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.
Beach House is the moniker for the duo of Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally, who play keyboard and guitar, respectively, in addition to their touring drummer and drum machine. After the extensive touring for their second full length Devotion in 2008 and 2009, the duo began working on a new record, at a new record label: Sub Pop. This along with the addition of flashy- among indie music nerds- producer/engineer Chris Coady led to their most distinct, ambitious and all around awesome album to date, Teen Dream, which was released in late January (but let’s be honest, if you’re taking the time to read this review you probably had a leaked copy ahead of time, too). The last time I saw Beach House, at the Sasquatch Music Festival in 2009, they stopped mid song, multiple times, due to technical difficulties with their sound monitors. It left me with the understanding that from that point forward, they would have to be a band which I appreciated for their recording abilities, and that they couldn’t bring the same qualities to a live show. Yet, on Saturday night I was tucked into bed with a couple hundred other audience members at the Doug Fir by the sonic blanket that they quilted for us.
Walk in the Park opened the set, for a still skeptical me, and by the time the tremolo picking of the chorus hit, combined with Legrand’s lyric, “In a matter of time / It would slip from my mind,” I was captivated, all my cares forgotten, swaying and head bobbing with my glass of red wine like a love struck buffoon. Lo and behold, they had figured out their monitor issues in the past 11 months and sounded absolutely stunning. The composition of their songs are simplistic, but Legrand brings the gravity of her voice, and mystical, love lorn lyrics to give the songs power. Also, I have never seen someone dance so well with a keyboard. Decked out in a Miami Vice looking white blazer, crewneck t-shirt combo she head banged (yes, she head banged to dream pop) her auburn locks, while maintaining a totally sexy demeanor, making me once again envious of French women. They moved onto mainly singles from their previous two albums: Gila, Heart of Chambers, and Apple Orchard. But the main focus was on the more lush, fully realized songs from Teen Dream. I often judge songs, and live sets, on whether or not they take you for a ride, to a place where you lose yourself in four, or forty-five, minutes of bliss through a build in energy. Used to Be, a single which they released in 2008 and appears on Teen Dream, opens with a steady, canned drum beat and a piano chord, and ends in a beautiful, breathy single chord, accomplishing the aforementioned task somewhere in the subdued yet cacophonous middle. Then, there are the songs like Lover of Mine and Zebra which open with a defined rhythm, for Beach House, and get a toe tap or two out of the sea of pretty Portlanders I found myself lost in.
I play a game with myself before every live show I see: I try to guess what they will close with. This time, I won! 10 Mile Stereo is one of the strongest tracks from Teen Dream with a steady guitar line that drives the song, challenging Legrand’s voice, and when performed she and Scally seem to be playfully flirting for the audience through their instruments, a direct juxtaposition of the sweeping cinematic quality of the song itself. The musical duo seemed genuinely excited to play for their audience, and conveyed it through their attention to details, passion, and quality, and if I could I would buy us a round of drinks and we could sway together as the end of Take Care fades out. But instead I will most likely just keep attending their concerts, and wishing they played in Oregon more often.
Because I am still in Eugene for spring break, I get the pleasure of discovering what our local musicians are producing and performing. Good Friday, The Horribalistics, Tullis, Drebin and a Vision in Gray who are all from around the area got to strut their stuff for a short set at WOW hall.
I arrived out the WOW Hall and the band Good Friday was playing and praising Jesus while playing acoustic guitars. Their music was decent, but I was not expecting to hear Christian camp songs so I ran outside and waited for the next band.
The next band, the Horribalistics, true to their name, certainly didn’t put on a great show. They’re another generic punk band. They played loud, fast and simple, but lacked the raw energy and anger that style of music requires to create a great show. They were unable to draw in the crowd, but they were following a Christian band. Any fans of the previous band were probably now offended and left.
The bands that stood out were Drebin and Tullis. Tullis put on a great show except that they sound too much like Floater without enough variation to create their own style. Unlike putting a punk band after a Christian band, Tullis was a good way to get the crowd ready for the next band: Drebin.
Drebin also sounds similar to Floater, but Drebin distances themselves from a Floater clone because their sound is funkier because of their loud, funky and aggressive slap bass style thanks to the bass playing of Derik Sibert although they are a bass-driven band like Floater. Matching the bass styling is the drummer, Ian Samhammer, with his excellently timed, loud and aggressive style of drumming. Samhammer’s creative drumming is the best part of Drebin.
Samhammer met Drebin through mutual friends when they had a different drummer before Samhammer joined the band. They have been playing for a few years together. Each song of Drebin’s, while they are similar in style, does not fall into the trap that so many bands do: not all of their songs sound exactly alike.
“The band is fun and interesting and not all the songs sound the same,” said Samhammer.
Sibert led Drebin and the crowd confidently onstage with their bass-driven sound that nicely complements his low-pitched vocal stylings. The only weakness of Drebin is the the guitarist, Kurt Schreiner, seems to get lost in what to play onstage and lacks the confidence of his counterparts, which hurts his playing. It is hard to play guitar well in a highly bass-driven band, but strong guitar playing is what lacks in Drebin. Also, Schreiner lacks the chemistry that Samhammer and Sibert have onstage together.
Drebin, unfortunately, were not given their fair share of their time slot and they had the audience at their fingertips when the plug was literally pulled out of their amp forcing them to stop playing. Because Drebin was sharing their equipment with Tullis, they were not given any set up time even though it took them ten minutes to tune their instruments and they were only given a 20 minute set that should have been 30 minutes. The crowd was cheering loudly for them when their set was stopped abruptly.
The WOW hall was rented out by the promotion company Nemesis Entertainment and they could not have ran the show any worse. The band that clearly had the most fans had the shortest time slot. As A Vision in Gray, after Drebin, started playing the audience diminished and they played for twice as long as Drebin.
A Vision in Gray was a mix of Emo and Metal and they just couldn’t pull of the mix of styles all that well. Not that I am really a fan of Emo anyway. There was a keyboard in their band that was out of place.
I am glad I live in Eugene where I can always catch a show of local talent, but I hope that I never have to suffer through Nemesis Entertainment organizing a show again.
