Leaving the lazy river-pool at a palm tree-lined concrete oasis in Indio, CA, at 1:30 pm for Coachella, a festival goer fully expects the “10 minute drive” to take at least an hour. Entering the festival (drive, park, trek to gate, line for ticket, line for frisking) at 4:05 pm, there was just enough time for a beer with The Presets and a little chat with Crystal Method before watching the Black Keys bring down the blues before sunset. Last night, Crystal Method played their second live non-DJ set in 5 years, supporting their new album of self-produced material. After so long and with new gear, they seemed a bit antsy, but the duo’s closing set in the Sahara tent knocked the socks off everyone not weeping over the ex-Beatle singing “Yesterday,” “Helter Skelter,” and “Can’t Buy Me Love” on the other side of the Empire Polo Field. LMFAO came out wearing robot heads and shiny sweat suits to kick off Crystal Method’s breakbeat blazing show. Every beat hit exactly where it seemed a beat should fill, which makes dancing a lot more rewarding for those with skills, as well as those flailing their arms in the air and shaking their tailfeathers. Surrounded by men dancing to their own tune with no shame, emphatically off, but so happy, I was happy they weren’t dancing on me.
Between the Black Keys and Crystal Method, there was much to see. Coachella requires a certain degree of A.D.D. Get a quick taste of White Lies emo-tional accent, catch the Ting Tings insisting THAT’S NOT MY FUCKING NAME (look out for the explicit remix with Christian Bale’s freak-out coming to a laptop near you); practice your Guitar Hero moves to Franz Ferdinand’s “Take Me Out”; Silversun Pickups trying to fix the world’s “rusted wheel”; Crystal Castles whining into a strobelight in that irresistible way that’s gotten Alice Glass’s indecipherable shattered melodies stuck in your head (and infiltrating your karaoke style); Peanut Butter Wolf rocking the best of the ’90s; Patton & Rahzel’s beat boxing match of high and low; and The Presets delivering Aussie electro straight and heavy–probably the loudest set so far. Some nice booty-shaking surprises came from Brasil’s Buraka Som Sistema and The Bug (U.K.) with Warrior Queen from Jamaica. Face it, the Caribbean and South America have better rhythm: these cultures inheritted tribal roots designed to take you out of your musical head and into your body. So, naturally, everyone lost a little bit of cellulite at these two shows.
Robots are IN this spring. N.A.S.A. played a DJ set on half a spaceship, with green-bodied alien chicks dancing on stage and a silver robot with longs arms. Ghostland Observatory had more lasers than an intergalactic battle. People were torn between watching Aaron Behrens float across the dancefloor and the laser combat on the ceiling. It’s almost incomprehensible that Behrens’ feet actually touch the ground and still he moves that smoothly. He moves (and Ghostland’s Observatory’s pop music encompasses) what we should each feel like we can do on the dancefloor. We should release our pelvises and spines and groove and tootsie roll and just believe we are Michael Jackson. I’d rather be Aaron Behrens, though. Jackson’s life is tough. It’d be nice to do aerobics with Ghostland’s singer. 
After all this, feet about to fall off at the end of Day 1, your friend loses the car. He runs up and down lot 5 pressing the car clicker for an hour…only to finally realize the car’s actually in lot 6…
Extra Reading…
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