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Coachella 2012 Weekend One


I am now officially old enough to say "back when I started going to Coachella, it was only a two-day, one-weekend festival."  This year, the production company Goldenvoice put on “Coachella” (the three-day festival) for two consecutive weekends as the exact same festival, but there must be something to make each weekend memorable as a unique entity aside from the bands shifting up their set lists (which they were discouraged to do).  So how about offering up two weekends of extreme weather to fuck with the patrons?  Sounds like a plan.

There's no way around it -- Coachella 9.1 (my ninth straight year of attendance, first weekend) was cold.  I’m not just talking about “cold for California” cold, but actual Michigan-level cold.  (In fact, there was one day where the afternoon temperature in Petoskey and Indio was separated by a few degrees.)  So cold that I wore a thermal undershirt and hoodie with the usual Coachella gear and was still struck by the biting wind and falling temps.  Friday and Saturday didn’t get past 70 for a high temp, and only Sunday was remotely humane, with temps in the low 80s.

So if I’m talking about the weather, was I was a bit underwhelmed by the musical offerings?  Nope, as it was as it always is at Coachella – it’s the sum total of the rather overwhelming musical experience as well as individual moments of joy and transcendence.  The late rock and jazz critic Robert Palmer talked about the listener looking for that “sanctified moment” of religious-like ecstasy in a secular setting, and that’s Coachella in a nutshell – the tent-by-tent hunt for those sanctified moments.

And between a thematically rich Sahara stage set by SebastiAn and the reunited Pulp on the Coachella stage, Friday was a great beginning.  As my friend Brian and I walked on the grounds early Friday afternoon – striding past Pierce Brosnan on our way to put some food on our empty stomachs to stave off the chill -- it was sunny but cool, which turned pretty quickly to cloudy and cool, with intermittent splashes of actual honest-to-dog rain sprinkles, in a polo field in the desert.  Despite the weather, it was a good day for sets both full (SebastiAn, Pulp, M83) and partial (honeyhoney, Other Lives, EMA, Gary Clark Jr., Death Grips, Dawes, Arctic Monkeys, Atari Teenage Riot), with the ace tunes and showmanship of Pulp ruling the day, followed closely by the thematic construction and relentless bass of SebastiAn.

Saturday was the worst for weather, in that the knowledge of just how cold it could be was fresh in personal experience.  However, the music was solid, from the full gigs (Buzzcocks, St. Vincent) to the partial performances (Destroyer, The Big Pink, Jacques Lu Cont, tUnE-yArDs, Laura Marling, Squeeze, Flying Lotus, Bon Iver, Radiohead).  Favorites included the smooth pop of this iteration of Destroyer (I would have stayed for the full set here, but I've seen their full set a few times before this) and the fractured rock of St. Vincent, who seems to be rounding into a sweet spot in her career.  Radiohead was wonderful as usual, but the lack of full stage camera work, combined with the cool remoteness of their new material that they showcased, made it easy to admire but hard to love, so when the cold became too much, it was off to the exits.

Sunday – the warmest day of the weekend by far – thawed out the crowd a bit, with a genuinely mellow vibe that was missing from previous days.  The partial sets (Metronomy, Real Estate, araabMUZIK, Fitz and the Tantrums, Girl Talk, Dr. Dre/Snoop Dogg) were fun, and the full sets (Wild Beasts, The Weeknd, Justice, Florence + The Machine) were wildly entertaining.  Justice on the main Coachella stage would have been even better had they started on time or used their A-list material, but Florence + The Machine closed the Outdoor stage with headliner flourish.  As we drove back to the hotel post-2Pac-hologram, I reflected on the fun of the recent weekend and the anticipation of what it would be like the next weekend.  If only I would have known about the heat...

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