As we headed over to the VIP area across the grass field, Michael Franti was leading Spearhead on the main stage as they offered up a tasty helping of their hip hop/funk/reggae/rock stew. Zeppelin and AC/DC riffs snuck into the arrangements. Franti thanked everyone for spending the day with the band. Once inside, we found ourselves sitting next to David J, whose work in Bauhaus and Love and Rockets I am a big fan of. While sharing that information may have been appreciated, I left him alone and instead attempted to surreptitiously take his picture as a background object in a photo of the Senora.
We headed back to the Outdoor Stage to grab a spot for Fleet Foxes, TV on the Radio almost made me stop due to the intriguing, upbeat rock sounds they were creating from the main stage. Also along the way was a very odd art installation entitled “Hand of Man,” where a user places his hand in a device that works a large mechanical hand that can pick up a car; the meaning and symbolism are still unclear.
The soothing harmonies created by Fleet Foxes under the setting sun were almost enough to quell my thoughts about the surrounding cigarette smokers not dying soon enough from cancer, which is saying something considering how little I care for my fellow man and their selfishness. We sat back far enough so that we could lounge in our legless chairs, but it turned out to be too far back once Thievery Corporation took the main stage because their music crept into the mix.
Luckily, we had planned to leave anyway to catch soul legend Booker T. backed by the Drive-By Truckers. We walked up as “Green Onions” filtered out of the Gobi Tent, and discovered it was maybe half full. I shouldn’t have been surprised, yet I still was at the lack of respect and limited musical history of my fellow Coachellans. Their loss. Booker and the band closed with Outkast’s “Hey Ya” and an instrumental of “I Can’t Turn You Loose,” made famous as the adopted theme for The Blues Brothers.
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