Coachella 2012 Day Two Wrap Up

My Coachella gang are the early goers, where we show up when the gates open and check out the less known acts and enjoy the festival grounds before the massive crowds later on. It's nice to sit in the beer garden in front of the Sahara tent and enjoy the nice weather, some good pizza, and some beer. Thankfully, the clouds from Friday disappeared and there was abundant sun. The only downside was there was also abundant wind. But I am always a trooper and soldiered on. Kurt and I went over to the Outdoor Theater for one of my favorite bands, We Were Promised Jetpacks. They did a solid and driving set of their brand of angular post-punk. It was good start to the day and had a nice effect of dispelling the bad vibes from the previous day.

I'm the guy in the blue baseball cap at the bottom/middle of the screen at the :10 mark.

Next up was the amazing Azealia Banks who rode into Coachella on a huge wave of hype and buzz for her first US appearance. Despite her set being cut short 20 minutes it was a fun/energetic show that had her crying throughout the entire duration for being so happy. Below is the clip for "212/Firestarter" that made the tent explode.

I shuffled over to the Mojave tent next for The Big Pink. They played in 2010 and I had to miss them due to a conflict so I was glad to catch them again. Their set was solid yet not amazing, playing most off the new album with a couple of tracks from the first one.

I had a lot of time to kill before my next show, so I wandered the fields awhile checking out the art installations and a few songs from Noel Gallager. I then headed over to see St. Vincent. Again, she was in the Gobi and had sound troubles, which seemed to be a theme for that tent this year. Despite not being able to hear her all that well, she put on a fun set, culminating in her crowd surfing while singing a new track.

I stayed through to Flying Lotus' set, which basically was a somewhat freshened up version of his set from 2010. The guy even had the same t-shirts in the merchandise tent. Not to say it wasn't good, there were some interesting moments throughout, but it had the feeling of being same old same old.



I joined my housemates for Miike Snow over at the Outdoor Stage. The wind had picked up and it had gotten much colder, so it wasn't the most ideal of situations. Despite the cold, we saw a really nice set from the band, although it felt a little truncated. But I was able to hear "Cult Logic" at its correct tempo and new faves "The Wave" and "Pretender" so I was very happy.



Which comes to Radiohead, which was one of the bands I wanted to see the most. However, the crowd was so horrifically douchey it turned us off from even staying long. We caught about 3 songs from them, and as they were basically the same tracks from their Atlanta show we decided to make it an early night. So I wandered home and got to bed relatively early. Sunday would be the big day.