Attention, cracker-ass crackers! The 2010 Coachella poster is here! Stop doing your day job and read it.
Day 1: Anyone remember the controversy surrounding Jigga at Glastonbury, the traditionally rock-centric music festival in England? Noel Gallagher said that it was wrong to have a rap act headline. And if you have the HD cable station Palladia, you know he was right. Jay-Z is a spectacular career artist with at least 25 good songs under his belt. They all sound bad live. All rap does. The rappers always shout their rhymes, as their hype-man shouts along. It sounds like people rapping over the studio track at a party, particularly because you’re surrounded by thousands of white people doing exactly that. Jay-Z should not be enjoyed in the presence of Animal Collective fans, although I would like to see Animal Collective fans at an actual Jay-Z concert. (We’ll see just how ironically hilarious a thin man with a scraggly beard saying, “Nigga what?! Nigga who?!” really is then.) Panning down, I see LCD Soundsystem has second billing. Night one: strike two. LCD Soundsystem is fucking awful. Anything that references Daft Punk lyrically (like this goon) or sonically (like Justice) can never be good. You’re just going to remind me that I could actually be listening to Daft Punk instead of your noise. “Daft Punk is playing at my house”? Mine, too! Unlike your albums, both of which I own and never, ever, ever play. Next. I have never heard a Them Crooked Vultures song, but given Josh Homme’s involvement, I’d assume they have a couple killer tunes sandwiched between garbage. Let me know, Starzlife readers! Line three: Vampire Weekend (good), Deadmau5 (I like electronic music), Public Image Limited (good enough I guess, but also who the fuck cares) and the Specials (who the fuck cares). Of the 35 remaining day 1 acts, two are good: The Cribs, whose last album was terrible, and Echo and the Bunnymen, who are wildly overrated but at least have enough good songs to string together a solid festival set.
Day 2: Muse. Well, fine. They’re amazing live and they have a ton of great songs, though I haven’t listened to the last album at length. Then you get Faith No More and Tiësto, I hope on the same stage at the same time, because watching the near-50-years-old goofballs in that punk/prog/jazz-fusion ensemble try to rock out over an unrelenting deep house beat and lose would amuse me. A little. Of the 42 remaining acts, 4 are good: MGMT, 2ManyDJ’s, Major Lazer, and the Raveonettes. Oh, and Les Claypool of course! Man, that guy is just the funkiest. (I’m kidding. Not about him being the funkiest – he is – about him being listenable.)
Day 3: Gorillaz. Ugh. Pavement. (Never got into them.) Thom Yorke. Ugggh. I can’t believe Julian Casablancas is listed fourth-tier on this day. The four great songs on his solo album are better than the entire catalog of Gorillaz and Thom Yorke combined. Hey, Orbital is on this night. It’s nice of the Coachella promoters to provide one act nightly that you can drop bomb E too, provided you can still actually still score real MDMA in 2010 and you don’t mind giving yourself permanent synaptic damage by rolling on E in the desert when it’s 103 degrees at night. Oh, man, Hadouken! are on this night. They’re this ridiculous group of screaming English teenagers that sound like rave rap from a war-torn future. Guess what? They’re better than Grizzly Bear. There are no other good bands on this night. And don’t holler at me about Sunny Day Real Estate. I like “Seven,” sure, but my parents never beat me and weren’t alcoholics. (Okay, fine, my dad wasn’t an alcoholic.)
This lineup blows. I hope Sasquatch up here in the Pacific Northwest is better.
I disagree on a few points. James Murphy of LCD is fucking hot, and his music isn’t bad. Pavement is the shit and should be headlining that night (The Gorillaz??? C’mon). And Sunny Day Real Estate and Thom Yorke will both be worth watching. Sucks that the only heavy bands I know on the list are Dillinger Escape Plan and Baroness.
Overall though, even if I lived right next door, I wouldn’t pay the money to go.