more coachella

this year turned out to be a lot more about the people than the music, at least for me. perhaps that had something to do with the excellent company (from Davis, from NYC, from LA, from SF, etc.)

or the fact that my back hurt and i sat down and talked with friends most of the night while music played above me. maybe this is how short people feel.

for me, the two musical highlights split dance and rock.

on Saturday night, when the big tom tom drums started in during There There, HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE. How can something so good be a 'walking disaster'? Answer: It's fucking not.

and then Sunday night, with Michelle the best hugger in the world, Basement Jaxx going off on 'Where's Your Head At?', replete with 10,000 bouncing maniacs offstage, and 10 gorilla suited people dancing onstage.

side note: my friend Tess's boss was one of the gorillas. he asked her after the show if she had seen him onstage. how would i know, asked Tess.

more soon...

MSNBC - Rock's Big Bounce: "Have you ever been outside in 106-degree heat? The air is crushing. You dehydrate instantly. You fantasize about cooler places, like Arizona. In 106-degree heat, the average indie-rock fan?thin, brittle, white as chalk?will spontaneously burst into flames. So it was a shock when 60,000 of them braved the elements recently for the Coachella music festival outside Los Angeles. Two days, all outdoors, all to see 82 bands with names that sound like parodies of band names: Death Cab for Cutie, Broken Social Scene, the Flaming Lips and one that could've been the festival's motto: ... And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead. (Yes, that's a real band. And yes, they're good.) Two years ago, the indie-rock scene was sputtering. Coachella was a quirky, decently attended event. And now? 'I had no idea it was such a big deal,' says Death Cab frontman Ben Gibbard. 'We were touring in Japan beforehand and people kept telling us they were flying from Japan to be at Coachella.'"