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Join Date: Jul 2009
Posts: 3,270
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Well said, though I'd still love to see TCV, Muse, and Julian.
and here's the article
Quote:
10. At The Drive-In (1999)
It was October 9, 1999, at 1:20 p.m. Where were you that day? We’re willing to bet you weren’t at Coachella’s Outdoor Theatre for an opening set by the then-emerging At The Drive-In. Having just released the Vaya EP, the now-mythical band put on a time-defining performance — to, like, fifty people.
Over the next year, Bono would declare his love for the group, critics would call them The Most Important Band in the World™, and the members themselves would celebrate this newfound success by promptly breaking up. But for 30 minutes in 1999, At The Drive-In were the match that lit Coachella’s fuse. If you chose to watch A Perfect Circle instead, we hope you’re happy with yourself.
9. Morrissey (2009)
Considering that one of The Smiths’ most famous albums is called Meat is Murder, it’s not so much of a surprise to find out that the smell of barbecued hot dogs is just not as delicious to Morrissey as it is to, say, the Killers. ”I can smell burning flesh, and I hope to God it’s human,” he told the audience during his set at Coachella in 2009. And a few minutes later, Morrissey disgustedly walked off stage — in the middle of a song! — presumably to find a room that didn’t reek of Bull’s Eye Original BBQ Sauce.
To his credit, the man came back and finished his set, but not without commentary. “The smell of burning animals is making me sick,” Morrissey said. “I just couldn’t bear it.”
8. Radiohead (2004)
Let’s not forget that when Radiohead came to Coachella in 2004, they were supporting Hail To The Thief — a largely difficult album that drew its influences from glitchy techno records and free jazz. Which basically means that the most avant-garde thing they could have done at that point was just give in and play “Creep,” the 1992 modern rock hit they’d been pretty much running away from ever since.
So they did, and if we can be earnest for a second here, it was a beautiful moment: Thom Yorke revealed that the Pixies, who had recently reformed and played directly before Radiohead that night, personally requested the song. “When I was at college,” Yorke told the crowd, “it was the Pixies and R.E.M. who changed my life.”
7. Prince (2008)
Can we talk about “Creep” again? Because one of the greatest Coachella moments ever, hands down, came when Prince — who was added to the festival as a headliner only three weeks in advance — took to the stage with three words: “Coachella, I’m here!”
As if bringing Sheila E. along with him wasn’t enough to make a strung-out desert dance party go bat****, Prince then strapped on his guitar for a rendition of “Creep” that was somehow even more epic than “Purple Rain.” Had Thom Yorke walked out for a duet, Indio would have looked like the end of that one Radiohead video where everyone falls to the ground like they’re dead.
6. Public Enemy (2009)
Nobody loves a good Front to Back performance more than MySpace Music, so when we heard that Public Enemy would reconvene at Coachella last year to perform their 1988 classic album It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back in its entirety — well, the Cure was just gonna have to wait until this was over.
Chuck D and Flavor Flav went out and proved, once and for all, that hip-hop can be as transcendent on stage as it is on record, and when they encored with “Fight The Power,” you could almost forgive them for not trying to get the dude from Slayer to play his guitar part on “She Watch Channel Zero?!” But still, that record is so good.
5. The Arcade Fire (2005)
There’s something magical about witnessing a seminal moment in a band’s career, and it seemed like the Arcade Fire — whose debut album, Funeral, had only been out for six months in the Spring of 2005— knew Coachella was a tipping point: Playing the sunset slot of the Outdoor Theatre to their biggest U.S. audience yet, the band played a forceful but frenzied set that culminated with Will Butler slicing his hand open after climbing a support beam and his brother Win throwing his guitar off his shoulder for an exigent take on “Revolution (Lies).”
By all accounts, the spectacle was a game-changer: Funeral went onto sell half a million copies in America without any major label support, and the Arcade Fire returned to Coachella in 2008 — this time on the main stage, right behind Red Hot Chili Peppers.
4. My Bloody Valentine (2009)
They nearly bankrupted their record label to make Loveless and pocketed half a million dollars from Island for a follow-up album that never materialized, so we’re pretty sure that half the people who came to see My Bloody Valentine reunite at Coachella really just wanted to see if they’d even show up.
They did, much to the chagrin of anyone with ears: For a band that gets routinely categorized under the demure “shoegaze” label, My Bloody Valentine might very well be the loudest band on the planet.A Los Angeles Times review compared their set to “the sound of concrete shifting” and observed that “many fans spent much of the show sitting on the grass covering their ears” — which is true. But it’s not like they didn’t warn you: For the first time in Coachella history, earplugs were offered to everyone with a ticket.
3. Roger Waters (2008)
Some folks questioned the wisdom of adding Roger Waters to a Coachella line-up, but those doubts were quickly defeated when the Pink Floyd legend closed the 2008 festival with an epic set of his greatest hits, including a complete run-through of Dark Side of the Moon — the third biggest-selling album in U.S. history.
The whole production was already a million times better than Laser Floyd when Waters’ team upped the ante by unleashing a massive flying pig into the desert sky. The pig, which also featured the word “Obama” spray-painted on its belly, hovered over the audience for several minutes before surreally flying away. Only it wasn’t supposed to fly away: The next day, Coachella organizers offered a $10,000 reward for the pig’s return and even set up a temporary e-mail for the search: lostpig@coachella.com.
The balloon finally turned up two days later at a country club in La Quinta, California.
2. The Cure (2009)
It’s not like the Cure didn’t get a chance to play at Coachella 2009: their set was over two-and-a-half hours long, it was already way past midnight, and they were just about to go into their third encore when Robert Smith walked on stage and announced, “They say we can only play one song. Ha!”
At which point Coachella became a real-time battle of will: After the Cure played two more songs, the house lights came up. A few moments later, the jumbotrons blacked out. And then finally — in the middle of “Boys Don’t Cry,” dammit! — the promoters pulled the plug on the Cure completely.
Smith and his band, of course, refused to surrender: They went on to play two more songs without a P.A. system, and — curfew be damned — the audience didn’t seem to care either way. No one was going home that night.
1. Rage Against the Machine (2007)
When Zack de la Rocha stepped up to the microphone on April 29, 2007, and — for the first time in seven years — said the words, “Good evening, we are Rage Against The Machine from Los Angeles, California,” it seemed pretty likely that the 60,000 people in front of him were going to lose their ****ing minds.
Indeed, Rage Against the Machine delivered a flawless, rapid-fire set consisting of thirteen songs and the kind of incendiary banter that gets you on FBI surveillance lists. “Our current administration needs to be tried, hung, and shot,” de la Rocha declared. “We need to treat them like the war criminals they are!” It was almost as if they were trying to atone for the sin of breaking up when George W. Bush took office, and suddenly, all was forgiven.
Despite the fact that conservative wingnut Ann Coulter went on Fox News the next week to denounce their remarks and diminish their credibility — “I don’t know anything about them, like most Americans,” Coulter claimed — Rage Against the Machine technically played to the largest audience in Coachella history; their comeback was relevant and undeniable.
Even Stereogum — who is much better known for swooning over Sufjan Stevens — recognized the significance of this legendary performance by magnifying what could arguably be the most extraordinary two minutes in Coachella’s history. Simply put, “you haven’t lived until you’ve yelled, ‘**** you, I won’t do what you tell me,’ pumping fists with 60,000 sunburned kids in the desert.”
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