Coachella Day 3 - April 29, 2007
Day 3 presented a conflict between The Mojave Tent (The Kooks, CSS, Klaxons) versus The Outdoor Theatre (Mando Diao, Kaiser Chiefs, Placebo). In the end I was won out by the argument that Placebo doesn't play the U.S. that much and CSS and The Klaxons will be back in LA eventually.

The Kooks. Due to yet another one-hour wait for food at another fine Indio restaurant establishment, we weren't able to make it in time for Mando Diao at 2:15pm. So after scrounging through trash bins for our daily bottle water supply, we headed over to the Mojave Tent where we caught two songs by Tapes 'n Tapes who sounded OK but nothing too memorable. Then we moved in closer (maybe 6 rows back?) for The Kooks who were surprisingly entertaining. But wow, was it steamy hot in there.

Against Me! So we give up seeing Explosions in the Sky and Rodrigo y Gabriela to position ourselves better for Kaiser Chiefs and Placebo. Not that I hate Against Me! I saw them open up for Jimmy Eat World and Green Day back on October 8, 2005 and they weren't bad. The crowd was apathetic towards them back then. But on this day, their fans definitely showed up--starting a mosh pit and spontaneously crowd surfing, to my dismay using my shoulders to climb on top :\  My friend Alex had enough and left for safer grounds which left Keith and I to fend for ourselves. I was hoping some of the people at the rail would be leaving after Against Me! But ugh...hardly anyone left. Keith was able to get a rail spot on the left side facing the stage so I followed. I talked to the middle-aged guy next to me whom I realized I see at a lot of local LA shows as he was talking about shows I too had attended. I guess the sunglasses and hat disguised him (and me).

Kaiser Chiefs. Fun show, from certain angles Ricky Wilson sorta looked like a more energetic Josh Homme. He did ANYTHING to entertain the crowd like climbing the scaffold and stagediving. But the crowd seemed meh to me. I guess they were waiting for Placebo? I managed to get their setlist, but gave it to Keith since he gave me The Fratellis setlist and was probably the bigger KC fan. Oh, some photographer stood on the bench attached to the barrier for a few songs thereby obstructing people's views. When he left, middle fingers were thrown and certain un-nice words were said.

Placebo. I know maybe a handful of Placebo songs, but wow they were awesome live. Something about Brian Molko's voice and darkness blanketing the stage. I was enjoying the show so much I even made space for this short girl who had been trying to squeeze onto the rail. Props to having a female roadie (I think she was Brian's guitar tech). They ended with a nice cover of the Kate Bush classic "Running Up That Hill." After Placebo, everyone was crowding in trying to get closer to the stage...for Air?!?! Two French guys?? We made a speedy exit by jumping the barrier and meeting Alex on the outside. I suck at jumping over barriers, BTW.

The Teddybears. Teddy bears are normally cute, but these were creepy. They had an interesting video on the projection screen which consisted of Teddybear heads inserted into different movies such as A Clockwork Orange, Taxi, Scarface while a different rapper or singer came out for each song. I think there were a couple guys with big Teddybear heads on playing guitar and bass but we were so far in the back we couldn't see them clearly. It looked pretty fun but we were swept into RATM fever and left after 5 songs to find a place to watch Rage.

Rage Against the Machine. I knew I wanted to be far away from the "action." It's one thing to experience it with 2200 other guys at the Wiltern, but 60,000 with the real deal? No way!!! We ended maybe 20 yards from the soundboard which meant we couldn't see the stage so we relied on the big screens. People in our section were pretty cool except this drunk-off-his-ass guy who kept falling over everyone pissing everyone off. I had enough and out of character screamed at the guy. He tried apologizing to me but he was so drunk he kept apologizing to someone else. Eventually his friends escorted him out before a fight would erupt.

At the end of "Renegades of Funk," we thought it amusing Zack was doing the "rerh rerh rerh rerhh rerhh" part (I thought it was suppose to be Tom Morello's guitar!) while Tim C sang "we're the renegades of funk!, we're the renegades of funk!!" The sound during RATM sucked!!!! It sounded extremely muffled and wasn't even loud enough which seemed weird when I recalled how loud JAMC and RHCP were. People were even screaming "LOUDER!" So the experience wasn't as epic as it should have been.