I also owe you...
May. 2nd, 2001 08:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
like_a_clown...a Coachella story!!!
So Friday night. I pack, Dave and Scott pick me up. We talk about reliigon on the way down, and I almost smack Dave for making the same gross generalizations about Christians that the bad ones do about Jews--that ALL of them carry the stereotypical bad traits that they're notorious for as a group, namely proselytizing. Also, we stopped for two and a half hours so Scott can buy clothes, even though I'm supposed to be in L.A. by 9 to call Kris; and we stop once in Montebello-ish for me to piss. I get home around 10:20, and Kris comes over about an hour later, after work. We kick it, and the next morning at seven motherfucking thirty in the morning I get up for our estimated time of departure of 8:30.
8:40 rolls around. I call Scott. "We slept in, we'll be over at 9:30."
A good chunk after 9:30, I call again. I get Dave. "Scott's in the shower, then he has to shave." Shaving Scott's face with a Gilette is like cleaning an aircraft carrier with a toothbrush.
10:30, and they're there. We have to go to the bank, though, and once we get to the bank, we have to go back to my house because in my listlessness I forgot my toiletry bag. 11 AM and we're established on the freeway. We are now set to miss the opening acts, because the show's at noon, an hour and a half to two hours away (not counting near-venue congestion, which was REALLY bad this time...more on that later) and haven't eaten yet.
After noon, we meet Dave's dad at a golf course for lunch. I can deal with free country club luncheon food, and I figure that my acts will be headlining the small stages anyway, so I'm cool with missing part of the day if I get in free anyway. Then, we go to Dave's dad's new house. It's all built and everything, and it's cool...but show time is running by now, and I want to get as much music into my day as possible. In the interest of diplomacy, however, I keep quiet--free ticket, free ticket, I think to myself behind clamped-shut jaws--and wait to get to Dave's dad's apartment, drop our stuff off, and get going.
We tour the model homes. I grow restless yet remain quiet.
Finally, we get on the road. It's now near (or after) three o' clock. We get to the apartment, stow our stuff...and Dave and Scott mill around. Dave shaves Scott's neck with a guardless clipper. I start doing what the untrained observer would recognize as the I-have-to-pee dance, but it's really the subtle variation: the I-want-to-see-Weezer dance. Left foot-right foot. Hayfoot-strawfoot.
Then--FINALLY!--we get on the road. The twoish-mile drive from the apartment to the venue takes what seems like an hour. Quite a few pedestrians pass us. We park in a dirt lot, thankfully for free. Then we get the backpacks situated with water, and Scott pulls out one of four fat...um...cigarettes that he rolled on the way down. He and Dave share, while I get out and have a couple beers with the kids in the back of a nearby pickup. Parked next to us is a girl that a now-loopy Dave becomes convinced is Meg Ryan. She is in a Beamer, but she had bluish hair. Via cell phone, she verifies for me that I am at that very moment missing Iggy Pop. I contemplate going in even though my friends lag, but I wouldn't know where to meet them to go home, so I grit my teeth and whine a little.
Then, after a false start (we bring the backpacks, and then decide on the advice of an authoritative-seeming passerby that maybe we should leave the backpacks in the car), we go in. Security lets backpacks in, and hardly pats anyone down at all. I want water already, even though I just chugged two bottles.
We pass through a tent with some ragamuffin rhymin' to a techno beat, and then spend ten minutes trying to find a schedule. We succeed. I missed Squarepusher, Plaid, Iggy, and the Dandy Warhols. I ball my fists in my pockets.
We go to the secondary outdoor stage to see Ozomatli. They rock! However, they rock in Spanish and really fast rapping, so we head over to see the Roots.
If you have never heard Rahzel, the human deejay/master beatboxer/holy-shit-worthy vocal freak, listen to a Napstered .mp3 NOW. He's fucking COOL. The rest of the Roots were cool, too, particularly the drummer (no samples! no turntables! actual AMPS!), but Rahzel...MAN.
After this, we get dinner with the promise that we'll go straight back to catch Weezer. I figure we'll miss a couple songs due to long lines, but not more due to tear down/set up times. However, the line is almost an HOUR long, and half the set's done before I've spent $10.50 for a veggie burrito, nachos, and a Coke. Surprisingly reasonable for a concert. Then, Scott and Dave stake out a warm spot on the grass--in the middle of the shopping complex--to eat dinner. During Weezer. Right next to a drum'n'bass tent. I'd pretty much given up by then, so I just listened from there. By the time we got done (in the middle of the second-to-last song, whach was Only In Dreams--sob), we went to see and couldn't see Rivers anyway. Too far. They'll tour America in support of the new album anyway.
Then, on the way to Mos Def, we meet Dave's dad...who takes. Us. Backstage.
It's really cool. Grass, palm trees, a pond, and stone paths that led ultimately to the elite-of-the-elite hideout, which is a thatched-roof hut with comfy seats and a view of the very side of the stage on which Oakenfold was weaving trance records, and the crowd, big and entranced by the laser-show. Free open bar. Free pizza. Mmmm. Two slices of pizza (I'm REALLY and happily full now), a rum and coke, a Heinie, and a fatly mixed vodka-n-cranberry later, and I am on my own separate way to see Sigur Ros and Tricky.
And about a half hour after I leave, my spirit leaves my body. A Gibson Les Paul played through a Marshall stack with a cello bow wielded by a man who manages to sound nothing like Jimmy Page...a voice that I would've recognized as that of an elfin castrati...a string section, a keyboardist, and the hardest wire-brush drumming I've ever seen...buy Sigur Ros's album NOW. I did. It is beautiful. It is sung in a mutated form of Icelandic. It was worth every one of the nineteen-hundred-fifty cents I spent on it. And I've only listened through track four.
The first song of the set was sung by a Pagan priest, if that was the same guy that's opened some other shows I read about. The blessing worked. If I were less tired at that point, I'd surely have experienced the breath-chokey feeling I always long for at shows...but I was in that surreal this-is-your-life-in-IMAX way I get. God.
Then, after their too-brief set is over, Tricky's roadies set up. And set up again. And stand around. And adjust shit. Then Tricky and band take the stage, perform three unreleased songs, one song that I hear is from Mission Accomplished, and one song that I assume is off Maxinquaye (which I do not own). Tricky speaks a total of like three smoky-throated lines. He stands around the rest of the time, soaking in the ambience generated by his band and two vocalists (and a guest emcee, one vocalist's brother). Mostly, he stands a millimeter from the bass drum. I enjoy myself anyway.
Then, I meet Scott and Dave. This is MY story, so what they did while I was gone shall be inadmissible as hearsay. We go to the big tent, where the Chemical Brothers are soaking E-tarded brains with fat, crystal-clear beats. We dance. I dance harder than they do--less tired and, um, TIRED, I guess. Dave meets up with some black-clad raver he apparently knows, but whose real name eludes him come morning. Her name, I learn, is Baby G. I dance away, and then we leave.
After the show, we drive around the back streets of Indio looking for the main avenue down which we drove on the way in. After about a half hour of traffic and backtracking, we find it. We get Winchell's donuts, which suck ASS, and while there the Spanish-speaking employee threatens to call the police because Scott took a cup from behind the counter for one of four boxes of milk (in addition to fourteen donuts) they bought. We go home. They choke down a few donuts. I check e-mail. We crash.
Sunday, we go to a sports bar (the Beer Hunter), watch the Lakers kick ass, and spend too much money on food and beer. I even leave the goddamn leftovers on the table. We make our way to SB and SLO, by way of the Cabazon outlets. Happy birthday, Darryl; we DID call you from Dave's dad's apartment, though...
Ok. Now my hands are tired. Happy now?
So Friday night. I pack, Dave and Scott pick me up. We talk about reliigon on the way down, and I almost smack Dave for making the same gross generalizations about Christians that the bad ones do about Jews--that ALL of them carry the stereotypical bad traits that they're notorious for as a group, namely proselytizing. Also, we stopped for two and a half hours so Scott can buy clothes, even though I'm supposed to be in L.A. by 9 to call Kris; and we stop once in Montebello-ish for me to piss. I get home around 10:20, and Kris comes over about an hour later, after work. We kick it, and the next morning at seven motherfucking thirty in the morning I get up for our estimated time of departure of 8:30.
8:40 rolls around. I call Scott. "We slept in, we'll be over at 9:30."
A good chunk after 9:30, I call again. I get Dave. "Scott's in the shower, then he has to shave." Shaving Scott's face with a Gilette is like cleaning an aircraft carrier with a toothbrush.
10:30, and they're there. We have to go to the bank, though, and once we get to the bank, we have to go back to my house because in my listlessness I forgot my toiletry bag. 11 AM and we're established on the freeway. We are now set to miss the opening acts, because the show's at noon, an hour and a half to two hours away (not counting near-venue congestion, which was REALLY bad this time...more on that later) and haven't eaten yet.
After noon, we meet Dave's dad at a golf course for lunch. I can deal with free country club luncheon food, and I figure that my acts will be headlining the small stages anyway, so I'm cool with missing part of the day if I get in free anyway. Then, we go to Dave's dad's new house. It's all built and everything, and it's cool...but show time is running by now, and I want to get as much music into my day as possible. In the interest of diplomacy, however, I keep quiet--free ticket, free ticket, I think to myself behind clamped-shut jaws--and wait to get to Dave's dad's apartment, drop our stuff off, and get going.
We tour the model homes. I grow restless yet remain quiet.
Finally, we get on the road. It's now near (or after) three o' clock. We get to the apartment, stow our stuff...and Dave and Scott mill around. Dave shaves Scott's neck with a guardless clipper. I start doing what the untrained observer would recognize as the I-have-to-pee dance, but it's really the subtle variation: the I-want-to-see-Weezer dance. Left foot-right foot. Hayfoot-strawfoot.
Then--FINALLY!--we get on the road. The twoish-mile drive from the apartment to the venue takes what seems like an hour. Quite a few pedestrians pass us. We park in a dirt lot, thankfully for free. Then we get the backpacks situated with water, and Scott pulls out one of four fat...um...cigarettes that he rolled on the way down. He and Dave share, while I get out and have a couple beers with the kids in the back of a nearby pickup. Parked next to us is a girl that a now-loopy Dave becomes convinced is Meg Ryan. She is in a Beamer, but she had bluish hair. Via cell phone, she verifies for me that I am at that very moment missing Iggy Pop. I contemplate going in even though my friends lag, but I wouldn't know where to meet them to go home, so I grit my teeth and whine a little.
Then, after a false start (we bring the backpacks, and then decide on the advice of an authoritative-seeming passerby that maybe we should leave the backpacks in the car), we go in. Security lets backpacks in, and hardly pats anyone down at all. I want water already, even though I just chugged two bottles.
We pass through a tent with some ragamuffin rhymin' to a techno beat, and then spend ten minutes trying to find a schedule. We succeed. I missed Squarepusher, Plaid, Iggy, and the Dandy Warhols. I ball my fists in my pockets.
We go to the secondary outdoor stage to see Ozomatli. They rock! However, they rock in Spanish and really fast rapping, so we head over to see the Roots.
If you have never heard Rahzel, the human deejay/master beatboxer/holy-shit-worthy vocal freak, listen to a Napstered .mp3 NOW. He's fucking COOL. The rest of the Roots were cool, too, particularly the drummer (no samples! no turntables! actual AMPS!), but Rahzel...MAN.
After this, we get dinner with the promise that we'll go straight back to catch Weezer. I figure we'll miss a couple songs due to long lines, but not more due to tear down/set up times. However, the line is almost an HOUR long, and half the set's done before I've spent $10.50 for a veggie burrito, nachos, and a Coke. Surprisingly reasonable for a concert. Then, Scott and Dave stake out a warm spot on the grass--in the middle of the shopping complex--to eat dinner. During Weezer. Right next to a drum'n'bass tent. I'd pretty much given up by then, so I just listened from there. By the time we got done (in the middle of the second-to-last song, whach was Only In Dreams--sob), we went to see and couldn't see Rivers anyway. Too far. They'll tour America in support of the new album anyway.
Then, on the way to Mos Def, we meet Dave's dad...who takes. Us. Backstage.
It's really cool. Grass, palm trees, a pond, and stone paths that led ultimately to the elite-of-the-elite hideout, which is a thatched-roof hut with comfy seats and a view of the very side of the stage on which Oakenfold was weaving trance records, and the crowd, big and entranced by the laser-show. Free open bar. Free pizza. Mmmm. Two slices of pizza (I'm REALLY and happily full now), a rum and coke, a Heinie, and a fatly mixed vodka-n-cranberry later, and I am on my own separate way to see Sigur Ros and Tricky.
And about a half hour after I leave, my spirit leaves my body. A Gibson Les Paul played through a Marshall stack with a cello bow wielded by a man who manages to sound nothing like Jimmy Page...a voice that I would've recognized as that of an elfin castrati...a string section, a keyboardist, and the hardest wire-brush drumming I've ever seen...buy Sigur Ros's album NOW. I did. It is beautiful. It is sung in a mutated form of Icelandic. It was worth every one of the nineteen-hundred-fifty cents I spent on it. And I've only listened through track four.
The first song of the set was sung by a Pagan priest, if that was the same guy that's opened some other shows I read about. The blessing worked. If I were less tired at that point, I'd surely have experienced the breath-chokey feeling I always long for at shows...but I was in that surreal this-is-your-life-in-IMAX way I get. God.
Then, after their too-brief set is over, Tricky's roadies set up. And set up again. And stand around. And adjust shit. Then Tricky and band take the stage, perform three unreleased songs, one song that I hear is from Mission Accomplished, and one song that I assume is off Maxinquaye (which I do not own). Tricky speaks a total of like three smoky-throated lines. He stands around the rest of the time, soaking in the ambience generated by his band and two vocalists (and a guest emcee, one vocalist's brother). Mostly, he stands a millimeter from the bass drum. I enjoy myself anyway.
Then, I meet Scott and Dave. This is MY story, so what they did while I was gone shall be inadmissible as hearsay. We go to the big tent, where the Chemical Brothers are soaking E-tarded brains with fat, crystal-clear beats. We dance. I dance harder than they do--less tired and, um, TIRED, I guess. Dave meets up with some black-clad raver he apparently knows, but whose real name eludes him come morning. Her name, I learn, is Baby G. I dance away, and then we leave.
After the show, we drive around the back streets of Indio looking for the main avenue down which we drove on the way in. After about a half hour of traffic and backtracking, we find it. We get Winchell's donuts, which suck ASS, and while there the Spanish-speaking employee threatens to call the police because Scott took a cup from behind the counter for one of four boxes of milk (in addition to fourteen donuts) they bought. We go home. They choke down a few donuts. I check e-mail. We crash.
Sunday, we go to a sports bar (the Beer Hunter), watch the Lakers kick ass, and spend too much money on food and beer. I even leave the goddamn leftovers on the table. We make our way to SB and SLO, by way of the Cabazon outlets. Happy birthday, Darryl; we DID call you from Dave's dad's apartment, though...
Ok. Now my hands are tired. Happy now?
