LA Weekly

It's a hard time for everyone, I know. But we have to get through this together.

The LA Weekly would like to open the comments section so you, the reader, can share your thoughts and remembrances on Roger Waters' and Pink Floyd's inflatable pig, dead, we're assuming, as a result of exploding.

The pig, in happier times, floating above the Hollywood Bowl

The Zapruder Film of Coachella 2008: last known image of The Pig before it blowed up.

But it's time to start asking some hard questions. In whose charge was the pig? Had Waters and his production team ever combined the inflatable pig with a big explosion before? Was the Coachella crowd in any danger? What if the fire had burned through the vinyl pig? Could it have exploded above the crowd, sending searing hot vinyl pig carcass onto the fans below??? WTF???

Any theories? Have you seen a Roger Waters or Pink Floyd show where they did both pig and fire simultaneously? How did it make you feel? Should there be an investigation? Or should we just be thankful that we lived in the same moment in history as the pig?

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There are very few breaking news stories in the music biz, and Pink Floyd's escaped flying pig ranks pretty high up there. Sources tell us that there are now two reports of pig -recovery operations currently underway in nearby La Quinta, California.

Imagine this pig exploding high up in the atmosphere, and floating down onto the village of La Quinta. Somebody should write a boring rock opera about it.

LA Weekly will be offering round-the-clock reportage on what is perhaps the most tragic event in Coachella history. We dedicate this post to the pig. It was a great run, and you almost made it.

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I wish I could say that this was a joke, but I saw the damned pig float away myself Sunday night during Roger Waters' set at Coachella. As it drifted up, I contemplated why Waters would release the pig, endanger the airplane circling the field advertising something or other, and litter the earth not only with his pomposity but with the symbol of that pomposity. But, no.

The pig in question, before sprouting wings. Will its arrival in the the jungles of South America be greeted by believers as a sign from God? (Photo by Timothy Norris)

Read on...

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By the third day, we were knocked out, loaded. Hungover, weary, wandering the festival grounds like lethargic lemmings, queuing in lines off instinct, jostled, aggravated and in no mood for the weird Aramaic gibberish spouted by the kid seeing God underneath the Tesla Coil. Three days of this is too much to handle, unless you're either steadily downing a diet of amphetamines, booze and hash; 16 years old, and/or Keith Richards at 16 years old.

To make matters worse, Sunday's lineup had no chance in hell of topping Saturday's Prince/Portishead extravaganza and everyone knew it. Scalpers couldn't give tickets away and out of the five years I've been to Coachella, I've never seen fewer people on the field. It actually would've been nice, had my brain not felt it was composed out of hardened tapioca pudding and squelched grape fruit. The performance enhancing drugs, the miles of walking, and the dry desert heat have a way of sapping any and all energy you may have left after two days. Yeah, seeing Chromeo and Justice would've been nice, but the P.C.E. * levels would've been far too high. The followers of Vigo the Carpathian, scourge of Moldavia, were still out in masse, tucked away from the scrum, creeping their way through the VIP section. Even Carmen Electra was there and something told me that she and her ilk weren't staying late to see Roger Waters.

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Chromeo at Coachella
By Chris Martins

Roger Waters was neck-deep in pyrotechnics and paisley. The Gobi Tent was done, abandoned 'til next year, and the grass 'round second stage was given up to sleepers, trippers and young love. Black Mountain was beardily spinning country-fried psychedelia to a small but appreciative camp. Coachella was winding down. Then an odd chant, coming from the last tent: "Chro-MEE-oh, OOOOOOoooo," followed by a blast of light that revealed a solid third of festival population, crammed together under dust, smoke and stage-fog, nervously shuffling their feet and waiting for the dance fix that would carry them onward to Justice (the band, but quite possibly the concept as well). It was packed and as the curtain was pulled, a shot of crunchy synthetic bass blew the hordes back a step. For all of their cheeky bullshit, Dave 1 and P-Thugg blasted their Prince-biting electrofunk to the metal rafters, earning their billing for the night, and leaving no question that they weren't just fluffers for the act to follow. One young lady hit the ground, eyes rolling back. She'd have to be carried out. Even in 2008, disco is still destroying lives.

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If there was one transformative performance at this year's Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, I'd say it was Santogold's Friday night statement-of-purpose. The festival, which wrapped up last night with a Pink Floyd flashback courtesy of Roger Waters and a furious day-long Sahara tent throwdown with highlight sets by Booka Shade, Modeselektor and Simian Mobile Disco (who used to annoy me, but when they dropped Plastikman's "Spastik" rhythm halfway through their set, I forgave them all their lighter-than-air sins), contained multitudes, but it was Brooklyn's Santogold (born Santi White), who concentrated all the sounds into one sparse, beautiful essence.

It was the songs, of course, and Santogold's wide-ranging tastes and influences, that shone brightest. But her two dancers sealed the deal. Dressed in identical black pants, white sleeveless blouses and checkered sunglasses, they danced like Public Enemy's troupe/security detail, the S-1Ws, as choreographed by Bob Fosse. They moved, but in fits and starts with the rhythm. There was motion, but there was just as much non-motion. It was funky. It was fresh. It was a dance I'd like to learn (yeah, right).

Read all of LA Weekly's Coachella coverage.

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Sunday at the Empire Polo Field is softer than Saturday, more like Seurot than the previous day's Van Gogh, a little hazy and lazy and everybody's sleeping off last night's feast. Sunday = day of rest, except that at Coachella that's not true, at least in the Sahara tent, which is packed with LA's koolest kids walking around with cockeyed hats and 'tude, and have no more desire to leave Sahara today than the pampered VIPers do to leave to soft grass and the sushi.

"Hi, I'd like to order a box of headbands, overnighted to the VIP area, please." (Photo by Randall Roberts)

Read on...

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I ran into a guy I knew from high school standing in line for the restrooms in the VIP area. I hadn't seen him in a decade but was about four glasses of $7 wine deep and feeling good. No reason not to be friendly, after all, I no longer harbored a grudge from that time in the 11th grade when he tried to tell me that Magoo was a great rapper, a moment in which I knew that our friendship was well on its way to being up-jumps-the boogied.

"Hey Vargas," I greeted him. (Names have been changed to protect the insolent)

"Hey Weiss," he responded with a dazed, bovine look on his face. "I'm so wasted."

"Cisco?"

"No. I didn't see him here. But I think I just saw Mischa Barton and I definitely saw Paris Hilton." he said,

"I meant...never mind...so have you seen anyone good today?"

"No, just some friends. We went to the Spin party, it was awesome."

"I mean like bands. Have you seen any good music."

"Ha..." he chucked drunkenly, leaning in towards me and spewing hot boozy breath all over me. "I don't know anyone who's playing. But they sound good from here!

"You can't hear anything from here."

He ignored the question.

"This place is an awesome party! Have you ever seen this many hot chicks?"

"Once, in an incubator."

"You've still got the same sense of humor, huh Weiss?" he slapped himself on the forehead, doing my work for him.

"It's not me, it's the drugs," I smirked and walked off, bobbing and weaving my way past the "hot chicks" re-intepreting Rihanna's "Umbrella," as "Coach-ella-ella-ella." Needless to say, if one were ever to start recruiting a Fourth Reich, he would be wise to begin conscripting the thousands of ding-bats lurking past the velvet rope, er chain link fence.

Read on...

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The Coachella mainstage on Saturday night was a glory to behold, a spirit-lifting evening celebrating joy through technology, through contemplation and through celebration. In a single four hour chunk of time, the lucky masses at Coachella witnessed two-and-a-half humongous performances, two of which were nearly epochal.

The fans at Hot Chip were very excited and very happy. (All photos by Timothy Norris)

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Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, Day 2
Yo! at the Gobi tent, 7:40 p.m.
By Chris Martins

Yo! Majesty kept it in their shirts. It's true - the Tampa-based, female-fronted answer to 2 Live Crew adroitly circumvented legal woes by neither rapping with their mams in the wind, nor outwardly woman-handling any of the young, more lithe ladies of the audience. But what was lost in novelty and voyeuristic draw was more than made up for in sheer mic-wielding skills and a more family-friendly show - you know, the one with two hardcore black butches rapping about pouring Courvesier down girls' throats before they "fuck dat shit!"

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All photos by Timothy Norris.

Vampire Weekend appear in broad daylight, above and below.

Kim (or Kelly) Deal of The Breeders

Jack White with The Raconteurs

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The National at Coachella, Day One.
By Chris Martins

Photos by Timothy Norris

The National were off to a strong start, but something wasn't right. The weather was just shy of idyllic; the band - expanded to seven with the addition of horns - was almost synced; the crowd was flirting with movement.

But singer Matt Berninger - dressed in black, looking in profile like a handsomer, whisky-soaked and wiry Philip Seymour Hoffman - seemed stricken by the audience's size. He'd grab his head like Thom Yorke, pained, reaching deep for those guttural man-pipes but coming back with a handful of nearly there. Then it happened. The sun hit the horizon and cast the crowd in orange, the white stage lights flared gilding the band in platinum, and Berninger swallowed whatever was in the cooling air, screaming to the scaffolding: "We're half-awake in fake empire!" He shredded his throat with abandon and, just like that, the baritone was there. Drums, guitar, bass, and voice hit an epic stride. The horns blazed. On the grass, ponytails flailed and feet moved. A guy in a sailor hat mouthed the wrong words. He'd probably never heard the song before.

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I hate lines. They're somewhere in the lower rungs of my own personal inferno along with club kids in fedoras, the Los Angeles Dodgers and the abstract concept of valet parking. Unfortunately, entering Coachella brings me into contact with three of those four food groups as quite often, while waiting in the Bataan Death march-like line to get in, you wind up next to a car full of trust-funders in fedoras maligning the Andruw Jones acquisition (seriously, you give the guy $40 million and he shows up to camp looking like Pop-N-Fresh?). It's times like this, I like to play a game creatively entitled, "What Band Are They Hear to See." As for the fedora fedayeen, I'd bet even money they were there to see Diplo. Or maybe Spank Rock. The guy strutting to the right of our car wearing a scarf in 100 degree weather? Vampire Weekend. The shirtless frat brahs tossing around a football? Jack Johnson. The girls to the left of us who wrote "Licking Windows all the Way to Coachella," on the exterior of their Toyota Carolla. Slightly Stoopid. No questions asked.

But the lines. Good lord the lines. Two hours trying to leave, one trying to enter. An interminable snarl of scalpers hawking tickets and t-shirts, hazy beat-up brown dust, beads of sweat slipping slowly down your spine, dull heat-stroke headache, Lawrence of Arabia thirst, and that gnashed teeth silence where you ruminate on the simple fact that after nearly a decade of doing this, no one has been able to figure out how to get cars in and out of the Empire Polo Grounds faster than than 250 feet per hour. And all this while the palm trees tauntingly sway in the breeze, laughing, calmly, coolly, reminding you of all the wonderful things waiting to be seen. That is if you ever get in--chump.

Read on...

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