Classic Post From 2001 - Rochelle Rochelle at Scolari's Office

Rochelle Rochelle are doing a reunion show at The Casbah on October 6, 2012. This is the review I wrote when I first stumbled onto this band, over ten years ago. I remember it like it was yesterday.


-mediaassassin

I was on my way to a friend’s 50th birthday party when my leg, broken from a 20-mile run earlier that spring decided to get soft on me in the late afternoon Del Mar traffic. As I crawled along the I-5 I wasn’t sure if I could make it all the way to the north end of LA, despite the rumors of an all-nude half-century bash. I wasn’t sure whether to be intrigued or petrified by the possibilities, but I was going. "I can’t make it," I explained to my friend’s answering machine through my disappointed sighs. “I don’t know if I can make it that far and even if I do I don’t know if I could make it back tomorrow." I’d already told all my friends that I was going to this big nudie party so they’d all made plans. I guess I’m on my own tonight, I thought, turning the car toward the closest international border I could reach by land.  By the time I got home, it was dark. I decided to go out and look for something. What I was looking for would be revealed to me over the course of the evening. I was hoping to find something about 5’3" with long dark hair, but what I encountered that evening was several disappointments that led up to one beautiful relationship.  I started at the Casbah where I caught a few songs by Sub Pop Monster Magnet Mimics Nebula. The last time I saw them some drunken lass had jumped on stage, taken her top off, danced around like an idiot, got pushed off stage, threw a beer bottle at the band and started a fight. This time was not quite so entertaining so I split.  My next Sapphire was imbibed at Lancer’s, the bar you go to when you would rather scream at your friends over a jukebox than scream at your friends over a band. Looking around, I saw no promising prospects. I slammed my lowball, nearly swallowing the lime, and was out.  Off to the Red Fox, where Miss Shirley always puts on a great show with a little help from her old friends and a little hindrance from her new friends. Well, sometimes the guest singers aren’t bad, but sometimes they are. This night was pretty dead, so I decided to head home. I wasn’t through yet, though. I decided to park the car in the driveway and limp to as many bars as I could until I either found someone willing to at least listen to me bitch about the night I’d had or better yet, listen to me coo about the night I had over breakfast on Sunday. I gimped up to Scolari’s Office, a small dive with great drinks that’s less than a block from my house. I don’t know why I’d never visited there before that night – I’d lived within hawking distance for over a year.  As fate had it, this was the night I was to discover not only the venue, but the act. I walked into the place, drawn in by the music I heard as I thumped my feet up to the door. I saw everyone in there standing not more than one foot away from the band. EVERYONE. I have never seen anything like it. The funny thing is, there were only 12 people in the entire place. But all eyes were on this quartet.  I stood there, dazzled. Being somewhat of a Casbah spectator over the course of the last year I was sure I would have heard of these guys. “Who ARE these guys?" I shouted to the guy next to me after about three songs. “Rochelle Rochelle," he said, never turning away from the band. “They’re fucking amazing!" I shouted. “I know," he yelled back. The band proceeded to pound out only two more songs before calling it a night. I felt cheated that I had missed most of the set but blessed that I ever got the chance to see them, considering the circumstances. I felt like walking up to them and saying, “I don’t know what to do now."  The band describes their sound as "Hard rock that’s pretty," and it’s an accurate description. Their use of dynamics and time signatures is reminiscent of acts like Hum and Smashing Pumpkins, and the influence of Radiohead and Drive Like Jehu shine through on songs like "Farewell Production," which pits Erik Berg’s floating yet grinding vocals against the chunky, electro-shock-like melodies courtesy of Austin, Jeff and Nick.  I honestly didn’t know what to do after seeing them for the first time. I felt star struck, as if I’d just seen the next big thing right before my eyes. These guys are up and coming only because they’re relative unknowns in the scene. Be sure to check them out for the sake of good music, if not for the sake of telling your friends you were listening to them before everyone else was.

CD Collection A-Z - A Journey Into Ambient Groove - Volume 1 (1995)

I've been threatening for some time to go through my entire CD collection alphabetically and write up a review of each disc.  Tonight, it begins.

How appropriate that the first CD in my collection is A Journey Into Ambient Groove, Volume 1.  This is something I was given by my mentors in Ibiza West Studios over ten years ago, when I was just a neophyte to the world of electronic music.

While most of these artists may have drifted off into obscurity, or may be pseudonyms of other, more well-known chill-out artists, there's at least one stand-out:  Kruder & Dorfmeister's Original Bedroom Rockers.  Anyone who knows anything about good music knows that this track is one of the great babymakers of all time, and that Kruder & Dorfmeister are the godfathers of Austrian groove.  In fact, when I was in Vienna a few years ago, I knew enough to ask my friends, "I love Kruder and Dorfmeister, where do I go record shopping?"  They turned me onto a massive record store where I discovered such greats as Langoth and Saint Privat, but that's another story.

Listening to this again, I realize that the first track (Gato de Oro by Sapien) is one that the proprietor of IWS Studio A used in one of his classic mixes.  There's a stutter at the end that he spins off into something beatmatched into another ambient groove track, which is pretty tricky, considering the low BPM.

Ambeint groove has sometimes been described as "instrumental hip-hop," which is pretty apt.  To paraphrase Mark Twain, "Hip-hop is ambient groove, spoiled."  To me, there's just nothing worse than having a great track ruined by some egotistic asshole talking all over it, saying the same shit everyone else has always said, over and over, ad nauseum.  A word or two in a song is all well and good, but there's a fine line between punctuating an instrumental with vocals and just destroying it because you knew some dude who wanted to rap over something.

Like all comps, this one has its dogs (Zion Train's Arise sounds like someone set the Casio to Moroccan and let 'er rip), and some are just crying out for a remix (Japanese Cherry Blossoms by Global Dance Project sounds like it could use a pitched-up deep house remix), once we get to NOW and Then's Jimi Dub, the compilation really seems to find its flow, like a nervous DJ who has a brief moment of anxiety), and finishes strong all the way through. 

Back in 1995, this fledgling style was still finding its way.  Sure, some of it sounds dated, but it probably did at the time, too.  That's the thing about certain styles.  They're either done well, or they're not.  And despite a minor dip in the disc halfway through, this one produces what it promises.  A tour through an emerging genre; what was considered to be ambient groove back in the mid-1990's.

Coachella 2012 Review - Sunday

Photo by me.  All good photos are by Mike.

All in all, this was a tough Coachella for me to review in my usual snarky style, because it was so amazing.  Everyone at the festival was friendly and "chocolate wasted," the talent was there and performed exceptionally well, and while there were sound problems rampant on Friday, by Sunday they'd all been cleared up.  It's too bad that Sunday was so thin, overall.

We made an honest effort to get there early to see Alf Alpha, but for the first time over the weekend, we couldn't get there early enough to wait for the gates to open.  It was strange, though, on Saturday when we were waiting for Suedehead, there was supposedly a DJ named DJP playing, but we didn't realize that he was actually there, just way off to the side of the stage, until just before Suedehead took the stage.

Found our friends Jason & MJ and headed over to the Heineken Dome to check out the talent there.  This was the first time in years that I'd taken the trouble to get a wristband for the 21+ drinking areas, but it was totally worth it.  The Heineken Dome is AIR CONDITIONED!  Plus there are DJs in there playing pretty decent music.  I'm not sure if we saw Barry Weaver or Dusty Carter, but whoever it was did it up right.  Plus, the visuals were stunning.  Great swirling stuff on the ceiling... I took a movie of it and will put it into Jitter and muck around with it even more, posthaste.

Mike was a bit overwhelmed by the whub whub (my word, not his) so we headed out.  What awaited us was Lissie on the Outdoor Theatre.  Lissie was an obvious Stagecoach hand-me-down artist, which can sometimes be great (Trampled by Turtles, Willie Nelson), but more often is just potato flour in the discount sausage, if you know what I mean.  Filler.  Like many early-day bands, she was good at what she did, but it sounded a lot like the music you'd hear at a bar in Alabama, between the time you declared that the North won the Civil War, and when you had your head introduced to your asshole.

I am not responsible for anything that happened between when we left Lissie and when we finally showed up at the Swedish country & western band First Aid Kit.  I swear, we wandered around because we could.  There was nothing compelling on any of the stages, tents, domes, or Do Lab, so we wandered like (insert ethnic group here) around the desert, dodging young fucked-ups. First Aid Kit could easily fit in at Stagecoach, but I don't think they'll cover a Fever Ray song like they did here.  "Have any of you heard of a Swedish artist named Fever Ray?" the one asked.  I was pretty sure Fever Ray wasn't going to show up.  That would be like having Jello Biafra come on out and sing a few tunes with The Grateful Dead.  But they did cover When I Grow Up, which was interesting.  Very reverent, but totally country.  Weird, overall, but nice.

We passed by Gobi to catch a shitty earful of Greg Ginn & the Royal We, and let me tell you, it sounded like crap was being poured into our ears.  The drums weren't even close to keeping time, and the guitar was just a bunch of random stupid noodles.  It sounded like the retarded siblings of kids in a garage band somehow found their way into the garage, turned on the amps, and were banging away on the instruments, with no regard for rhythm, musicality or human life.  Some remember Greg as the drummer for Black Flag, but I'll always remember him as the soulless cocksucker who sued Negativland after the whole U2 debacle.

 Greg Ginn & the Royal We - Musical Poop

Seun Kuti & Egypt 80 were a real highlight on the Outdoor Theatre Sunday.  I'm not sure how big the crowd was, because we were right up front and enjoying it too much to really give a shit.  Plus, Mike got some amazing pictures, and I'd rather let those do the talking.  Seun is one of the 80+ sons of Fela Kuti, and he jams.  That first part is a lie.  I heard Fela had a shitload of kids but I can't prove it.  Then again, if you come here for facts, you're barking up the wrong blog, Jack.

Headed over to Real Estate for something quite different indeed.  This was a set we had to truncate, sadly, to make it back in time for araabMUZIK.  We actually just sat and chilled for Real Estate's set, which was fine with us.  It was good, but so mellow, it's hard to really enjoy a mellow band at Coachella sometimes because you usually just want to rage, and if you truly do want to enjoy a band that's chill, usually there's some fuckstick rap/rock nightmare on the next stage baring over it.  Here's their full set.

Car trip, food trip, then over to the Mojave tent for araabMUZIK, where we weaseled our way right in front of the soundboard.  As we were waiting, our senses were being bombarded by what I think was Gonorrhea by Lil Wayne (featuring Drake).  It was pretty intense, partially because the bass had been turned up to full blast in order to accommodate the beat-centric music of araabMUZIK.  I can't for the life of me figure out who this song is by, but the lyrics keep repeating "I get high as fuck" over and over.  That, plus the razor bassline, made me feel like I was about to be blown into a million pieces. Or at least two.  And that was the music BEFORE the artist started.

While I appreciated what araabMUZIK did live, I was really hoping for something much more like what I'd heard online.  His YouTube stuff features him mostly making killer beats, all live and all by hand with MPC samplers over melodic trance music.  At Coachella, however, he decided he needed to start with what seemed like an eternity of tuneless, warbling dubstep samples.  While it was brilliantly executed, I truly thought I was going to lose my shit right there in the tent before the set was over.

While part of me wanted to get out of there, a larger part of me just couldn't resist watching this freak of nature.  I wondered how long he could possibly go on doing what he was doing, with all ten fingers flying over the MPC's pads and working the mixer faders like it was what he was born to do.  It turns out he could do it for the full 50 minutes.  Pretty impressive, but equally draining as a Mogwai set.  Take a look at this video.  It's 49 seconds long.  Imagine 60 times that, and you'll know why you don't need drugs to freak out at Coachella.

We twitched out of that tent like stunned gnats that had just gone through electroshock therapy, trying to make our way to The Weeknd's set on Outdoor Theatre before we totally spazzed out.  We didn't get too close, unfortunately, but we did get close enough to be surrounded by people who were interested in seeing the  set.  They were pretty good overall, though I think the vocalist was just getting warmed up by the time we decided to split their set with Gotye's.  Not to worry, The Weeknd's full set is available online.

We weaved through the crowd to try to get over to Gotye's set, but the cross-current was too strong, and we never actually got there.  Despite trying for ten minutes, we zigged and zagged through The Weeknd's crowd, through part of the cross-crowd of people going from The Weeknd to Gotye, and the crowd just going from two other different places, to no avail.  Gotye had a huge crowd, and had I known their song Somebody That I Used To Know was recently featured on Glee, I would have said fuck it.  But here's a video anyway.

 Next, we had our only appointment of the weekend in the Sahara Tent to see Calvin Harris.  I was really hoping for a live show, and the 25-minute intermission between the previous DJ and Calvin Harris suggested that they needed time to setup something like that.  However, it turned out to be a DJ set.   While I appreciated that he wasn't spinning fucking dubstep like all the other artists, I was really hoping for a live set, so we split.

Justice was really late going on, so we ended up catching a few songs they did.  Predictably, they opened with Genesis / Let There Be Light from Cross, which was excellent.  After that, they started into their new material, which I must admit was much better live than on the album.

We had some time to kill before our final pick of the festival, so we wandered over to Girl Talk.  The closer we got, the more Mike's smile turned into a frown.

"I feel like I'm being violated," he stated blankly.

My take on it:  "This is like that scene in Fight Club where Tyler Durden beats the shit out of the pretty boy, like until his face isn't even recognizable as a face, and then says, 'I wanted to destroy something beautiful.'"

Sorry Girl Talk fans, we didn't get it.  He takes two good songs, or two shitty songs, or a good song and a shitty song, and makes you hate them all.  That's not talent, that's musical genocide.

We finally positioned ourselves in our favorite spot for Florence + The Machine.  I wasn't too familiar with their material, but for Mike, they were a must see.  I'm glad I checked them out, because they were about the best thing I saw on Sunday.  They didn't have a lot of competition overall, though, as Sunday seemed about as tacked on as a third day has.

If you disagree, keep in mind that I don't listen to hip hop or shitty music.

So, back to Flo.  That chick can SANG man.  She was all parading around in this long, flowing dress, like that scene in Prince of Darkness when the angel of death appears at the door of the church in the dream sequence.  It was eerily good.  And it's not just her.  The band is spot-on, and she's a great performer to boot.

So overall, it was a great Coachella.  Top four of the eleven I've been to, I think.  I just don't think anything's ever going to beat 2008, where we witnessed Kraftwerk, Portishead and Prince all in a row on the Coachella Stage, or 2004, where we saw Radiohead, Pixies and Kraftwerk on Friday, and then saw Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips walk over the crowd in a gigantic hamster bubble.  Yeah, I heard about the hologram of Tupac, and that would have been pretty cool if I gave a shit about Tupac, but I don't.  So I stand by my statements, as usual, but I admit that I may have been wrong about them expanding to two weekends.  We'll see if they can pull off a carbon copy this weekend, but either way, Coachella 2012 Weekend 1 was fucking epic.

And yes, as ALWAYS:  Everyone who attended Coachella was, all the time, was incredibly...




FUCKED UP.

Coachella 2012 Review - Saturday

 Photo by Mike

Saturday came with the usual pains and sores of a Saturday at Coachella.  But as I suspected this day was absolutely going to kick ass and take names in crayon, I was more excited than hungover.  Although we swore we'd never make it to the event before the gates opened two days in a row, it happened, and once again we were waiting in a (smaller than Friday's) crowd, behind Weird Trenchcoat Guy With Long Hair.

There was really nothing we wanted to see for the first couple of hours, so we did what everyone else does at Coachella, which is get fucked up and wander around.  There's really nothing like a temporary oasis with 80,000+ freaks stumbling around in the desert.  Especially when you're absolutely useless to anything and anyone in polite society.

The first band I was curious about was Suedehead.  Two words:  The Jam.  Not that they were a jam, they really wanted to be Paul Weller's old band.

Next up, an awesome band that proves they've run out of names for bands, We Were Promised Jetpacks.  They sound a little like fellow Scottish Fatcat Records label chums Frightened Rabbit, but the singer for Jetpacks is much better fed.  He may have eaten Frightened Rabbit.  Maybe that's why he's such a badass.

The Outdoor Theatre once again held our attention as we stayed for Wolf Parade side project Destroyer.  They've been compared to David Bowie, but they're not that good.  They're really good, just not David Bowie Good.   They sound a little like Spandau Ballet meets Lou Reed.  No, asshole, that's a compliment.  I really liked them.  The vocalist has this way of just sort of talking and singing when he feels like it, and their sax player is spot on.

 Photo by Mike

Next up, The Big Pink.  Other than their drummer, this hot little lady who beat the living shit out of her drums, it was pretty forgettable.  Sound wasn't perfect, and neither was the performance.  But that drummer could lift 50 times her weight in drumstick.  She was like an ant.

Photo by Mike

Left the Mojave tent after only a few songs, headed to see fIREHOSE.  I'd seen them back in like 1993 opening for the Beastie Boys, when they opened the show with Revolution 2 by Butthole Surfers.  I have to say, they were good, but I liked what I saw back then better.  Probably because of the Butthole cover.  I mean Butthole Surfers cover, not something you use to blockade your cornhole.

 

Photo by Mike

 

Stuck around for Buzzcocks, who I thought were excellent.  I've been listening to the song Orgasm Addict since I was probably 14, and they also did Homosapien, which I didn't even know was them (might be a Pete Shelley solo song, I've been told), and What Do I Get.  All sounded like they were being played on a scratchy old record, just like they sound on the albums.  Mike didn't think they sounded that good and neither did this girl I was talking to before Bon Iver, but they didn't have earplugs in like I did, so they might be right.

 Photo by Mike

Headed out to the car to change clothes and got back in time to wolf down some chow mein and overcooked chicken just in time to catch part of Squeeze.  Man, if I had only known how good these guys were live I would have gone on a hunger strike and let my nuts drop so I could deal with the cold.  It would have been worth it.  We had to take off early, right when they started doing this great version of Tempted so we could get a place to stand for the grand finale on the Coachella Stage.

We started on the right side of the massive soundboard for The Shins.  We couldn't see very well, but these guys were so good I almost didn't care.  I was closing my eyes and listening and just enjoying it as they banged out a bunch of stuff from the new album, and two or three from Wincing the Night Away, which is the only one of theirs I own or have even heard.  They covered Pink Floyd's Breathe, which was a cool surprise, and ended off the otherwise pretty mellow set with Sleeping Lessons, the opener on Wincing.

As the crowd shifted, so did we, so we could get closer for Bon Iver.  I swear, I think I've listened to Bon Iver, Bon Iver about a dozen times, and these guys are just soooooooo wonderful live.  Their harmonies remind me of Grizzly Bear, and it's much more intense and upbeat than you would think from their studio stuff.  Peaks and valleys, emotional rollercoasters, and a sing-along at the end to The Wolves (Acts I and II), where they had the whole crowd singing "What might have been lost" over and over at the end made this a very memorable experience, and was truly a "Coachella moment."

Finally, Radiohead took the stage for a two-hour set of mind melting fury.  They mostly played material from The King of Limbs and In Rainbows, with a healthy dose of Hail To the Thief.  This was actually pretty cool.  I've now seen Radiohead nine times, and it was great to hear a lot of newer stuff.  Sure, I miss the classics, but they still played Everything In Its Right Place at the end of the main set, Lucky and Airbag during the set, and the last song of the night?  Fucking Paranoid Android.  A class act all the way, I simply cannot see how someone couldn't like these guys, but at least the haters aren't snapping up the last of the tickets when they come to town.

Here's their ENTIRE SET:

Milled out of the polo grounds slowly, but once we got in the car it was even faster than Friday's non-eventful drive back to the motel, where we drained beers and marveled at the fact that it was nearly all over once again, and we felt like we'd just gotten there.

Coachella 2012 Review - Friday

(This, and pretty much all other photos by Mike on this page)

Last night, I sat in a dirty motel room, covered in the filth of three days of wandering aimlessly around a polo field and having my mind repeatedly blown.  The only thought in my head was a question:  "How can Coachella 2012 be over?"

Technically, it's not over, because Goldenvoice has expanded the festy into two full weekends with "identical" lineups.  While I had my doubts when they announced the presale last June, I think the changes they've made may have optimized some really basic stuff about Coachella, like traffic.  While I still feel like the first weekend is the real festival, I'm excited for anyone who's going next weekend.

Friday started pretty typically, with us waiting for the gates to open.  The whole thing takes place on a polo field, and it's a much different place when it's relatively empty.  While the sun shone, we headed over to the Sahara tent to see Mea.  Not quite sure what to make of her, we agreed.  Sort of industrial, sort of good but the jury's still out.

I thought Wallpaper. could be good, but Oakland's answer to Party Rock Anthem took themselves a little too seriously to be truly entertaining.  If they'd taken themselves less seriously, or way more seriously, it would have been funny.  But the only thing that would have made it good would have been changing the band members and the songs they were performing.

The first great surprise of the day came on the big stage after that, with Mexico City's Hello Seahorse!  They kind of reminded me of a more poppy, Mexican version of Lush.  And the singer was easy on the eyes.

Other Lives were actually really good.  Normally, a band that's opening for Radiohead is good in their own way, but you just don't want to sit through their set before you get to see Radiohead.  These guys were less like that than most of Radiohead's opening acts.  Fairly mellow, but well-placed in the early day in the Gobi tent.

Stuck around for EMA.  She was great.  I figured she wouldn't open with the song California, but she did end with it, as I predicted.  I reckoned that if she wanted to sing, "Fuck California / You made me boring," she would have to win over the audience first.  She's one of those artists that Pitchfork lavishes attention on, and she's actually worth it.

Blues man Gary Clark Jr. was up next, once again in Gobi.  I was pretty impressed but Mike thought he was a bit overrated.  Mike plays guitar very well, so he's probably right.  But still, pretty damn good as far as I was concerned.  Right in the middle of his set, the rain started coming down.  Despite the fact that we were in the dead center of the tent, that shit blew in and gave us a tiny little splash.  The crowd actually cheered the rain, not because it was refreshing, but because this was the first time in Coachella history that it had rained during the festival.

Dreading the rain, we headed over to the main stage to see Jimmy Cliff & Tim Armstrong.  It had stopped raining, but ironically it started again right before I Can See Clearly (the one that goes, "It's gonna be a bright / Bright sunshiny day").  We feared the worst, but by the time the set ended, we'd gotten splashed about ten times in five minutes, nothing serious.  It felt like someone standing over us flicking water droplets from wet fingers.


We beat a retreat back to the car thanks to the recent "ins and outs OK" policy, and were accosted by an obnoxious high school chick wearing a poncho (not a real poncho, a Sears poncho).


"Are you COLLLLD?!" she shouted?


"Um, YEAHHHH!" I replied, hurrying past and rubbing my bare arms.


Headed back to the car, grabbed our sweatshirts and ditched the sunglasses and hats for the nighttime wear.  Made it back to the field, all within about 45 minutes.  Had our usual Asian BBQ stand fare (our only meal other than breakfast all three days), and then headed for M. Ward in Mojave.  I stuck around for three songs and split.  Not my thing, but Mike liked 'em.  Or him.


I, on the other hand, was getting a decent spot for Frank Ocean in Gobi.  Gobi used to be the bastard one-eyed stepchild at the festy, being the smallest of the tents.  I guess it saved up to get implants or something, because this year, Gobi was just as big as Mojave!  Now they can share an inferiority complex, comparing their mutual size to Sahara (which is The Hedgehog of tents, if you know what I'm sayin').


Frank started a little late, singing a few notes before he stepped onstage, and causing the crowd to totally lose their shit.  I swear, this guy is like a modern day Frank Sinatra, if Sinatra was part of a group of guys who rapped about bitches and hoes all the time.  Wait, did The Rat Pack do that?

Anyway, Frank was great, though this was yet another example of the sound problems we were forced to endure on day one.  I didn't think it was that bad, but I don't think he could hear himself, because at one point he addressed the crowd, saying, "I don't mean to be unprofessional, but..." then he turned to the stage sound engineer, and asked him if he was in charge of doing sound on stage.  He cut the mic and walked over to the guy, and I can only assume tore this guy a new asshole somewhere near his ears.

Despite turning in what I thought was a great set including Strawberry Swing, Swim Good, and Novacane (and a special guest appearance from Tyler, the Creator), Frank Ocean walked offstage without saying goodbye, before the music even stopped.  Dude didn't even wave.  He must have known we were loving it, people were singing along to every line in the songs from nostalgia, Ultra, and we lost our collective shit when he sang the line "Met her at Coachella."  Still, I'm hoping to see him again soon, for a full set with sound he's happy with.

After that, I headed over to the poorly-attended Mazzy Star show to catch up with Mike.  He was way up front, so I just chilled in the back while Hope Sandoval looked about as excited as someone trying to get a puke stain out of a carpet.  I swear, she looked downright ANNOYED to be up there.  I guess that's her thing.  While the music was actually really well-performed, it was a bad slot and stage for Mazzy Star.  At least she's not fugly, as you can see in these bomb-ass pictures Mike shot.

Onward we foraged to the Mojave tent for M83.  These guys are just absolutely fantastic live, and they performed very, very well, but it was too quiet.  I'm normally OK with a band that's not super loud, especially at Coachella and especially late in the day.  However, I don't know if there's any other way to listen to these guys than at a blistering volume.  That's what earplugs are for, use 'em if you need to.  The whole effect was lessened somewhat because the music wasn't as visceral as I wanted it to be.  It felt like we were listening to it because our mom was on the phone in the next room and she told M83 to turn down that racket.  They were still a highlight, but I truly hope next weekend they crank that shit up to a billion.