Coachella 2006

This shit is pretty addictive. Coffee has turned into cocktails. There is still plenty to discuss. Bloc Party is flying through "Banquet" right now.

Last year, I had a bad idea. The Mars Volta was playing Electric Factory in Philadelphia, soon after that or right before that announcement we heard that Audioslave was playing the Friday night right before it. We're down in Arlington, so the drive to Philly to make it all happen didn't seem all that crazy. On top of this, the Marlins were in town to play the Phils, so there was an outside chance that we would get to see Dontrelle Willis pitch. Too easy. We ended up following through on all of it. Caught Audioslave, caught a Phils game (missed Dontrelle by a day), heckled Eagles fans wearing the "then-not-so-obnoxious-TO-jerseys," caught The Mars Volta on Sunday, hit up Geno's, and got pretty shamboozled. Somehow we made it back and showed up to work on Monday (TMV ended at around midnight). Although it was a pretty brutal drive, it was nothing compared to the Wolfmother's-playing-in-Brooklyn-I-have-to-work-tomorrow-in-DC-drive that I conducted a few Sundays back. If that show wasn't the illest thing this side of The National playing Black Cat, I would have flown off the Jersey Turnpike when those exits start getting few and far between on the southern tip. But, the show kicked ass, I was juiced up, some Starbucks cold bevies added some fuel to the fire and I made it. I digress.

Does anyone else hear Bruce Springsteen inside The Hold Steady? Just a little? I digress, again.

What does this have to do with Coachella? Plenty. Coachella was another bad idea between me and the fellow Bastards. I had to work late one night and I was tooling around on Ticketmaster for no reason other than comparing exorbitant services, fees, and surcharges and I came across Coachella. At that point, I hadn't looked into the festival or checked out the lineup, for the simple fact that I didn't think it would be feasible. I think there is also some sort of self monitoring that goes on inside me that avoids looking at things like Coachella for the simple fact that I might not have the money, and once I look at, I know I will do everything possible to go. Especially when Tool is headlining. Not to mention Madonna, Bloc Party, Massive Attack, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Editors, stellastar*, Depeche Mode, White Rose Movement, Eagles of Death Metal, Daft Punk, Franz Ferdinand, Wolf Parade, Ted Leo/Pharmacists (still pissed I missed you last night at Black Cat...did anyone catch it? fill us in...), Nine Black Alps, the Zutons, and Wolfmother.

The self monitoring just went to shit.

I woke up the next morning and emailed Top. The subject line was probably something along the lines of "RE: Bad idea no. 26,784,093." My next step was emailing Frat. He is currently embedded with the Iraqi military, helping them out, training them, etc. I knew that his mid-tour leave was coming up soon, so I figured why not. The next day I received an email from him that said: "i was thinking of going to that actually...i just didnt get a chance to tell you about it./ i dont have much time to write.../ but my leave dates start on april 24th...so i could make the dates.../ let me know if this is going to happen...cause if it/ is...IM IN!!/-frat." Fate intervenes once again. It wasn't the first time Frat and I were on the same train of thought in different cars. And I am sure it won't be the last. This was the icing on the cake.

Simple steps followed: talk to the boss. Get the Friday before and the Monday after off. Get tickets. From here it is drinking from a fire hose. Cahuilla was booked up, and that seems to be the big party spot for campers, etc. We looked into Joshua Tree and all sorts of different options, thing was that we jumped on the tickets and soon realized that the hotels were booked solid in the weeks following the lineup announcement. We even looked into people that were putting their houses up for rent ($900 for the weekend, no more than 4 people...yeah, that would be bad idea no. #26,784,094). My funniest venture into lodging options was exploring what was available at the "clothing optional" and/or "gay-friendly" hotels in Palm Springs. They had some pretty humorous ads and I talked to some of the guys over the phone and they were laughing at me telling me that they were booked up for a few weeks at that point. They also busted my chops about how bad I needed a place to stay and whether or not I would ever entertain staying at their hotel if it wasn't for Coachella. Good times.

We decided to all get the on-site camping pass for $35 as a back-up plan. If anything opened up, we would jump on it. Other than that we are all pretty amped up to get out there. It is hard to believe it is just a little over a month away. Currently Frat, one of his friends from Jacksonville, FL, Top, and Callo are going to make it. We are still waiting for word from JQ on whether or not the Quinnebago will make a grand entrance. He finally replaced the boat engine in his RV with a real RV engine. I shit you not. The thing had a boat engine in it. At any rate, he told me that it can't get above 50 mph most days, so the drive from Lawton, OK to Indio, CA might prove to be a little much on the Quinnebago.

Anyone else doing the Coachella thing this year? What are your plans? Where are you staying? Who are you looking forward to seeing? Top and I are going to have a pretty solid background going in. By the time we get to Indio we will have seen:

Hard-Fi, Living Things, Wolfmother, Franz Ferdinand, Eagles of Death Metal, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Wolf Parade, Editors, stellastar*, James Blunt, and possibly Art Brut. We will also head into it with a solid background in Depeche Mode, My Morning Jacket, the Walkmen, White Rose Movement, the Zutons, Madonna, Tool (any chance for "Ticks and Leeches"?), Bloc Party, Sleater-Kinney, Mogwai, Gnarls Barkley ("Crazy" is on heavy rotation right now), Ted Leo / Pharmacists, and the Subways.

Not bad. I am pretty psyched to see Nine Black Alps, the free download from iTunes has me ready to pull the trigger on the rest of the album. Is it just me or are we seeing a little grunge resurgence? Living Things has its moments in Nirvana-dom (see: "March In Daylight") and Nine Black Alps on "Cosmopolitan" has that heavy, fuzz feel to it at times. Granted, the vocals and riff to "Cosmopolitan" lend more to the brit-pop a la Franz Ferdinand school than anything else...but, I still feel Seattle in that song...somewhere out on the periphery, maybe. It might be the lyrics: "we'll be dead by sunrise."

Oddly enough "Mardy Bum" just turned up in the shuffle (see below).