Radiohead, Pixies, Cure & Flaming Lips Rock Coachella Fest

05/03/2004 6:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Lyndsey Parker

The glorious return of reunited alt-rock legends the Pixies, Thom Yorke's triumph over a severe throat infection (which had almost led to the cancellation of Radiohead's Saturday headlining appearance), Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne's attempt to crowd-surf inside a giant plastic beachball, and a two-hour, festival-closing set of greatest hits by the Cure were just some of the highlights of the fifth annual Coachella Music & Arts Festival, held this past weekend in Indio, California. Not even the punishing, 106-degree desert heat, which could have made Coachella a true endurance test for even the most enthusiastic music fan, was enough to stop more than 100,000 people from flocking to this year's festival of nearly 90 alternative, hip-hop, and electronic artists. In fact, attendance was actually up 30,000 from last year, making the 2004 Coachella the most successful yet.

Among the 100,000-strong throng were a good number of celebrity spectators, including Rosanna Arquette, Jack Black, Neve Campbell, Andy Dick, Sex And The City's Willie Garson, Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz, No Doubt's Tony Kanal, Jackass's Johnny Knoxville, Tommy Lee, Jared Leto, Ann Magnuson, Alicia Silverstone, System Of A Down's Serj Tankian, Nick Zinner of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Fox Network sitcom brothers Danny and Christopher Masterson (of That '70s Show and Malcolm In The Middle, respectively), and The O.C.'s Mischa Barton, Seth Brody, and Rachel Bilson.

The first day of the festival kicked off strongly with Swedish garage-rock babes Sahara Hotnights, moody Montreal rockers the Stills accompanied by fellow Canadians Broken Social Scene and Metric, new-wavey New Yorkers Stellastarr, and ferocious Texan guitar fiends And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, all of whom oddly dressed in weather-inappropriate head-to-toe black clothing. But things really heated up--literally--with a last-minute surprise acoustic set by Beck in the intimate Gobi Tent, which, not surprisingly, was positively choked with people; while some desperate fans were either trying to crawl underneath the tarp to sneak a peak, others who'd recently escaped from the tent's claustrophobic, sweatlodge-like confines were collapsing dramatically on the lawn outside with wet cloths draped over their foreheads. And yet others simply opted to see Danish cartoon-pop duo Junior Senior in the neighboring Mojave Tent instead--which turned out to be a good decision, as Fred Schneider of the B-52s and porno-rock novelty act Har Mar Superstar ended up unexpectedly joining Junior and Senior onstage for a rousing medley of the Isley Brothers' "Twist & Shout" and Salt-N-Pepa's "Push It."

The late afternoon was highlighted by a scorching set by bare-bones blues duo the Black Keys (who made an impressive amount of eardrum-rattling noise for just two guys) and the Desert Sessions, a revolving rock 'n' roll collective led by Queens Of The Stone Age's Josh Homme (today's Desert Sessions lineup featured his girlfriend, Brody Dalle of the Distillers). But this was all leading up to the most anticipated gig of the entire festival, the early-evening set by college-rock heroes the Pixies. Original band members Kim Deal, Frank Black, David Lovering, and Joey Santiago took to the stage just as the sun went down and the weather transformed from broiling to balmy, at which point they played an hour-long set of such classics as "Monkey Gone To Heaven," "Debaser," "Here Comes Your Man," "Where Is My Mind," and "Gigantic." It was perhaps the perfect Coachella experience.

The Pixies were a tough act to follow, but if any band was up for the task, it was Radiohead. And despite rumors that they would have to call off their Coachella performance due to Thom Yorke's throat ailment (which had caused them to cancel an Australian concert the previous week), they put on a stunning 90-minute performance, beginning with "There There" (during which Jonny Greenwood and Ed O'Brien put their guitars aside to bang away furiously on tribal drums instead). The band's extremely well-chosen setlist of fan-favorite songs included "Paranoid Android," "Airbag," "Karma Police," "No Surprises," "Street Spirit," and "Myxomatosis," as well as the early hit "Creep," which Yorke dedicated to the revered Pixies, announcing, "When I was at college, it was the Pixies and R.E.M. that changed my life." Later, back over in the Gobi Tent, L.A. powerpop combo Phantom Planet dedicated their own song to Radiohead, with singer Alex Greenwald stating, "Radiohead is the litmus test for us, so, since they played 'Creep,' we're going to play this." They then somewhat sheepishly performed a jazzy version of their O.C. theme, "California," although the aforementioned O.C. castmates weren't there to witness it.

But the night wasn't over yet: As soon as Radiohead wrapped up their show on the Main Stage, seemingly everyone who'd been watching them migrated en masse to the Sahara Tent across the field, for a rare appearance by German techno pioneers Kraftwerk. Once again, the tent quickly reached capacity, but thankfully, the show was projected onto the side of the Sahara Tent, so that those loitering outside could see these four proto-Sprockets robot figures, clad in neon yellow jumpsuits, operate their neatly lined-up keyboard banks. The mannequin-like band may have scarcely moved as a jumbo screen of TRON-like computer graphics flickered behind them, but their funky electro classics like "Tour De France" whipped everyone in and outside the tent into a dancing frenzy, ending the first marathon day of Coachella on an especially high note.

There was no better band to jumpstart day two of Coachella than British power trio Muse on the Main Stage: Lead singer Matt Bellamy's massive, operatic voice (sort of a combination of Thom Yorke and Freddie Mercury) absolutely filled the entire field, and their finale of "Stockholm Syndrome," with its breakneck metallic riffs, was as blazing hot as the Indio weather itself. Elsewhere, the similarly rockin' blitzkrieg set by another U.K. buzz band, Cooper Temple Clause, turned out to be one of the best gigs of the entire weekend, and Las Vegas new wave/garage rock band the Killers made quite an impression when they enlisted a white-robed gospel choir to accompany them on their invigorating final number. California-obsessed Irish pop group the Thrills--whose songs ("Santa Cruz," "Big Sur," "Hollywood Kids") include numerous West Coast references--seemed delighted to be playing in the desert (near Joshua Tree, home of Gram Parsons), and a very different U.K. act, Mercury Prize-winning rapper Dizzee Rascal, drew one of the Mojave Tent's biggest, sweatiest, rowdiest crowds. The mood then mellowed out considerably for the twilight appearance by romantic French electronic duo Air, with keyboardist J.B. Dunckel cooing in his thick Parisian accent, "I think we have good time here tonight. We feel full of love for you." However, when his partner Nicholas Godin announced through a computerized vocoder effect, "I am a French robot and the night is here...it is time for dancing," all the couples cuddling on the lawn jumped to their feet to boogie to more upbeat Moon Safari hits like "Kelly Watch The Stars" and "Sexy Boy."

Air may have oozed tres-French coolness, but it was Oklahoma's Flaming Lips who earned the title of Coolest Band At Coachella, when frontman Wayne Coyne reinvented the long-standing festival tradition of beachball-tossing by stepping inside a giant clear plastic bubble, then having roadies send him out into the crowd, where he rolled around gleefully like a giddy hamster in a habitrail. "I had a dream that I would arrive at Coachella in a bubble descended from outer space," was Coyne's matter-of-fact explanation of this little stunt. His human-beachball experiment caused a delay that trimmed about 20 minutes from the Lips set--but it was actually worth it. And the group did manage to play a good handful of bombastic pop tunes ("Race For The Prize," "Gash," "Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots," "Fight Test") amid a carnivalesque stage setup of giant balloons, furry animal costumes, and copious clouds of dry-ice fog. Coyne also squeezed in a political message by slipping his hands inside giant rubber puppet gloves emblazoned with the slogan "STOP BUSH" and encouraging concertgoers to vote, and he ended his band's abbreviated set by getting the crowd to join in a singalong of "Happy Birth-Day" in honor of Beck, whose first child is due in three weeks. And of course, Coyne sang the song while pouring rivers of fake blood down his face. Does it get any better than that?

Perhaps it does: The Cure certainly brought Coachella 2004 to an amazing conclusion with two hours' worth of nonstop hits ("Fascination Street," "Love Song," "Inbetween Days," "Just Like Heaven," "Charlotte Sometimes," "Boys Don't Cry," "A Forest," the rarely played "Lovecats") and surprise album cuts ("A Night Like This," "Push," "Edge Of The Deep Green Sea," "Play For Today"). "I never thought this day would end," Robert Smith warbled during the Cure's encore performance of "Close To Me," and while there were times during the weekend when heatstroked, exhausted Coachella patrons probably echoed that sentiment, now that it was all over, it seemed like it had all gone by too fast.