Author Archives: Vanessa

Mike Relm is wearing a black suit backstage at Coachella.

“It’s advantageous,” the San Francisco-based DJ said. “I won’t get burned on my arms and chest and legs like everyone else.”

The DJ who uses video in his sets is playing at 10 p.m. in the Gobi tent. He arrived Friday and got the chance to see former touring partners Peeping Tom and a little bit of Interpol.

However, he’s planning to catch Air and Rage Against the Machine on Sunday.

“I definitely want to see what Rage Against the Machine’s energy is like,” Relm said. “It’s going to be historic.”

He said of all of the festivals he’s played, Coachella has been one of the best.

“It’s overwhelmingly amazing,” he said. “And the setting is beautiful.”

He said the organizers have been great and they definitely care about the artists. He arrived to find a drawing marking his dressing room of a lamb wearing glasses and a tie that resemble his own.

Find out more about Mike Relm here

If anyone asks you what the best song of the last five years is the answer is the Fratellis’ “Flathead.” You’ve heard the tune on the Apple iPod commercial and seeing it live and in person at Coachella under the burning sun makes it even more infectious. The energy in the Mojave tent during that tune was like Shaq when the Lakers were still winning titles. The rest of the set wasn’t bad either, but didn’t compare. Lets hope they don’t fall in one-hit-wonder land.

Personally, I’m a fan of Fountains of Wayne’s brand of quirky power pop but since their mainstream success with “Stacy’s Mom” I thought they were an odd choice at Coachella.

However, the band seems to be trying to up their indie cred with hipster vintage T-shirts. Lead singer Chris Collingswood sported a green Miller High Life shirt and the bassist opted for a Huey Lewis one in black. Maybe they mugged some concertgoers before their Coachella mainstage set at 2:35 p.m. Saturday. There are a lot of shirtless people running around.

The band entered to a cheesy repeated recording of “Traffic and weather every 10 minutes on the 8s.” “Traffic and Weather also happens to be the name of the bands just-released disc.

Older Fountains of Wayne songs went over well with the crowd, the newer stuff not so much. Maybe it was the disco beat on new track “Someone to Love” or the country flavor of “Fire in the Canyon.”

However, the band played some crowd pleasers such as “Hey Julie,” “Radiation Vibe,” and “Mexican Wine.”

The band also thanked the crowd for braving the sun during the hottest part of the day. According to weather.com, it is currently 105 degrees, but don’t worry, it only feels like 99.

The band did not play their biggest hit, Stacy’s Mom.

Your faithful Press-Enterprise reporters are back at the Empire Polo Field in Indio for the second day of Coachella.

On the way in, there seemed to be a lot of people chugging bottles of water and a few caring for sunburns.

The lines were not as crazy as Friday to get in the gate, but traffic was starting to get sticky around Jefferson Street.

However, braving the traffic may have a benefit. There’s a White Stripes ice cream truck in parking lot six giving away ice cream sandwiches.

Pharoahe Monch is the first act on the Coachella Stage right now with quirky pop-rockers Fountains of Wayne to follow.

I wonder if the guys in Interpol go home, change out of their suits and lip synch to ’80s hair metal while dancing around the house. That would be the carefree alter-ego to the suit-wearing quartet that took the Coachella stage around 9:30 p.m.

I have never seen a band have less fun on stage than this group of uber-hipsters. They sound good, but you have to question if they’re really having a good time up there, playing for the thousands of people who flocked to the main stage to see them.

The only other interesting note about them is that as I was driving in, I saw a ton of Interpol posters stapled around palm trees on Jefferson Street in Indio, promoting the band’s yet-to-be-released album. That makes me think the city of Indio probably won’t pick an Interpol ditty for its official song.

Pulp lead singer Jarvis Cocker recently issued a solo album, and his solo set at Coachella has been filled with energetic pop songs and plenty of live panache. Cocker knows hw to interract with a crowd, which is something the weary audience at 9:15 p.m. needs. It’s been a long day and it’s still not over.

Coachella Art Curator Philip Blaine said that when he selects the large-scale sculptures for the show, he looks for pieces that will have different senses depending on the time of day.

Now that the sun has gone down, there are flames shooting through the air, lights glowing and a modest crowd waiting for the Tesla coils to start shooting lightning bolts through the air.

If you’re attending on Saturday and Sunday, do yourself a favor and check out the different art pieces both during the day and at night.

Some things are in short supply at Coachella: restrooms and cell phone reception.

Some things in surplus: vast open spaces between stages to run through and people wearing comic book superhero shirts (someone’s been shopping at Target).

— KIMBERLY PIERCEALL
kpierceall@PE.com

Drawing people away from the packed Amy Winehouse set, British lads the Arctic Monkeys played a blistering set on the Coachella stage this evening.

They played a mix of old songs and a few new ones off their latest effort, Favourite Worst Nightmare at about three times their normal speed, which was for the better.

The band played its biggest hit, “I Bet You Look Good on the Dance Floor,” only a few songs into the set.

Amy Winehouse, the young British chanteuse with a classic sound that finds a home somewhere between Motown and Trojan records, easily created the biggest buzz thus far. For some reason her 6 p.m. slot in the miniscule Gobi tent, which resulted in thousands of fans spilling out into Coachella’s walking arteries, wasn’t in a larger locale — but so be it. Beyond any logistical performance her set showed that the hype was well deserved. Backed by a nine-piece band that featured horns and backup singers, Winehouse proved that she’s way ahead of “American Idol” and a lot closer to the Aretha Franklins and Diana Ross’ of the world. It will be interesting to see what she does in the future.