Manchester Orchestra played at the Outdoor Theater. They are a tight five-piece rock and roll outfit and delivered a few decent songs, but nothing that locked us down. We headed over to the Mojave Tent where Swervedriver had the worst mix of the weekend. The bass drums drowned out everything else that was going on.
During the last song of their set, electro-rock band Does It Offend You, Yeah? were tearing it up in the Gobi Tent. Everyone was on their feet and dancing around. Todd and I quickly got caught up in the wild energy and regretted not stopping by sooner.
On the Coachella Stage, the ensemble Gogol Bordello had a very good size crowd engaged with their gypsy-rock sound. At Outdoor, new wave dance band Metric, which includes James Shaw and Emily Haines who take part in Broken Social Scene, sounded good when their equipment worked; Haines’ synthesizer was particularly moody.
Later at Coachella, Sean Penn took the stage and broke the ice by saying even his mother wondered “what the fuck Sean Penn was doing at Coachella?” He was there to tell attendees that “revolution is a young man’s job,” and the best way they could better the country was through volunteerism. He offered to anyone interested The Dirty Hands Caravan, which was going to leave Monday afternoon for Louisiana to help with rebuilding efforts and then return on May 7th. While Penn said they would take care of the parked cars, I couldn’t understand why he waited until Sunday. What time did that leave anyone to reschedule work, school, or anything already planned before taking off for 10 days. I hope he got the number of people he wanted, but idea came off poorly executed. He left the stage with a phrase he claimed he hadn’t said in over 20 years to a group he knew would likely identify with it. Everyone cheered his “Hey, Bud. Let’s Party,” even though he didn’t sound like Spicoli.
My Morning Jacket followed with some nice grooves to jam to. Singer/guitarist Jim James wore some crazy skeleton boots and stomped around the stage. They have me curious to pick up one of their albums or download a bootleg. We would have stayed longer, but had to check out one of our favorite bands.
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