Coachella 2010: In This Economy?

Every April, the tumbleweed-strewn town of Indio, CA welcomes a youthful mob roughly three times the size of the UO student body. The patrons suffer three days of sunburn, body odor, dehydration, and monetary exploitation in exchange for a chance to see performances by a pantheon of musical gods and goddesses. The art installations, trance-inducing night-lights, carnival attractions, and constant human hubbub that permeate the festival grounds are a non-stop sensory assault. And the concerts, which occupy five stages from mid-day through early a.m. hours, are a music lover’s wetdream. This year, a team of Voice staffers (Megan Gex, Scot Braswell, Cara Merendino, and I) evaded responsibility for five days to experience the madness that is Coachella. The following were two of my favorite moments.

After a twenty-hour drive in a cramped VW Golf, a three-hour nap (disrupted every five minutes by dubstep pulsing from our neighbor Joel’s minivan), and a full day of concert-going, the Oregon Voice Coachella Committee wandered as close as we could to the main stage where Friday’s headliner, Jay-Z, was scheduled to perform. Despite our aching ankles and heavy eyelids, we were determined to give the “greatest rapper alive” (but what rapper isn’t) our fullest attention. With the help of his hypeman and longtime friend Memphis Bleek, Jay-Z fired off hit after hit: “H.O.V.A.,” “Dirt Off Your Shoulder,” “Beware of the Boys,” “Big Pimpin’,” “Hard Knock Life.” It was the creme of his crop, a retelling of his prolific career.  As he bounced around the stage engaging his ocean of adorers, his energy never waned, although at the two-hour mark his voice took on a worn, hoarse texture. Behind him, towering three-dimensional JumboTron structures displayed hypnotizing imagery. When the time came for Jay-Z to play his recent hit, “Empire State of Mind,” the screens conveyed helicopter footage of New York’s glimmering skyline. At this point, Jigga had fulfilled all his requirements. He could have retired for the night, and everyone would have been satisfied. But he proceeded to ice Coachella’s cake. He invited out “somebody super duper special”: arguably the world’s flyest diva, his lover, Beyoncé Knowles. The two of them performed a rendition of “Young Forever” as fireworks erupted from the stage. I walked away with a reaffirmed conviction that Jay-Z is a gangster.

On day two my Coachella high intensified when I witnessed Major Lazer, a Dancehall crew comprised of two American DJs (Diplo and Switch) and a Jamaican psychopath with an affinity for partying (Skerrit Bwoy). They gained Youtube notoriety with their freaky deaky videos, creations of Adult Swim’s Tim and Eric. In the video for “Pon De Floor,” Skerrit Bwoy and the track’s two guest artists bump their pelvises against the booties of their female counterparts. This creative sort of dry-humping, known to Dancehall enthusiasts as ‘daggering,’ featured prominently in Major Lazer’s Coachella performance. Instead of playing the individual tracks from their lauded album, Guns Don’t Kill People…Lazers Do, Diplo and Switch kept bassy beats playing continuously, interwoven with samples from the album and punctuated by sound effects (blow horns, zapping laser guns, and the words “Major Lazer” pronounced in a Jamaican accent). But regardless of a DJ’s skill, watching DJs spin is never much of a spectacle. That’s where Skerrit Bwoy comes in. Throughout the party, he and a wedding-dressed dancer paraded around the stage vigorously daggering one another. Into his wireless microphone, Skerrit Bwoy yelled a few phrases repeatedly: “We party every day!” “Major Lazer in the club. We crazy in the club!” and “We are the solution!” The party culminated when Skerrit Bwoy set up a ladder in the middle of the stage, mounted it, dropped his jeans to his ankles, jumped onto the bride’s upturned butt, and daggered away.

After she repeated in kind, descending several feet onto Skerrit Bwoy crotch, she approached the table where Diplo and Switch were spinning, balanced firmly on her head, and shook her ass in ways that I, sadly, will never be able to. What was possibly the sweatiest, craziest, crackingest party I’ve ever attended, was just another night’s work for Major Lazer.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 10th, 2010 at 12:35 am. It is filed under Art, Live Shows, Oregon Voice, Pop Culture, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.