Coachella Day 1

 Hey Yall--
First of all you can check out all my photos from this and the coming posts here (I took over 300 but most of them weren't that great).
Yeasayer
So I arrived at the Empire Polo Club (the grounds that Coachella is on) at around 3:30, and after cutting about two and a half hours of line and avoiding the logistics nightmare, I made it to the Mojave tent just before Yeasayer started playing (they started at 4:20), so I was towards the back.  They packed the tent commanded the stage well and definitely got the crowd in a trance by starting with the slow, distorted opener from Odd Blood, "The Children."  At times, the synths didn't quite come through and the vocals sounded a little overwhelmed by the drums, but overall they played a crowd pleasing psych show, my personal favorites being their tried and true songs "2080" and "Ambling Alp."  Unfortunately, it was during the day and at Coachella, so the crowd wasn't treated to their signature light show, but it was still a very enjoyable first concert, even if it wasn't a perfect show.

Photo by Yours Truly

 Afterwards, I wandered into the Sahara Tent (the electro/rave/dub tent) for a few minutes of Aeroplane, which was essential just some good DJ-ing, but the tent wasn't packed as it would be for the rest of the weekend and the crowd wasn't as into it, so it just sort of felt like any other set by an electro/DJ artist.  When they did their remix of Friendly Fire's "Paris" they did get the energy levels up.

I saw one song by Ra Ra Riot, so I don't really have too much to say, except they looked like they were 16!

Then I saw the Specials, a really big ska band from the 80's (I did not know that, my friend told me that... I don't know if you guys knew or not so I included it...).  They had lots of energy and they were very danceable (I mean they are a ska band come on), but it didn't stand out to me in particular to write about on this blog, just because I don't love to listen to ska when it's not live.

Unfortunately, after that I had to miss two bands I would have loved to write about on here, Passion Pit and Grizzly Bear.  Over the course of the weekend I saw lots of bands that my friend didn't want to see, so I saw some bands he wanted to see.  We each tried some new stuff.  In this case it was Them Crooked Vultures.  It wasn't my style of music (harder rock), but it was certainly fun to see just because the crowd was really into it, plus John Paul Jones (of Led Zeppelin for my less musically educated readers) can rip it up on any instrument whatsoever, and Dave Grohl (of Nirvana) is such a rocker that it was still pretty fun, despite the loss.

LCD Soundsystem

Photo by Sam Wolk (the Teenage Elephant)

This was a show I was dying to see for pretty much ever, as LCD Soundsystem was one of the first bands that I liked when I started liking the music I like now when I got the album Sound of Silver when it first came out.  The show featured some of James Murphy's goofy antics, an all white getup and some excellent music.  The songs really emphasized the band's style of using repetitive drum beats for minutes on end and vocals that are usually essentially just spoken and then repeated in a shout.  If you dig LCD's style than the show was awesome; the music grooved like no other and everybody was dancing under a massive disco ball that hung over an otherwise sparsely lit stage.  At the back of the stage, Jay-Z's equipment loomed in the background, and when James Murphy was told he only had time for one more song when he still had three left, he went into a nearly 15 minute long rendition of "Yeah" that to me seemed essentially like a big "Fuck You Jay-Z" as people in the crowd either starting throwing up the Jay-Z diamond or dancing like there was no tomorrow.  After that he played yet another song, "New York I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down" before yielding the stage to Jay-Z's roadies.  The best songs were definitely "Yeah" and the always moving "All My Friends."  Other favorites were the new song "I Can Change" and the long, comedic "Losing My Edge."  Unfortunately he didn't play "Someone Great," the first song I ever heard by him and one of my all time favorite songs.

After that, unfortunately I didn't get to see Vampire Weekend (my friend really dislikes them, so we didn't see them), but hearing them from afar they did sound like they put on a good live show.

Sahara Tent
After we went to LCD we went to Sahara.  This is when the tent starting heating up, both literally and figuratively (even though it was 11 at night).  The tent was absolutely packed when we got there with Benny Benassi mid way through his set; there must have been about 20,000 people there.  Lemme tell you (it's hard to say that without sounding pretty stupid...) this tent is all about partying and nailing the bass drops.  It was very fun, though nothing in particular to write about, besides the fact that you get REALLY tired.  We left at around 11:30, which was before Deadmau5 went on, which we would have liked to have seen but we were just too tired and we knew we would have a big day on Saturday.  We then saw a couple of Jay-Z songs and left.

So despite missing a few bands and not seeing too many shows, Friday was an enjoyable day and served as great warmup for the front row madness that would be Saturday and Sunday.

--A Teenage Elephant

PS Yall should check out the Antlers cover of The xx... very interesting.