Report Back From Coachella: Days 2 & 3

DAY TWO: With dirty feet and sore muscles—and perhaps a touch of heatstroke—I wanted to be able to tell you that Prince was awful. Day two at Coachella brought his Royal Purpleness, and a sick part of me wanted to report that he took the money—a reported $4.8 million—and ran, back to his jeweled Minneapolis palace in a car made of whatever gems or natural metals are actually purple.

Truth is, Prince was brilliant. Astonishing. I’d already decided that hearing the guitar solo on “Purple Rain” amid tens of thousands of fellow acolytes beneath the palm trees and the flight patterns was going to be one of the highlights of the weekend, and it was. But it didn’t end there.

Prince opened with a little help from his friends, starting with “Jungle Love” - including that dance - performed with Morris Day and the Time, followed by Sheila E’s wild percussion on “The Glamorous Life”, before ever launching into one of his own hits.

A hits-heavy set that included “1999", “Controversy” and “Little Red Corvette,” Prince also busted out blistering covers of All Points West headliner Radiohead’s “Creep” and an anti-war tinged “Come Together” by the Beatles.

That monumental end capped a day of monumental music, with Portishead’s return to live action every bit as breathtaking as anyone could have dreamed. MGMT and Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks hit the extremes of psychedelia, with the latter’s guitar jams causing a kid who looked like Notorious Byrd Brothers-era Chris Hillman to writhe on the ground at the Outdoor Tent, peering intently at handfuls of grass with wild eyes.

Kate Nash packed the Mojave Tent, while both Hot Chip and an anarchic M.I.A. did the same during their own sets in the Sahara Tent.

Cold War Kids made far more of their late-afternoon Coachella Stage time slot than Death Cab For Cutie an hour later, with the latter’s fairly pedestrian tales of mundane minutiae worn thin.

[Photo by Mick 0 on Flickr]

DAY THREE: Anti-climactic isn’t the right word. Maybe it’s relief. After three straight days of music on five different stages, fighting for a square foot on a patch of grass, frozen lemonades and organic foods...Coachella is mercifully over. A wonderful memory whose charm will likely be revealed incrementally as the delirium and exhaustion and physical pain fades.

Day three of Coachella was very much like the first two days - Tough choices were made between one band or DJ and another, rolling waves of foul funk coming from rows of Porta-Pottys were often the curse of a nice breeze, and too many kids in skinny jeans looked as though they wished they’d made another desert fashion choice.

Sunday headliner Roger Waters played for 2 _ hours, which in Coachella terms might as well be an entire day. Even if you’re not high enough to register on a NASA radar, it’s hard not to find the appeal in Dark Side of the Moon in its entirety, as well as Pink Floyd classics like “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun” and “Shine on You Crazy Diamond.” The crowd wasn’t as big as they were for Prince one night earlier, but the giant floating pig filled out their ranks nicely.

Preceding Waters on the Coachella Stage was a run of well-received groups, including the Cool Kids, the showcase theater’s only hip-hop act of the weekend. Gogol Bordello’s swear word-laden gypsy punk set was a smash, though two older witnesses were not impressed. “I liked this the first time around, when it was called Dexy’s Midnight Runners.” My Morning Jacket was a triumph, as well, mixing classic tunes with tracks from forthcoming album, Evil Urges.

Elsewhere, Holy Fuck thrilled a huge Gobi Tent crowd with a set of quirky instrumentals, Perry Farrell laid waste to the remaining shreds of Jane’s Addiction’s legacy by turning some of their tunes into a bloopy-bleepy electronic mess, and Swervedriver proved they would have benefitted from a small warm-up club show before taking the stage together for the first time in a decade.

Spiritualized overcame early sound troubles to play the best mellow set of the day, a much-needed respite from the constant distant pounding rhythms that could not be avoided anywhere on the site. It was the final Acoustic Mainline show for Jason Pierce, and with the exception of a few perplexed teens only there to get a good spot for Sia, the crowd soaked it up.

French dance duo Justice closed out the festival with a storming set in the Sahara Tent while most of the Roger Waters fans streamed out to their cars for the two-hour wait to leave the parking area.

CELEBRITY SIGHTING DAY THREE: Mark Ronson and Jamie Reynolds of Klaxons clearly loved Coachella so much, they stuck around after their Saturday night set. Ronson and Reynolds were everywhere - at the side of the Mojave Stage before Spiritualized came on, wandering through the crowd unfettered.

RUMORED CELEBRITY SIGHTING DAY THREE: Sean Penn, who spoke on two stages Sunday about whales or starving children or some other activism most of the kids were too stoned to care about, earned some street - or is it sand? - credibility by camping in tent city.

Prince brought the celebrities to the V.I.P. section - including David Hasselhoff! - but for on stage action, no one could top Mark Ronson, who turned the Outdoor Stage into an early evening soul revue. Joining Ronson’s stellar funk band the Version were Tim Burgess of the Charlatans, Rhymefest, Kenna, Charlie Waller of the Rumble Strips, Ricky Wilson of the Kaiser Chiefs, Jamie Reynolds of Klaxons and...errr...Kelly Osbourne.

NON-VIP AREA CELEBRITY SIGHTING DAY TWO: In the mid-afternoon sun, I witnessed the following - Two young shirtless gentlemen walking four feet in front of me noticed an older gentleman coming toward us in the opposite direction. The younger guys spotted the older one and said, “Are you Steven Tyler?”

“Yes I am,” came the studied cartoony response, as the man - a rock star mingling with the rest of the crowd - continued on his course.

“Did that just happen?” one of the younger fellows said to the other.

“Yeah...Wow...”

[Photo by Danny North on Flickr]