Coachella pt.3

The Battle of Coachella (Day Three)

Sunday started out inauspiciously. Having finally found the water spigot we discovered it was not hooked up, and no one seemed to want to find out how or why that was so. Not the groundskeepers not the food vendors, not the officious-looking people in golf-carts. No one. So we stocked up on bottled water and traipsed off to see Mika, and subsequently had his sugar-pop music insinuate itself into my head. Its pure gibberish refused to let go, "Nah nah nee nah-ah nah nee nah nee nah..."

Zach insisted we see Kid Beyond. Mr. Beyond himself was bald-pated, wore black and sounded exactly like a mechanical beat box. He looped himself into beats and songs like Andrew Bird did with his violin. Some how Kid Beyond pulled an entire NIN song through his lips and teeth. It was impressive but the novelty began to wear thin. Then something happened.

Tati sipped out of a water bottle, gave a face, Zach sniffed it, then after much deaf gesticulating we moved out.
"It wasn't water!"
"Was it yours?"
"I don't know!"
"What did it smell like?"
"Musty-- weird"
So we went over to the Pan Asian food court and sat in the shade. Zach scarfed down some pad thai as Tati sat shivering, throughly freaked out. So we walked over out over to a dusty corner by the Outdoor Stage to a place in all of my Coachellas I had never once been in or near: a first aid station. The station looked very small from the outside, merely a slit in an unbroken wall of white tents with a simple little sign. The grassy area outside was empty save for a single plastic chair. The inside, however, seemed to go on for quite a distance, the atmosphere was cool and clean, if in a slight state of disarray. It was populated by young, professional-looking personnel. A single casualty of the heat sat with her elbows on her knees over a sickly pink basin filled with wads of tissue. A woman came over to hear Tati's complaint. She said she would have Tati sit in the station for an hour for observation.

I wandered outside and half-listened to Mando Diao, whose sad attempt at rocking-out roused about twelve people at the rails. The rest of the audience stood, sat or slept in the heat. I walked about or sat, overheating.

Back inside the first casualty's friends came to check on her, inspecting her nose, which had filled the basin with pinkish bloody wads. She tottered off to join the fray when a tall man came in with a huge weeping swath of road rash on his shin that I could barely look at. The medic doused it in anti-bacterial goo, wrapped it in gauze and secured the whole mess with a net of hot pink tape. We managed to distract Tati enough to dispel her paranoia and she walked out fine.

The three of us plonked down by the mixing station of the Main Stage for Explosions in the Sky. It was hot, but everyone stood up. A strung out Spaniard sucked on his pipe and babbled constantly. A huge man came by and dropped a bottle of something that DEFINITELY wasn't water and that was the last straw. I lead everyone out of the crowd, saying, "Explosions were fine, they sound great, but the people are being shitheads!" and Zach texted Flora using my words.

We got to a pretty good place for Rodrigo Y Gabriela and stood around. A very familiar beat emanated from the Mojave Tent so we decided to check it out. It was the Junior Boys, so we danced for a few songs. When we turned around the Gobi was spilling people. We hurried over but there was no way of getting in again. We missed our chance. So we stood outside by a couple of trashcans, one of which sported a familiar bit of graffiti. Last I had seen it it was painted in black on the side of a decrepit white warehouse asking Banksy, "can we have the elephant?" Its marker pen face stared out in silence in the vicinity of "Santa Barbara".

The Mexican's sweet chords were nearly lost outside the tent, but I stood there and swayed, alternately watching the musician's heads over the crowd and the sun slipping behind the blue mountains.

Tati gasped as another song started. At first I couldn't tell, but then I heard it. It was "Wish You Were Here". The crowd began to sing, softly at first and then loud like wind through grass. I could feel the words form as they played.
So, so you think you can tell
Heaven from hell
Blue skies from pain
Can you tell a green field
From a cold steel rail
A smile from a veil,
So you think you can tell...

The words flowed out. I never thought I knew them all. They came thick and bubbled out and caught in my throat, as if I were sobbing. I walked away singing into the breeze.

The Kaiser Chiefs played at a distance as we stood in line for Thai Iced Tea. We were meant to be in that crowd but sound was wan at this distance and all I wanted was the cool orange substance.

Picking through the maze-like matrix of people in front of the Main Stage we found the stage sign, the spot where Ma told us to meet her for Crowded House, and maybe a few boardies as well. Its face was marred by stickers and messy graffiti-- I had never seen it treated like that. Willie Nelson crooned from the stage and Tati went off to the bank of portapotties. I was left, the day cooling, with a particularly annoying group. One drunk over my shoulder called in a slow slurred drawl "YEAH! WILLIE!" every few moments with the occasional "Wooo!" thrown in. Minutes ticked past, grating on my nerves. Tati came back in time to save my sanity and we decided to catch some Cut Copy at the Oasis Dome.

Did I say the day started out inauspiciously? As our luck would have it Cut Copy was outside of 20 minutes late so we had to leave before we heard any of his set to go find Ma for Crowded House.

We met and headed right for the mixing station. The field out in front had been partitioned like the Sahara had when Madonna showed up last year. Leaning against a heavy black steel fence (what I call rails) was an incredibly thin man wearing a shirt that had "Radiohead is..." written in blue puff ink. I couldn't read the rest but reason dictates that it said "... BIGGER THAN DEPECHE MODE" which made the man Menik(mati) from the Coachella board. I didn't go up to him because we had misidentified Century Son from the RHMB last year.

Neil Finn and Crowded House came on perfectly on time. He had a kindly, puffy aged pop star face. Old, but never weary. His eyes sparkled and stood out the most from their spartan stage and black garb. He introduced the band, which included his own son on keyboards. A New Zealander whipped out a flag, stuck it on a tent pole and pushed forward through the crowd, where during "World Where You Live" I saw it waving energetically quite close to the stage. But the rest would not have it, and they began to throw water bottles. Water streamed through the air and shivered in the stage lighting. Poor Neil was struck in the face and his mic knocked over, but he calmly sang on as if it hadn't happened, and then kindly advised the crowd to "drink it before you throw it" and "why don't you go over to the beer garden and cool off a bit". Then made a mistake, which was to mention Rage by name, which got the rage fans riled up and they began to chant RAGE RAGE RAGE RAGE!! My heart pounded and my palms sweated. I was afraid for Crowded House, so afraid I hardly enjoyed their short set. Then we were off for what we thought would be AIR...

We found an empty stage and an already disgruntled audience. Thin streams of people were trickling out, which became unabated torrents even when, forty minutes late, the French duo showed up. Forgetting the boardie meet-up, Tati and I fled to Ratatat.

The Mojave was filled with a voluminous crowd. Each person stood at arms length from the other, like water molecules in a lattice, each face lit by the warm light from the stage. The lattice chanted, in one strong voice:
RAT TA TAT RAT TA TAT
and when the voice failed:
CLAP clap CLAP CLAP clap CLAP
seamlessly, one big lattice-being.

Ratatat came on stage and began to play immediately. The music had no voice but the searing lead guitar. The band melted into the stage lighting as if they weren't there. The crowd swayed, taking full advantage of the space the lattice afforded. As set progressed the audience boiled out of its structure and each molecule bounced and bounded to the simple but soaring music.

We rescued our forgotten jackets from the lockers. Again I held the thin blue Radiohead sweatshirt I had carried in on Friday, with my head down and panicked like I was on the day that shirt was acquired.

The Sahara Tent was desolate. Some thunderstorm had begun at the other end of the field. I could hear Zach de la Rocha's voice boom out and his rapt audience respond like a downpour, thousands of voices rushing in a torrent. The stage lights flickered against the sky like lightning.
The interior of the Sahara was flooded with harsh light, each empty square foot illuminated without mercy, each discarded bottle and carton scrutinized by the blue-white light. Some faceless filler music played into the void, powerless to rouse the few ravers that remained. They milled around, not bothering to throw shapes. There was no one left to entrance.

We sidled up closer to the Sahara's stage than I have ever been before. Beyond the mixing station the audience faded to nothing, then the white tent faded to black sky.
Suddenly the cold whiteness switched to searing color while a faceless guitarist spewed a combination of hair metal and prog-rock. A bald, powerful man strode out on stage, signaled a skull rattling beat and sent his paltry but enthralled audience into full raver pogo mode.

We sidled out again after 40 minutes of dancing wildly to the bone-crushing beat, in which I rapped Flora on the head with my elbow, distinctly deaf. Our plan was to beat the Ragers out. We walked along in a cottony fog, past the warm lit little Gobi where Spank Rock played energetically to a handful of people, all of whom crowded eagerly to the front. Rage had filtered out the casual and left only fanatics. All of the small spaces and avenues were empty of all except art and trash. The Energy factory was judiciously dark but sad all the same.

Most of the population of Coachella was in the Rage mosh or lolling about the ridge by the exit. A man rode through the crush high above everyone on a Cyclecide bike. He leaned his monstrous double decker mountain bike against the Coachella site map, surveyed the destroyed hipsters and the frat boys, those exhausted or shot completely out of reality, and pushed off and arced silently into the dark.

I walked into the blinding lights and didn't look back.