelming and lean.

Well, not Friday, I suppose; it's hard to beat the big guns (McCartney, Morrissey, Cohen, FF, Black Keys, Hold Steady) although the undercard bands are drive-bys. [A "drive-by" is a band that you watch for about ten minutes, and once you've seen the best they have to offer, you move on. Unless it's really hot out, and the performance is in one of the tents...then you stay for fifteen minutes.] But when the Saturday go-to names are The Killers and Thievery Corporation, you have a profound absence of star power, despite a stronger day roster (Mastodon! Junior Boys! Glass Candy! Amanda Palmer!) with which to contend.

Sunday is pretty much a nod to the old folks with the headliners (unless you contend that the best work of The Cure and My Bloody Valentine is ahead of them) but it's the best well-rounded collection of the weekend. There's quality hip-hop (Clipse, Public Enemy, The Knux), some Pitchfork-approved indie bands (No Age, Vivian Girls), solid pop (Lykke Li, Peter Bjorn & John, Sebastian Tellier), potential fucked-up spectacles (Brian Jonestown Massacre, Fucked Up), British buzz bands (Friendly Fires, Late Of The Pier), and yes, the headliners (since I am, indeed, one of the old folks). Because of Sunday's potential and a hopefully sizable recency effect, I'm sure our Monday morning drive back to LAX will be full of joyful reminiscing and conjecture about 2010. At least, that's what I'm hoping for.

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"The Silver Gun" by Robert Palmer (1983)

I mean...Urdu? Seriously, Urdu . On an already eclectic and worldly album -- Pride , from 1983 -- "The Silver Gun" closes a chapter in Robert Palmer's career by singing a song about a horse in a language spoken daily by over 100 million people. The liquid bass line and propulsive electronics set out a bedrock for Palmer to ping phrasings rather out of place in Western music, askew astride even the peripatetic minimalism of the rest of the record. Somehow, in the middle of Michigan's Appalachia, I had this on vinyl a few years before the CD era officially commenced. It was an album of effort -- even the cover, a pointillism-and-bronze work, had Palmer's head barely above the water -- but the stitches didn't show to my pre-adolescent eyes and ears. In a career marked by zigs and zags, Pride and "The Silver Gun" were most certainly Other, and for a kid that felt like he didn't belong much of anywhere, it was nice to have those discrete feeling...

"I'll Drive You Home"

Upon reflection, I’ve had a fortunate life in the area of work. As a freshly minted teenager, I would visit Evergreen Park Grocery and dream of someday working there like my father did, and at the age of 14, I got $2/hour to live out that dream, such as it was. From there, I yearned to try other occupations, from record stores to teaching, and I’d be chuffed to tell Young Erick that both of those things happened in due course. ( Oh, and Young Erick, one of them got you to meet David Bowie, and one of them got you to own houses and cars, so I’ll let you ponder on which one was better. ) I even got to DJ a bit here and there, and while it never hit the heights of a professional radio gig, it was certainly better than the summer I played preset cassettes on my boom box for a nerd camp dance while my unrequited crush stayed in her room. What I never crossed off my professional life list was acting, either regular or voice, but while I still yearn for that big breakthrough -- seriously, ask...

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