I’m just going to give you a quick blow by blow wrapping up the last two days. For everything that this festival does wrong, it does get a lot of things right, they’ve made it more comfortable than say Big Day Out for giving you easy access to decent bathrooms, water, and keeping the grounds clean. Although the prices they used to keep low have caught up to besting Disneyland, $5 for a churro? $6 for frozen lemonade? Food now clocks in at $7 for a slice of pizza, and $9 to $12 for most meals, which doesn’t include $2 for a bottle of water. Factor that into $350ish for your ticket and then hotel or camping and you’ve spent a ton of money. So I’m not going to say worth it or not, that’s all up to you and how much you love the bands, and if you and your significant other or friends can withstand what I call the ultimate relationship destroyer, a festival in this heat seems like it’s been the last straw for many of couples platonic or not.

Radiohead
Must think they’re god’s gift to music, seem so out of touch on stage, I understand they’ve maintained their relevance, but they played they sleepiest set I’ve ever seen them do for a festival crowd. I’d probably bitch if it were all wall to wall hits too, but this was not what I expected, they just seem to ride in on a high horse of their post 2000s catalog, playing all the downtempo electronics that this audience could withstand, throwing a few bones like “Karma Police” which seemed like a fierce rocker compared to 80% of what they played that night. The 2nd encore included “Exit Music” and “Paranoid Android” but if you’re going slow, then might as well get heavy, which they steered clear of almost entirely. They’re a great rock band of the past, and a decent electronic band.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor
5 film projectors mixing images live behind the band, impressive set, uneventfully good.

Bon Iver
I’m not sure how they talked 4AD into thinking this was their kind of thing, but they’re bringing home the money from what I could tell from gazing at their giant ass crowd from the other end of the field. I’m sure beautiful and what not, he’s got a song I kind of liked, but this is not my thing. To me this sounds like early My Morning Jacket, which you didn’t see 4AD tossing out contracts for that.

Jeff Mangum
I’m sure today he’s considered a forerunner to all of the painful Bon Iver style, sad folkies and Decemberists, but in my book NMH came along and wrote one of the most sweeping, beautiful and sad story albums, won’t call it a concept record, ever made. The album was subsequently discovered by hippies and fans of Bright Eyes in the early 2000s and they ran with it all the way to Burning Man and back. But I settled into this, and let go of all the bullshit, and appreciated some real fire caused by something real.

A$AP Rocky
I don’t know, A$AP Rocky, Asop Rock? This gets a sad face

Flying Lotus
Has a mainstream rave crowd, strange for a Warp Records artist, but he’s alright, not my fave but not bad.

St. Vincent
I hadn’t been won over by her in the past, but she did a great cover of The Pop Group’s “She’s Beyond Good & Evil.” I was impressed by her set.

Buzzcocks

fIREHOSE

Santigold

At The Drive-In
It’s like slightly better emo/hardcore, they built a huge career off of one big hit.

tUnE-yArDs
Always seemed super overrated to me, like a much less interesting Dirty Projectors, who I could barely get half a chub for in the first place.

Kasabian
Fucking bravado, heavy and dark, good balance use of electronics. Felt like all their songs were written in front of festival crowds for maximum impact. You have to like that psychedelic brit pop sound to appreciate this, but they put on a stomping and damning set that lived up to their tough talk.

The Shins
Could probably start calling themselves The Panty Liners, I don’t know what these guys are doing, they put out a fluke lo-fi album and then a bunch of super watered down indie top 40 LPs and one of the worst collabs I’ve ever heard with that Broken Bells shit. This is a machine used for making money. This also gets a sad face

SBTRKT

David Guetta

Flo & Her Machine
Giving mainstream ladies a new less interesting Tori Amos, with less depth and dimension to her music. Huge fucking crowd for a 2nd stage set.

Justice
Big overblown basslines, but always enjoy their halloween vibe to their french flavored house.

Growlers
Great band, Ariel Pink seems like their cousin, but they come from 60s surf garage, where as he lives in late 70s/early 80s soft rock.

Dre & Snoop
They should probably have done this years ago, but when you’re a producer, you obviously don’t want to be much of a performer, just enough to launch your artists and sit back and let the checks roll in. They put on a good show, with every major star associated with Dre from the last 20 years. Good set, not an eminem fan at all, gets a 9.2 with a .8 deduction for his inclusion.

Day -1 Filter Party/Coachella Editorial
http://ivacationinyourhell.wordpress.com/2012/04/24/coachella-report-part-1-i-vacation-in-your-coac-hell-a/

Day 1
http://ivacationinyourhell.wordpress.com/2012/04/25/coachella-report-part-2-i-vacation-in-your-coac-hell-a/

I didn’t know what this shit was about, but I’ll tell you, if I didn’t hate life I would have loved this party. It was set at some landlocked party spot called “the something something Yacht Club,” it was this beautiful lake thing with a dock, I guess for RC Yachts? Who knows, but they were generous and put on a good event.

Which brings me to Class Actress, I thought they’d be some overhyped XMU thing, but honestly I was impressed by their tiny arena stage performance on the Filter lawn. Great synth work, an actual analog being played live (which is rare these days), well constructed basslines and melodies. They may sound a little fluffy for you, who is vacationing in my hell, hate me for this if you want, but they were good live, and I think it comes across well recorded, shit that I like to dance to and express my unspeakable desires through.

More to be discussed, part two will be posted soon, where the bashing begins.

So it has been three months since my last “A Collection” post…These are my favorite posts and while they take forever to make, I honestly believe that the more time that goes by, the better these posts turn out to be. I made a promise to Veronica that I would have finished it three weeks ago and here it is. Better late than never.

This collection was created with the theme of being selfless. I never make up these themes beforehand. It is only when I can look through it as a whole that I begin to notice these patterns that arise out of the photographs. I am talking about the Japan Relief and TOMS’ One Day Without Shoes. Sometimes, giving back feels so much larger than us that we are overwhelmed by it, but there are much smaller ways to contribute. You can give back to the people you already know in even the simplest ways.

Prada

This is Indexed

Kirsten Dunst having a tea party with a stuffed elephant for Boy by Band of Outsiders. [Source]

We Hate Sundays

King said in an interview that this photograph was taken as he tried to explain to his daughter Yolanda why she could not go to Funtown, a whites-only amusement park in Atlanta. King claims to have been tongue-tied when speaking to her. “One of the most painful experiences I have ever faced was to see her tears when I told her Funtown was closed to colored children, for I realized the first dark cloud of inferiority had floated into her little mental sky.”

I’m selling my ticket to Brochella for $.08. Call 1-800-boring-music to get yours.

This was too good not to repost…

Now that both Coachella and Bonnaroo have released the bulk of their lineups, one can’t help but think of how these stack up against that “dream” lineup that all of us have been lusting after (my fingers crossed for Lolla).  In contrast, here is one that recently popped up via our friend Carles at Hipster Runoff (“a blog worth blogging about”).  I thought it was timely given that none of the bands listed no longer are.  Somehow however many of these performers have gained the frenzied maniacal cult status usually reserved for the Grateful Dead or Rocky Horror Picture Show.  Or MMA.

Peruse this at your leisure, and compare it to the actual Coachella (pretty decent - KOL and Kanye notwithstanding) lineup, and ask yourself, really ask yourself, just how many years of your life you’ve wasted on the Dave Matthews Band.

(Cue up fiery pro-DMB comments….now)

J1

Oh, and of course, a song for the day!  How about a whole album?  Enjoy this one, it’s a scorcher:

Gil Scott-Heron and Jamie xx – We’re New Here (the remixes)

Holy fuck I’m laughing pretty hard right now. The sad part is half these bands are gonna call each other after seeing this and figure out if they can make it happen for real. The even sadder part is there’s a whole lotta people out there that would enjoy this line up.