The Concerts: 2004

2004 was the first year I got up the balls to go to an out-of-state festival; armed with my friend and former MWHR colleague Brian Siers, we made the trek to California to see the two-day Coachella festival, featuring a one-two punch of The Pixies and Radiohead closing the first night. I've written about the Coachella trips before, and while the first one was special for many reasons, Brian and I did it better in future trips (for example, flying to Los Angeles instead of San Diego). But the concert landscape of 2004 looked something like this:

David Bowie [The Palace of Auburn Hills 1.9]
The Church [Magic Stick 3.11]
N*E*R*D* / Black Eyed Peas [Clutch Cargo’s 4.9]
Coachella Music & Arts Festival (Radiohead, The Cure, The Pixies, Kraftwerk, etc.) [Empire Polo Field, Indio, CA 5.1/5.2]
Secret Machines / VHS Or Beta [Shelter 6.12]
Franz Ferdinand / Sons And Daughters [Majestic Theater 6.13]
Mouse On Mars / Ratatat / Junior Boys [Magic Stick 9.23]
Vote For Change (Springsteen, R.E.M., etc.) [Cobo Arena, Detroit 10.3]

Again, not many shows, but lots of bang for the buck:

-- Most likely the last performance I'll ever see from David Bowie, working the Reality record and confidently swooping through his expansive catalog; months later, Bowie had a heart attack while on tour in Europe, and has not released an album since, to the eternal sorrow of me and many others

-- An on-the-cusp-of-mega-fame BEP opening for Pharrell and the gang; say what you will about their music, but Will.i.am and Fergie were working the merch booth like fiends, and it's those little bits of hustle that put you over more often than not

-- Coachella, and the glut of gotta-see bands and body odor and intense heat and dust and "oh shit did we just spend over two hours in traffic getting there?" and back pain and more

-- The Vote For Change tour, where for a second there, most attendees thought that this would put Kerry over the top of Bush in the '04 elections (which may well have come to fruition had some odd voting machine quirks not happened in the swing state of Ohio, firing up all sorts of conspiracy theorists in the process) and where Bruce "The Fucking BOSS" Springsteen showed all in attendance (including R.E.M., who played an energetic set hamstrung by bad song choices) how to rock and/or roll

So once again, not a bad set of musical memories for one year. But the most rock and roll thing I saw that year was the Michael Moore doc Fahrenheit 9/11 -- the boldest swipe at a modern presidency in recent memory during a time when most Republicans and Democrats alike were drinking the Bush Flavor Aid. Can't think of a rock show that moved me like that flick, for better or worse. And in 2005, it got worse for rock, at least from my perspective. But more on that later.