coachella and more, more, more

well, i'll talk about coachella, but if you just want to skip to pictures of japan (finally!) and others, scroll downward a bit.


well, the show was incredibly good. there were a few snags. between the japan trip and coachella, i'm really beginning to loathe group dynamics. it's so inflexible, and the mob rules. i like all of the people involved individually or in groups, but when you push up against a complex situation with too many people, it becomes problematic.

anyway, we (me, shane, mark, skip, and seanbaby) drove down friday after work. we got incredibly lost, not getting in to town until around 4 AM. we ended up crashing at the fabulous house that seanbaby's friends had rented. it was pretty much my ideal place to live. spacious, with decks for BBQs, a hot tub, and a pool. granted, it was also in the middle of goddamn nowhere, so there goes that idea.

on saturday we met up with mark's friends and had lunch before heading into the show -- and this became one of the places where group dynamics kind of wrecked things (i missed the stills.) coachella was craziness: over 100 degrees, and crowded as hell. i started to watch beck but he bored the shit out of me -- who wants one-man samey acoustic guitar crap? (a lot of people, but not me.) i wandered off for awhile, reuniting with people for the pixies, who were fucking awesome. super awesome. even that far back, the sound was totally awesome. and then radiohead, and then not kraftwerk. do we want to watch the most influential electronic band in history in a rare US performance, the last of their tour? no, let's go to a fucking party with twenty people at it, many of whom we've been seeing/will see a lot more over the weekend. sigh. group dynamics. never again.

sunday was better overall, in terms of getting what i wanted out of my colossally expensive ticket. i saw muse, who were great, and air, the flaming lips (good for spectacle if kind of disinteresting musically IMO) and the cure. missed part of the cure's encore, but they were fabulous all the same. then we drove home all night, arriving back at 9:30 AM, and i went to work after a shower and a nap. and zoned out all day... oh well.

it was hot, it was insanely crowded, but the performances i saw were uniformly excellent. great stuff. i'd definitely go back presuming i could take the day after off, i could go with a single, trusted compatriot (instead of a gaggle of people) and there were such a huge perponderence of acts i wanted to see again.



and now, the long awaited pics of japan. in a zip, instead of a dir, since there are 174 of them. i will probably dir-ify them later because i like to link to pics on my lj, but for now, this'll do. i'm not going to post up a big entry on japan because i covered it while i was there in that entry and more. sufficed to say, i had a fucking blast and i recommend it to all.

as a bonus, i've uploaded some slightly stale pics of rayBQ final (and some other stuff).

after E3 calms down, we're definitely going to have to have an SF-based bash.