Contributing writer Marcy Bulkeley
reports! Below we're featuring one day of her fantasic Coachella
coverage (words and videos). Check out the rest of her Coachella
experience and other blogs after you're done here at her site benzaitenmusic.com
Hey yo, it's just another bombtrack... ughh!
Hey yo, it's just another bombtrack... yeah!
It goes a-1, 2, 3...
This is how I got my self amp'd up Sunday morning, the day Rage Against
the Machine was to be reunited, jumping around, reciting only the
few lyrics that I could remember to various Rage songs, and reminiscing
about my angsty teenage years. Ahhhh, the rage... I wasn't this excited
about them pre-Sunday, but walking from the car to the main entrance,
hearing car stereos blasting Rage's most known songs brought me back
12 years, and that is enough to get a 90's teen stoked on the reunion.
The crowd on Sunday was ummm... different, than the Saturday crowd.
There were Rage fans camped out by the main stage all day in record
breaking high temps, most of them in black. They were fans enough
to endure the music of Lupe Fiasco, and Crowded House (whom I hear
had stuff thrown at them by the anxiously waiting Rage fans), JUST
to secure their spot for the show. These people were there for one
purpose, and that was to see Rage.
But not me! I had loads of artists I wanted to see, and some I didn't even know I wanted to see until I saw them! Like Tonegent said, the beauty of Coachella is you never actually know what you're going to see until you see it.
SUNDAY
Kid Beyond - I caught
the last song in beat boxer Kid Beyond's set, which was a bummer,
but at least it was his rendition of Portishead's "Wandering Star".
His beats are spot on, and his voice is soulful, he does the song
justice. I couldn't find a video of him doing it at Coachella, but
I have this one for you...
Lupe Fiasco - I'm
really glad that Lupe Fiasco was as good as he was, considering
his people were responsible for getting us into coachella on Sunday
and I would have felt awkward giving him a negative report. There
wasn't a ton of Hip-Hop at coachella this year and he was a good
choice for the artists they decided to include. He had great energy,
smoooth and thoughtful rhymes, super hot beats and his charismatic
hype'n had the audience bump'n. The Gorrillaz "Feel Good Inc" was
used as a backing track for one of his songs. Here is a video of
him Effn
F Up
Explosions
In The Sky - A really pleasant surprise. They were perfectly
scheduled at 4pm. I wasn't all that familiar with them. Relying
on guitars, bass, and drums, and no vocals, they are a moody and
dynamic instrumental indie rock band whose dramatic yet reflective
performance was exactly where my head was at that point in the day.
Junior Boys - Sexy
time! I love the Junior Boys, and they sounded fantastic. We caught
a couple of their songs, most importantly "In The Morning", "The
Equalizer" and "Birthday". Their sound was lush and sexy. I'm going
to post 1.5 videos for you so you can kind of feel like you were
there for it, because they were really good.
The Roots - I've seen
The Roots a couple of times and they are consistently solid. Their
Cooachella performance wasn't bad, it just had an undeniable sense
of activism with Hendrix's "Machine Gun" , Bob Dylan's "Master's
of War" set to the "Star Spangled Banner", and a cover of Jungle
Boogie (what? boogie'n is active). They did all very well, they
had their own funk flare and rocked it, but the group went a bit
skimpy on their own material. They did throw in "The Seeds" though,
which brought the hip back into the hop again.
Willie Nelson and
Family - Brothers, Sister, and Sons along with Willie Nelson
. Willie's set was probably the most laid back fun for me. (Teddybears
come close, but we'll get to that later). His son Lucas's song was
my personal favorite,his guitar skills were impressive.
He has so much charisma and good, fun energy,he was obviously having
a great time up there performing for everyone.
At this point we wandered over to the dome to see Cut
Chemist who I was really looking forward to seeing, but unfortunatley
he was in the dome, a stage WAY too small for his turntable performance
style. We left after hearing the sound quality, which is too bad
because I heard it got better and his set was amazing.
AIR- 1/2 hour
late going on, no sound check, terrible sound quality and an 8 song
set.I'm glad they have a tour going on and didn't fly to the US
just for Coachella, because these Frenchies would have been tres
mal. I mean NOTHING about the set sounded good. I am glad I experienced
them at the Bowl a couple years back. I guess that show will have
to hold me over for a while since LA loses out on having them back
to the bowl this year.
I won't even show you a clip...I'll just show you the highlight
of my experience at the Air stage...
Yep, that is me and Gary Dourdan aka CSI Warrick Brown. I am a ridiculous
CSI fan, so this pretty much made my entire month of April and probably
May.
Teddybears - When
you go to coachella, you hope that there is at least ONE performance
that catches you off guard and blows you away, that is exactly what
Teddybears did. We found them on accident, I hadn't planned on even
seeing them b/c I knew their song "Cobra Style" and didn't really
care too much about it. But we were on our way to The
Rapture, trying to figure out if we were really going to walk
all the way down to the Sahara tent and then have to walk back to
main stage for Rage (ooh, rhyme'y). We were all still disapointed
from Chemist, and Air, when all of a sudden this surge of the most
rocktronic music we've heard in a while, starts up. We look to the
left and see men with Teddybear heads performing in front of a screen
projecting classic movie's."Clockwork Orange", 'The Shining","Easy
Rider" "Taxi Driver", "The Warriors"clips shown with teddybear heads
superimposed onto the main character's bodies. I hear this is their
normal show, but it was the MOST entertaining thing I saw all day,
every type of stimuli you can imagine. Their album Soft
Machine is worth buying, but if you can see them live, DO IT.
RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE - I
stayed for about 6 songs and was satisfied, so we left. It was a
"Rage for Dummies" intro. The foursome tore into staples like "Testify,"
"Bulls on Parade," "People of the Sun" and "Guerrilla Radio" to
one of the largest main stage crowds in the event's history.They
played "Bombtrack" early enough for me to shout out loud to. The
one song I was hoping to see live was "Killing in the name of",
unfortunatley for me that was the finale... I was able to find it
on Youtube though... let's watch it together...
The sound is a little off in the begining, but it gets back on track.
That's it! My story is finished. I had a fun time, and would like
to thank all who where there with me to make it a thouroughly positive
experience!
Now back to our regularly scheduled programming... next up...?
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