Couch-ella recap (No. 46)
Laufey, Blood Orange, Slayyyter, Woodstock, Karol G and Nine Inch Noize
Welcome to How to Drob where we combine memoir and music. I hope your couch has a comfortably-sized ass print on it.
One of the first films I ever watched as a kid was the original 1970 release of Woodstock, which chronicled the iconic summer of 1969 festival in upstate New York. We had it on VHS.1 You’ve maybe seen Joan Baez doing “Joe Hill”, Country Joe & The Fish “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ To Die Rag”2 or Sly and the Family Stone ripping through “Higher and Higher”. You’ve probably seen Joe Cocker doing his best Beatles impression. You’ve almost certainly seen Jimi Hendrix playing the national anthem. But you likely haven’t seen Richie Havens unleashing his soul doing “Freedom”. Take a few minutes, you will not regret it.
My parents would’ve been in their mid-teens at the time, though they were west coasters and just too young to have been at the original original music festival, 1967’s Monterey Pop. Looking at the two lineups might make you feel a little nostalgic for the days when you might actually recognize all the acts (and nobody’s name is spelled with 4 extra y’s or a $, though, love you Ke$ha).
While we’re nearly six decades past this, these were clearly the inflection point of the modern music festival. A lot of the dressing has changed but the salad ingredients remain intact: a high profile lineup, logistics coming out the ears and overpriced tickets.3
Coachella’s first year was 1999 but they didn’t start livestreaming the event until 2011. It’s now a critical part of the festival’s marketing and it’s working; if you’ve been paying attention to their YouTube channel, it went from under 5M subscribers to around 6.4 I’ve never been but I did do my annual Couch-ella tour all three nights and even though nobody asked, I was there and … I give you notes.
FRIDAY
Teddy Swims was dressed like a king and brought out Vanessa Carlton to do 1000 Miles. That song still gives me the silly happy shivers.
Please enjoy Lykke Ki, heater in mouth, dancing in a leather, booty-first outfit.
Source: AltoSaxo.net Dijon has a drummer facing the center of the stage, which is very hard to beat. I missed his show last year at The Greek and was kicking myself; his artistry is really a lovely mess of sound. The whole band seems too cool for school though.
The XX closed with “Intro” and the internet definitely liked that irony. I was totally in love with the black and white aesthetic of the stage. I’ve always been more of a Jamie XX girlie; 2024’s In Waves was an instant dance floor classic album. They did play “Treat Each Other Right” for 36 seconds to tease me.
Source: architeg-prints.com Don’t nobody know Jacob Lusk’s troubles but God! “Natural Blues”, probably the second biggest song from 1999’s legendary album Play, was fantastic. I super did not have Moby playing the congas on my ‘things that’ll bring ecstatic feelings during Couch-ella’ bingo card.
Turnstile are fun. I have tried and failed to get into the music but do like a few songs. Very glad they did well, especially given their recent nearly impossible to believe drama.
Slayyyter is weird and hot and full of energy and very Charli XCX-coded but really her own thing. She has a very cool redemption story which is worth reading if you happen to not be into the music. Plus, she made her own outfit, a look that Vogue called “sexy, with a dash of Y2K, and a sense of somewhat refined messiness.”5
What I liked in the Sabrina Carpenter set: Sam Elliott. People making babies in all the “drive in” movie cars. The dancers dressed like poodles and dalmatians during “Manchild”. And the absurdly-long-during-a-costume-change Susan Sarandon appearance, due to her Rocky Horror Picture Show-inspired video.
Disclosure doing live instrumentation and singing was dope as hell. These guys crawled so Fred Again could walk etc. etc. It’s been 10 years since they played live like this, which is awesome.
Blood Orange is one of the most intriguing artists in existence and his band setup was even better than that - in the middle of the crowd.
MJ Lenderman’s band Wednesday, doing “Bitter Everyday”: yes. Karly Hartzman’s tutu: double yes.
SATURDAY
Jack White requested a 3pm start time, and it worked. He was awesome. He’s 50.
Geese did two things I loved: one, they played Keith Mansfield’s “Funky Fanfare” during their intro video; Danger Mouse famously sampled the same song for Danger DOOM’s 2005 song “Old School Rules”, featuring Talib Kweli.6 Two, during the same video, they featured TrackStar, my favorite YouTube show maybe of all time. Shoutout Miles, who was there and sent me this “THERE’S A BOMB IN MY CAR” moment from their closer, “Trinidad”.
Nine Inch Noize, which I didn’t even realize is a thing, put on an all-time festival performance. Trent Reznor is so unbelievably lit doing “Closer” live. It was completely and totally dark in the audience. He’s up there pouring his heart out at the top of his lungs and it looks like there are zero people in attendance. lol.
David Byrne was predictably joyful and awesome and visual. This is the third or fourth best Talking Heads song. Also I love how young the band is.
SUNDAY
Little Simz is so joyful and multi-talented. She does a DJ set mid-set.
Laufey - as I’ve written about before, she can do no wrong for me right now so take this as the least critical viewpoint possible: you should love her as much as I do! Definitely giggled when she very proudly mentioned how glad she was to ‘bring a little jazz to the desert.’
I do have ten trillion Karol G thoughts but I’ve run out of space. So just know that “Tropicoqueta” is a combination of the Spanish words for ‘tropical’ and ‘flirty girl’. Probably don’t need to say much else. BUILD THE STATUE!!!!
This edition’s playlist is here. Text me or leave your comments.
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DROB
That stands for video home system. Which is funny because I didn’t know that but I can still feel on my high horse for anyone that still had to look up “VHS”.
Shoutout Barry “The Fish” Melton, who’s son I went to junior high and high school with. Barry had a second life as our county’s public defender.
I mean who had the audacity to charge two dollars and fifty cents in 1967? Absolute heathens. For reference, that is $25 in today’s terms. A one day Coachella ticket ranges from $850 to a thousand bucks.
I hope you weren’t paying attention. I would say ‘I have no life’ but really I just like numbers.
Also she has an album that bombed called STARFUCKER. Interesting.
Speaking of things not on my bingo card, that would be Geese, the most over-popular and belovedly and annoyingly indie rock band of the last 25 years, using an obscure but epic hip hop sample during an intro video to their first-ever Coachella performance.