| Sputnikmusic
 

Posts Tagged ‘Guy Gerber’

It’s a sad fact of life that, after two full days and nights of festing and after partying in 90+ degree desert heat and an inordinate amount of substances willingly or unwillingly consumed, I’m not always going to be in tip top shape by the time Sunday of Coachella rolls around. I tell myself every year: it’s a marathon, not a spring. Rarely do I listen. So apologies, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, Hannah Wants, Noname, and Japanese Breakfast – I wanted to see you, I really did, but my body had other ideas. It didn’t help that my prediction that Sunday would an easy ride in proved horribly, horribly wrong. For no discernable reason whatsoever, event staff allowed concertgoers to wait in line for over an hour at various parking lots that ended up already being full, thus necessitating subsequent re-routing and even longer waits at other overflow lots. Not sure how this happened given the relative fluidity of previous days, but maybe there’s a lot more Eminem fans than I thought.

Luckily, Sunday’s offerings were fairly sparse compared to the abundance of riches that flowed from noon to midnight Friday and Saturday. After catching a few minutes of raucous LA garage punks FIDLAR (a left-field choice for your average Coachella attendee, but good for some chuckles and some yells), I hurried over to the Outdoor stage to see the entirety of Jessie Ware. Although technical problems delayed the start of her set and Ms.…

The worst part about Coachella 2013 was easily the dust storm that turned Sunday into a set piece from the Depression and choked the life and easy visibility out of a struggling Red Hot Chili Peppers closing set. 2014’s storm wasn’t nearly as bad; for the most part, walking around during the day Saturday felt like you were travelling on a strange, ominous alien planet, the sun reduced to a weird, haunting half-light and the wind picking up curlicues of dust seemingly at random while bits of sound escaped intermittently over the fields. That creepy feeling was magnified by the fact that everyone seemed to be running from one destination to another, as if constantly striving to avoid the almighty wrath of the weather gods/the narc chasing them. It was how I imagined walking on Mars might be, if everyone on Mars was really, really fucked up all the time.

Of course, God being the sick bastard that he is, Saturday turned out to be my favorite day of the festival. When you kick things off with a blogger’s wet dream of Foxygen, Ty Segall, and CHVRCHES on the Outdoor Stage, it’s easy to ignore the fact that your choice of t-shirt and board shorts for the day will prove quite uncomfortable against pelting sand and an insidious wind chill. Like Friday’s HAIM set, Coachella is made for a band like CHVRCHES, not quite on the verge of widespread popularity but certainly on…

STAFF & CONTRIBUTORS // CONTACT US

Bands: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z


Site Copyright 2005-2023 Sputnikmusic.com
All Album Reviews Displayed With Permission of Authors | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy