Coachella day 3 Review

This is my review of Day 3. 

Airplane Boys - I remember people trying to hype up Airplane Boys and show some love or whatever. But trying to hype up Airplane Boys is like trying to hype up the new McDonald's burger or getting excited for the new Mcshake. Their music in particular live, does sound like one of those McDonald's urban targeted commercials. The beats are soft as hell and they still try to appeal to an indie crowd of supposed urban hipsters. Now I know they are not that bad, their music is okay on recording or whatever but please....... don't try to hype them up like they are going to "kill it" or something. In that case then everybody is "killing it " ......... Bon Iver fucking murdered it last night. On second thought, I realize the "killing it" concept is just an extremely stupid one to begin with. 

The Growlers - I kind of considered them an uncle band of my whole scene, which is the garage scene. I support that they try and spread their music around and Coachella is a great way to do it. With that said and out of the way I have a lot of stuff to confess. First, their music is descent but nowhere near any sort of hype that has been going around. The singer is very limited and could definitely put a guy like me to sleep, which kind of makes sense why Auerbach (Black Keys frontman) likes them a lot. Dan was probably like "hey you sing the same notes over and over like me" and the relationship begins. Singer Brooks Shield and the band are also yet another Doors style band, yes I know it seems like a constant reference throughout my review but what do you want me to do?.......  I guess The Doors are in right now. After a couple of songs I felt my blood stream slowly drag and slowly fail to circulate. A couple of songs more the blood fails to reach my head efficiently to keep my eye lids from staying open. It wasn't like a cool stoned feeling or anything but instead like that tired yawning sleepiness. They picked up the pace a little later with a cool reggae jam but that was hardly enough to revive me. Point being, this is some straight hippie stoner rock shit. Not my style, but I don't hate on it. Weird War was a great psych funk band that will melt your face and give you that psych feeling on some of their recordings. Growlers on the other hand will make you feel like you took a shot of nightquil while you still have a long day of work ahead of you. 

Gregg Gin and the Royal We - I wish I would have caught this guy's whole performance instead of that boring shit the Growlers did. Much respect to this old guy who is a "one man show" act. Apparently he is the guitarist of punk veterans Black Flag. He jammed out like he was on acid or something. And he fucked around with a bunch of wicked sounds. He didn't even care about the stage presence or anything. He just showed up and played with no bullshit gimmick in mind or concern for the audience's reaction. I caught the last jam which was pretty groovy and heavy. As soon as his performance was done he left with haste, not even turning or addressing his audience with a "thank you" or anything at all. I don't know if that is just how he is but it was refreshing to see that "don't give a shit" attitude by some middle aged dude. 

Wild Flag - They did their thing. The music isn't amazing or anything but it's descent. Not pretentious either. I give a lot of respect to rock veteran Carrie Brownstein who was the vocalist of Sleater-Kinney. She has seen an even bigger surge of popularity after the success of tv show Portlandia. She put on her stage persona and I was digging it a little. Kind of sexy actually..... okay nuff said. 

Modeselektor - This German electronic duo put on a descent show in my eyes. They had my attention for about ten minutes. I of course am not used to this type of music over all. It was their sample of a Tom Yorke hook from a Radiohead song that I could not put my finger on. I couldn't remember what song it came from and they used it brilliantly. The beat got more complex as it went on. These were cerebral stye beats that don't give you that much to dance to but do give you a bit to groove to. I am however a jurassic music listener, so I did eventually lose attention. The beat just kept going and going to the point where I couldn't tell if the song had changed or not. It seemed like one long 10 minute beat. But, will give them more listens since they did grab my attention for that long........ and that is saying a lot for an electronic group. 

The Hives - Okay let's get to the meat and potatoes of the day or as The Hives referred to themselves as the "main course." This performance gave me a lot of mixed feelings. The Hives were in fact the first rock show I had ever attended back in the year 2000 when they opened for International Noise Conspiracy. They were raw, fun and at that point released a classic punk album Veni Vidi Vicious. Since then they never made an album nearly as good. What they have become now is some kind of shameless salesmen style act. They started the set with what is presumed as their first song on their new album. The song was titled "Come On!" and a good way to pump up the crowd. Later they would play some of their lame new numbers, seriously they get really cheesy beyond control. What made this performance so memorable and one of the highlights of the festival is frontman Howlin' Pelle Almqvist and his persistence in getting the audience completely involved in the whole show. Up until that point no other act was that interactive with the audience, at least from what i saw. All of the sudden, it seemed that The Hives have insecurity issues and Pelle kept urging the audience to tell the Hives that they love them. It was both weird and desperate at the same time. What happened? Pelle felt like that annoying car salesmen that won't take no for an answer......... or like a door to door salesmen that is trying to sell you some sleazy ass pyramid scheme or a new product that is going nowhere. He has the stubbornness of a Jehovah's Witness or Mormon recruit. He is trying to convince you to come to their ceremonies and close your eyes and give up all your faith to the church of The Hives. Did The Hives become the Mormons of rock? ............ hmm now that I think of it they actually do look like Mormons in a weird way. With their clean cut short hair and fancy white shirts. Not to mention how obviously Almqvst would be the preacher of the church. They played some classic slappers like Main Offender , Hate to Say I Told You So and my personal favorite Walk Idiot Walk. Just before they leave with Tick Tick Boom Almqvst had the whole crowed sit down, the whole damn field just sit down........ just so they get up and rock out to the end of the song. Ehh, it's a lot of fun but reminds me too much of some kind of theme park show. It's that good ol' kids birthday party fun, just keep your kids away from the creepy Almqvst......... because he is like that sleazy clown who swears a lot in front of the kids. 

Weeknd - If I could cut and paste everything I said to describe Airplane Boys and put it in here, I would. 

Justice - They came on and dished out some catchy infectious beats. I preferred this performance just a bit over Modeselektor because I am a sucker for the old style format of electronic beats. Of course I understand that Justice could be repetitive as well, but their music was very candy and more familiar for someone not deep into electronic music. I wasn't too overly impressed or anything. The youtube stream cut off their performance and labeled it as a partial performance. A few people in the comment section got upset and demanded Justice back. The comments kept coming on and complaining that Justice got cut off for Beirut. I myself was more into the Justice show but would never demand them back over an actual live instrumental performance, besides that's rude. So calm down people, if you want to watch a Justice show so bad just play their song on your computer and turn on the screen saver. Cause it's practically the same thing. 

Beirut - Not bad, but not into them really. They opened the set with probably my favorite song from them titled The Shrew. Then after that they kept it going with the horn section collaboration, they kept it polka stye I guess. It got kind of boring as it went on. 

At The Drive-In - Never was I into this band but like them a lot better than the awful Mars Volta. If anything Cedric and Omar should have continued with this band and see where it went. There was a rumor in the comment section that Omar's mom had died recently and that is why he was not particularly energetic. If that is true then I give my full respect to Omar for being that brave to face up to a crowd that big after such a tragedy. Now the performance was okay; it's just that...... well I have always hated Cedric Zavala's voice. There are moments where he sounds like he is singing normal and then he abruptly breaks into this whiney high pitched off tune holler that sounds like he is desperately crying for help from getting raped. It's just not a very comforting sound, he needs to get rid of that at some point in his career, don't know if he already has or not......... probably not. The better singer that actually gives the band a bit of balls is Jim Ward. His backup vocals really give their songs an edge. They ended on their biggest hit One Armed Scissor and also a song I consider as one their better ones. 

Dr. Dre & Snoop Dogg 

I remember owning a copy of The Chronic in high school. I would bump it as I did chores and clean up the house, when my parents weren't around of course. And when I was in high school everybody of everybody had to have Dre 2001 in their cd collection. I remember those two records fondly. I never owned Snoops Dogg's monumental Doggystyle album but always bumped "The Shiznit" whenever I can. And of course I remember Snoop's classic hits. Now Dre is more of an entrepreneur and Snoop does just about any crappy collaboration with anybody for quick cash...... in other words he is well done and retired. Albums such as the The Chronic can now be found in the Urban Outfitters vinyl selection therefore it has it's "indie kid" stamp of approval I guess. The set started out with some classics from both albums and I was kind of into it at first for pure nostalgic reasons. Later Snoop would try and get the crowd into it with the hip hop oldie "Jump Around" by House of Pain. Everybody finally got full fledged into it and jumped around all at once. Snoop said that he had to make Dre a believer and Dre would later say "that's fucked up" and laugh. At first I though hmm is this lame? ......... okay yeah, it's pretty lame. If you have to get the crowd all wild up with a song that is not yours, that's pretty lame. Snoop began rolling his blunts getting high as shit. Wiz Khalifa came out to perform....... I can't believe that there is a man skinnier and lankier than Snoop Dogg. Whiz looks like he hasn't eaten in days....... he looks like he could go into Ethiopia and survive amongst the impoverished. That guy needs to eat something. Snoop said he was going to take a break and they were gone. 50 Cent eventually came out and all of a sudden it was a 50 cent concert after only like twenty minutes of the show as Dre and Snoop lazily took a break. Kendrick Lamar came out too to promote his new song with Dre, it was alright and I respect Lamar's flow..... he put it down on Dre's pretty solid beat. Other than that it just got worse as the show went on. Eminem came out and played some of his worst songs and had to leave or whatever. Then eventually the atrocity had to happen. I couldn't believe it at first. It was a close up of a Tupac impersonator? Was he wearing makeup? Then it became more clear, that it was some kind of digitally enhanced hologram of Tupac? I don't think I ever recall Tupac that buff before. The crowd and me were clearly more dumbfounded than shocked. There was an awkward silence throughout the field, wtf is going on! Silent uneasiness crept up as Snoop Dogg tried to get jiggy with his dead homie of the past. I couldn't believe this shit at all. Your going to bring back the dead and pretend he is there rocking it with you? Apparently this is what Dre used up some of his Beats earphone money to spend on. It's like "okay I know we are old and are not going to outdue Jay Z and Kanye on their shows, so fuck it I'm having a crap load of guest performers and bring 2Pac back to life. Huh beat that!" If this was his big finally and big pay off to outdo everybody I could only imagine who he is going to bring back to life next. Next weekends show Dre will resurrect Eazy E for a special collaboration where he will ask Eazy to squash the beef. Eazy E will finally put away his differences and embrace Dre with open arms. Dre and Eazy hugging in front of 90 thousand people........ Easy drops some hologram tears all over the place.......... NWA songs come on and Dre resurrects MC Ren and Yella back...... oh wait a minute those guys aren't dead. Maybe he could do a hologram Skype performance with Ice Cube as he is still in Australia promoting 21 Jump Street or something. Fuck it....... fuck it! all the dead homies that died in Compton come back to life all on stage....... joining hands as all these indie white kids start pouring their $12 Heinekens to the ground.......... all for the dead homies. 

        I can't imagine where this is taking us in the future. This was an atrocity of the highest order and some first grade lazy ass shit. I can't believe they are going to start bringing people back up from the grave to perform. Leave those poor souls to rest and write a song or two or something. And please, next time you pay $300 for a festival give the alive and well performers a chance and your undivided attention because they will need it, since you know their limelight is going to be taken away by performers that have been dead for 14 years. 

That's it, peace out.