Dudes, where's our car?: 31 hours at Coachella

It's all very '90s out in the California desert

By Joe Gross
AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Sunday, June 17, 2007

INDIO, Calif. —

Part 1: 'California/knows how to party.'

Careering down Interstate 10 in a rented black Mustang at speeds nearing 90 mph under an utterly cloudless sky, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five's "White Lines" blasting out of the stereo, a single thought dominates one's mind: This is why God created California.

I was lead-footing it toward the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, perhaps the premier three-day music festival in the States. Held nearly every year since 1999 (organizers took 2000 off), the festival has grown from a single-day affair into a high-gloss, Southern California weekend of big bands and bigger stars (Scarlett Johansson! Jessica Alba! Danny DeVito!).

I was at Coachella and in its environs for a mere 31 hours — 9 a.m. April 27 to 4 p.m. April 28— a surgical strike (well, more of a mosey, really) into the land of the beautiful people, which in this case seemed to include pretty much everybody there.

After cruising by the spectacular wind farms and less-spectacular mini-malls of the Inland Empire desert hills, I met up with the New York colleagues on whose hotel room floor I would be crashing. We piled into another rental and headed over to the fest.

This was a bit easier said than accomplished. Coachella offers free parking, which means everybody drives to the site. About 65,000 patrons attend Coachella each day, and even if you assume three to a car, that's still more than 20,000 vehicles that need space, 20,000 vehicles that dump into a single lane, and then a double lane, and then back to a single lane that stretched more than a mile.

After an hour, we settled the car in well-manicured field, next to some girls who were unloading what looked like Rice Krispies treats out of their trunk.

"Hi," one said brightly. "You guys wanna buy some ganja treats? I baked them with my mom last night!"

Welcome to Coachella.

Part 2: 'No beer/Cavalier'

Coachella is based on the same basic theory as Austin City Limits Music Festival: multiple stages spread out across hundreds of acres. There's a food court with $7 burgers and $2 water; a beer, wine, booze and Red Bull garden out of which one may not take one's drink; and a whole mess of temporary art installations spread around the campus.

Maybe it's because this is California, but this is one of the best-groomed rock festivals I have ever seen. There was a giant camping area, and that probably got pretty funky pretty fast, but there were surprisingly few crusty-looking patrons.

Of course, it was only Day One.

Part 3: 'No one's gonna/ STOP!'

Perhaps fittingly, the first band we heard was Satellite Party, the new project from former Jane's Addiction/Porno For Pyros frontman Perry Farrell, whose Lollapalooza launched the modern American alternative music festival scene.

Satellite's sound is heavier and more flagrantly rock than Porno, which means the new band can cover Jane's songs and not make them sound like a Hawaiian Tropic ad. Think of Satellite Party as Farrell's Wings to Jane's Beatles — there's even a Linda McCartney spot (Farrell's wife, Etty Lau, sings background vocals).

Not the most thrilling stuff, but it was fitting that a '90s icon was playing so early. Coachella feels like a very '90s festival, recalling a weird era when it seemed actual social change would happen if everyone just showed up, looked cool and listened to the right bands.

Ha!

More compelling was Of Montreal, the indie rock stars whose album "Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?" is one of the year's critical smashes. Decked out in glammy costumes and runny makeup, Montreal songwriter Kevin Barnes led his outfit through a meaty set of noisy, vaguely psychedelic guitar pop.

An appalling mix, always a danger at these things, didn't help the band's opening salvos, but when they hammed down into a three-guitar, elf-powered rock machine, these indie fops du jour turned in a mighty racket. (Word to guitarist Bryan Poole: Not everyone can make angel wings work. Nice job!)

The less said about Silversun Pickups' dull, blaring set on the main stage, the better. Suffice to say, grunge isn't even close to dead.

Amy Winehouse, on the other hand, is wrigglingly alive. Decked out in tank top, Daisy Dukes and roughly beehived hair, Winehouse over-packed the Gobi tent.

While Winehouse played the diva, a full soul band, complete with choreographed background singers, ran through some of the ringers on her debut album and an unexpected and on-point cover of Lauryn Hill's "Doo Wop (That Thing)." Clearly, she should have been on the main stage, and Silversun should have been banished to the Gobi.

The Arctic Monkeys proved that you could get the crowd moving with a good drummer and frantic, barely there, spit-and-bailing wire song-shapes. The cult hit "I'll Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor" proved a sing-along, while I found my $7 burger (and watching Danny DeVito buy one) more compelling.

Part 4: 'Makes you wanna blow the stars from the sky'

The big names, the folks people really came to see, started after 7 p.m. when the Jesus and Mary Chain took the stage.

The seminal noise-pop outfit disintegrated in an ugly mess in 1998, when guitarist William Reid stormed off an L.A. stage, leaving his brother, singer Jim, to finish the tour with the band. Not a good look.

It had been 17 years since I'd seen the Mary Chain (March 2, 1990, Liner Auditorium, Nine Inch Nails opened). Their acne-riddled howl, the sound of Phil Spector records done in with a chainsaw, was a root integer of my black-clad youth. Many acts have tried to look like they don't care up there, but nobody ever looked as disinterested in anything as the Mary Chain. They looked capital doing it, too.

So it was a little silly to hope for transcendence, or even both of the brothers to, you know, look happy to be there. Instead we got a mess of great singles propelled by an excellent drummer (dude handled the trip-hop beats on "Reverence" brilliantly), a solid backing band, singer Jim Reid and his cheekbones hitting all the right notes and a pudgy, almost lifelike William Reid on lead guitar.

Or maybe they were just nervous. As Jim put it, surveying the massive crowd, "this is (expletive) unreal." These guys haven't been onstage together, let alone in a front of tens of thousands, since 1998.

Opening with "Never Understand," the Mary Chain chugged through all the hits thirtysomethings covet, including "Head On," a limpid "Sidewalking" and "Some Candy Talking." The bass sound moved from nonexistent to filling-rattling, but it's entirely possible they didn't notice. Noticing stuff is not high on the Reids' skill set.

And holy cow, there's Scarlett Johansson singing back-up on "Just Like Honey" (the closing song from "Lost in Translation"). Just so you don't get too jealous, know that she wore an inner ear monitor for the single-easiest chorus since "Hey Jude." Also, the JumboTron adds about 20 pounds.

Oh, whom are we kidding? It was a perfect Hollywood moment, schoomzy and fun and mostly on key.

Part 5: 'The greatest people in the world/all springing up and feeling fine'

Despite technical misfires that caused the singer to eventually call the guitarist "cursed," the most dynamic and emotionally sophisticated set belonged to former Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker.

Playing an acoustic guitar now and then, Cocker yammered a lot, jumped about quite a bit for a guy who's 6'6", apologized for the late start ("because it's rude") and came off as both a consummate entertainer and pleasantly humane in songs such as the complicated "Big Julie," "Don't Let Him Waste Your Time" and "Happy Weather."

He introduced "One Man Show," an ode to men who want to be single and "free" and end up at home by themselves on a Saturday night ordering a lot of takeout, by admitting that the song was about him a few years back.

He closed with the stellar ballad "(Expletives) Are Still Running the World," his best slice of cranky political pop since 1995's watershed "Common People."

For a festival filled with '90s relics, on Friday, Cocker came off as the one most deserving of a second act.

Part 6: 'Wind is whippin' through my/ stupid mop'

Sonic Youth's set, on the other hand, felt like just another show, a missed opportunity from a band that usually knows how to play up a big moment. Or maybe they were just tired, having just gotten back from a tour in China.

Universal Records is scheduled to release an expanded reissue of Sonic Youth's 1988 watershed "Daydream Nation" this year, and some patrons were hoping for a set drawn mostly from that still-bracing album.

They opened with a somewhat lackluster version of "Candle," but instead of continuing with "Daydream" classics, they jumped all over the place, breaking out unremarkable takes on newer jams ("Incinerate," "Do You Believe In Rapture?") and the execrable grunge-era misfire "100%."

It was a blown save from a band capable of perfect innings.

Part 7: 'Good night everybody, everybody everywhere'

By this time, the serious fatigue had set in, the 100-degree heat having taken its toll. My boon companions, at the fest for the duration, were ready to split.

So we saw only the smallest sliver of Friday headliner Björk.

There were costumes, there was an opening ballad in Icelandic before a stomping "Army of Me" and, for all we knew, her producer Timbaland appeared via hologram.

Then we realized we weren't sure where the car was.

We hadn't noticed that the parking lots were numbered. But there were also no markers inside the lots telling you where you were.

Half an hour later, we found it, mostly thanks to one of our party remembering what a particular mural looked like.

In fact, accounts of three-hour waits to park popped up on the Internet virtually overnight. As one patron put in on a Mary Chain message board, "Whomever is running Coachella's parking has no idea what they are doing. I was a ground transportation coordinator at the port of Los Angeles so I have some skills in that area. Coachella is a joke and I will never, EVER, no matter who is playing, go again."

Seven hours later, three of them spent asleep, I was back in the Mustang, heading to the airport in Ontario, Calif., 31 hours of Coachella in the rearview mirror.

As are the '90s it celebrates.

jgross@statesman.com 912-5926