Timothy NorrisCoachella’s first weekend was amazing this year! Except when it wasn’t. Here are the parts of the festival that rubbed us the wrong way. Saturday Night dust storm (above) Conditions may not have been as bad as they were during last year’s Red Hot Chili Peppers set, but Saturday…
As Bombay Bicycle Club singer Jack Steadman walked up to the microphone in the middle of the band’s show, he lifted his hands above his head. The sound of a church organ filled the crowded Crescent Ballroom as his bandmates slowly worked toward the finale of the title track of…
Colin Young-Wolff So many Coachella-goers spend months before the festival working on their tans, their outfits, their figures, and their breezy poses. There’s a real glut of fabulousness, we have to say, both among those in attendance at the Polo Grounds and the parties surrounding the festival. Here are the…
Ever since sunshine acid saturated Woodstock back in 1969, music festivals and recreational pharmaceuticals have gone together. While we applaud those using Coachella as an opportunity to get sober, it’s not for everyone, which is why, below, we’ve recommended a fine list of musical acts and drugs that go together,…
From everything we’ve heard, seen, or read over the past few days, the first weekend of Coachella apparently went off quite fantastically (unless you happened to be in Outkast). And if you’re weren’t able to be at the polo grounds in Indio, well…that certainly is a bummer. The good news…
This time of year you should be well within your rights to bitch slap any music fan who spends the weekend whining about how there’s “nothing going on.” Plenty of live music is flowing all over the damn city, at any given time, and the weather is nice, too –…
Joe Diffie, Tyler Farr, Colt Ford, Jason Aldean Country Thunder 2014 4/13/14 As Country Thunder closes out, the tried and true aficionados remain: They’re the groups who’ve done this before, who have more alcoholic stamina than all your friends combined, who will wake up at 5 a.m. on Monday morning…
Did you know that, for some people, Coachella represents a big ol’ Alcoholics Anonymous meeting? Since 2009, New Orleans couple Bob Johnson and Jane Smith (not their real names) have led 12 step meetings on the festival grounds for those who, like themselves, are in recovery. They call their group…
As a dusty wind whipped behind her in hazy stage light, Solange and her ultra-slick backing band brought serious chops and swagger to the polo fields as nighttime fell over Coachella. And then Beyonce showed up on stage, dancing to “Losing You.” It was the first Coachella big celebrity surprise…
Omar “Bombino” Moctar is a Tuareg nomad from Agadez, Niger, and while his music is rooted in the deepest traditions of desert life, Bombino is also deeply indebted to the likes of Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton — maybe even Jerry Garcia. I went to the Musical Instrument Museum to…
Mark Chesnutt, Craig Morgan, Miranda Lambert Country Thunder 2014 4/12/14 By day three of Country Thunder, most attendees are in one of two states: You’re either cripplingly hungover and sunburnt, acting as brothers in spirit with those souls at Coachella, or you’ve been saving yourself for the biggest two days…
The Band Perry, Easton Corbin, & more Country Thunder 2014 4/11/14 Country music fans in Florence were surely pleased with the way their weekend kicked off last night. Friday marked day two of this year’s annual Country Thunder festival, and the night’s lineup featured up-and-comers Mary Hoffman and Cassadee Pope,…
Broken Bells Marquee Theater 4/10/2014 There’s a line from the LCD Soundsystem song “Drunk Girls” that resonated through Broken Bells’ show last night at the Marquee Theatre: “Drunk Girls know that love is an astronaut / It comes back but it’s never the same.” It was clear that the duo,…
Classic arcade games didn’t really have music. Unless it merited a spot on Buckner & Garcia’s Pac-Man Fever, the best a machine before the videogame crash of 1983 could hope for was two or three measures that would stick in your brain long after you’d committed every last beep to…
If it seems like everyone you know is hitting the pavement this weekend for some big festival, it’s only because that’s exactly what’s happening. There’s the first weekend of Coachella out in Cali, of course, as well as Country Thunder down in Florence and KUPD’s UFest over in the East…
Country megastar Jason Aldean doesn’t front a tribute band insofar as we can tell. An argument could be made otherwise, considering the number of cover songs the crooner has performed and recorded during his storied career. Whether or not fans are aware of it, some of Aldean’s biggest hits were…
I Saw Sleigh Bells at Crescent Ballroom — Now I’m Forever Glittery
Rap music and country music — two distinctly different genres that don’t go together, right? Maybe in the past, cuz, but it seems like the hybridizing of the two are happening more and more in recent years. Brad Paisley and LL Cool J collaborated on last year’s track “Accidental Racist,”…
The month of April is packed wall-to-wall with concerts. Check that, it’s packed wall-to-wall with great concerts. Some of the bigger hitmakers and tastemakers in pop and indie rock — Lorde, Bastille, Lana Del Ray, Grouplove, Phantogram, Chvrches … just to name a few — will all perform around the…
Country music is all about the storyline, and the path of least resistance, lyrically speaking, often makes for the best tales-turned-songs. Easton Corbin, the Floridian behind hits like “All Over The Road” and “A Little More Country Than That,” is a man familiar with this model, using it to his…
When it was announced in 2009 that James Mercer from The Shins and producer Brian “Danger Mouse” Burton were going to collaborate under the moniker Broken Bells, it seemed like another interesting experiment in a year glutton with odd collaborations (Monsters of Folk, anyone?)…
Craig Morgan, apart from stopping every other minute to either express gratitude or share a laugh, can call to mind the archetype of the male country star — years in the game, a rack of number one hits, a massive song in current rotation. Morgan doesn’t run by standards, though:…
