COACHELLA 2010: DAY 1

The most awaited day in April has arrived—the first day of Coachella. After a sleepless night at the Filter pre-party I chose to go with the unpopular choice of going early, and good thing too, considering most who showed up later got stuck in “Slowchella” when the fest ran out of wristbands and traffic was standstill. Australian Kate Miller-Heidke kicked off the entire festival with feisty pop punch with tracks about not being able to dance and ignoring Facebook friend requests. Minneapolis guitar playing and quick tongued rapper P.O.S. followed, starting his set off by handing out gum to the front row.

After seeing a packed tent of full grown adults “get their sillies out” with the Yo Gabba Gabba gang during DJ Lance Rock’s set, Yeasayer drew in a huge crowd exceeding the Mojave tent playing a hipster hip shaking set.  She & Him’s set kicked off  late in the afternoon. For a band who’s fan base is based more off of how hot Zooey Deschanel is than the actual albums, the duo (the him being M. Ward) were surprisingly impressive set of folksy blues off their two albums.

I then continued to Gil Scott-Heron’s set, which apparently Passion Pit took 80% of Coachella’s masses, because when I got there, it was just graying die-hard fans, and then me. The equally graying ‘father of hip hop’ put the crowd in complete awe with both his lyricism and his in between song stories. Gil Scott-Heron also was a subject of one of the many ramblings from LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy. Along with which proverbial food item LCD would be (a vegan side next to Jay-Z’s tender steak) and the bashing of laptop DJs. Aside from preachiness, the set shook the desert underneath a glimmering disco ball with favorites from Sound of Silver and soon to be new favorites off the new album.

For the headliners, instead of picking over the other I chose to do halfsies with Fever Ray and Jay-Z and let me tell you, leaving one set of four city blocks worth of audience to go to another with six, is not an easy task. Fever Ray’s dynamic Swedish electronic eccentricities paired with the light show spectacle were definitely something to see, although tearing myself away from inebriated crowd sing-alongs wasn’t too difficult. The tail end of Jay-Z’s set proved worth the crowd navigating as he brought out wife with equal stardom – Beyonce to sing the hook of “Young Forever” – not quite the Dr. Dre we were all expecting, but still worth seeing, and, of course, what’s better than seeing the masses of “wouldn’t be caught dead listening to top 40” hipsters know every single word to every single song. Besides seeing a drunk one tell Paris Hilton she sucks and needs a life that is.