Storys from a road trip

In retrospect the funniest thing that happened to Stephen and me at Coachella 2005 was pretty damn irritating at the time. Stephen and I had parted ways when Coldplay started their set because while he adores them they simply make me want to snore. So I headed to the tents and grooved out to The Chemical Brothers and want not while he got all the mellow vibes he could stomach. When it was time to be herded out of the venue my brilliant plan was call Stephen up on the handy dandy cell phones, ignoring the fact that I had already discovered early on that the polo field’s cell coverage was rated at fifteen to twenty calls at once. Needless to say of the fifty thousand plus folks there, a small percentage had a phone or two and I ran my phone dead trying to get a line out. At this juncture I decided to simply go to the car and wait, he’d figure it out, right? The thing was, we had gotten what seemed like such a great parking  spot(just pulled right off the road and boom we were parked) that I hadn’t paid any attention where it was and consequently spent over an hour wandering and clicking the panic button on the key fob before stumbling  across the car. It was empty and just as we had left it earlier that day. I started to get a cold feeling in my gut because whilst I have a reasonably good sense of direction, Stephen though my best friend and a truly great man, couldn’t navigate his way out of a brown paper sack with the end tore out. I shook the unease off, popped the door and sat to read the book that I had been “given” after “donating” twenty bucks to the nice Hari Krishna man that morning. Two hours later Stephen stomps up to the car and launches a stream of explicatives five minutes long in a minute and a half flat. Turns out that, unbeknownst to me, all of his insulin and sugary drinks had made their way into my backpack sometime that day.  The upshot was that we did not have to fight traffic back to Palm Springs where we staying and the next day on the way to the venue, Stephen purchased a hand held GPS unit with a “tag this location” feature. They have yet to be parted since.

Coachella confirmed acts

First up is Depeche Mode, confirmed here and here for Saturday the 29th. Myspace profile here if you would like to hear some of their new stuff.
Second we have She Wants Revenge, which shows here as being there on both the 29th and 30th but I doubt they are playing on both dates. This group has a very catchy sound for a band with the worlds most monotone lead singer. Myspace goodness.
Next up is Amadou & Mariam, confirmed here and at their site. No Myspace for them.
Here comes Paul Oakenfold confirmed here. Myspace here. Good trance if thats your bag.
This ones a bit iffy, Coldcut did have coachella listed on their site under tour dates but with the magic of google the old page is cached. It may be telling that the hole in the tour dates has yet to be filled. Their Myspace has short samples of songs.
Giant Drag will be playing as per here. This is a nice little Fem-Indie-Rock sounding group, hit up Myspace for a sample.
Nine Black Alps may be making a Coachella return. Myspace here if you've been living under a rock.

Props go to Burnedbythesun, their list is a bit bigger than mine but these are the ones I feel are the strongest possible's.

Quick note before bed

Have you ever been to Massive Attacks web page? Its a brilliant piece of interactive art, if you have a fat pipe I recommend you play with it. Err... take your minds out of the gutter, you know what I mean.

Coachella dreaming

As near as I can tell Depeche Mode is confirmed to play this year, that alone is enough to freak out over. And the rumors floating around the Internets of The Smashing Pumpkins playing sounds like wishful thinking but if its true... O. M. G.! The one band being bandied about that I can throw my two bits of info and 15 bits of opinion on is Portishead. About four or five months ago I was looking at Portisheads site and a few other places and found a bit of info that indicated that a new album was in the works for the early part of 2006, if so Coachella is the perfect place to stage a reunion. I went to the festival last year and was hooked, sadly last year was a much better time financially for me and in order to get my fix this year I'm going to have to do some desperate measures like sell my car or *gasp* get a job that I hate. Bummer.

Not the beginning but a beginning...

The space before you will gradually be host to my musings on those things that catch my eye, DVDs, books, news and people of note as well as the occasional tale of the far flung future or deep dark past. All that enter look upon my works and aspire.