The Decline of Coachella

The Coachella lineup was announced this week, seemingly much earlier in the year than usual. Perhaps the festival's promoters announced the acts so early this year in order to make up for the extremely underwhelming and somewhat bizarre group of acts they've assembled.

Roger Waters doing “Dark Side of the Moon” is their top headliner? Oh my god everyone, let’s spend $100 to see the guy from Pink Floyd drag out that old warhorse of an album at Coachella even though we didn’t spend $30 to see the same thing when he played it at every local amphitheater across the country a year ago! I feel like Waters has been touring “Dark Side” for the better part of a decade now, so how is his playing it at Coachella supposed to be the big headline that makes you jump up and say “oh fuck, I have to go to Coachella this year or I’ll regret it for the rest of my life!” This is the festival in which The Pixies played their first reunion show in the same year that Radiohead and Kraftwerk played just a few years ago. Maybe if they had put together a full Pink Floyd reunion, then that would have been something to get excited about…or not. I’m no longer a stoned high school student, so it’s hard for me to get really excited about Pink Floyd at this point in my life.

Led Zeppelin reunited last month and is probably going to tour the U.S. soon. If they wanted the stoned teenager in all of us to come out for Coachella, couldn’t they have tried harder to get the Led out?

And then there’s the first day’s headliner…Jack fucking Johnson. Really? Really? This is the best you could do? I guess Coachella has really abandoned adventurous music fans and turned towards taking cash from bros who just want to listen to some chill tunes and drink some cold brews in the sun while they play hackey sack, toss Frisbees, take their shirts off, continue to repress their latent homosexuality, and just generally drain their father’s trust funds. Coachella used to be a place to where music lovers would make a pilgrimage to the desert to see edgy and interesting musicians, and now one of their headliners is a guy whose brand of boring acoustic rock is blandly inoffensive enough to be used as the soundtrack for the “Curious George” movie.

There are a few surreal choices clearly meant to fulfill the 90s nostalgia industry that will probably hit its peak in a couple years with nostalgia for 90s era 70s and 80s nostalgia. The Verve is playing…huh? I liked that “Bittersweet Symphony” song as much as everyone else did in the nineties, but did they even ever record another song after that? Without orchestral Rolling Stones samples, that band had nothing. Then there’s Portishead and Fatboy Slim, filling in the slot that Massive Attack occupied two Coachellas ago, and proving that not every ninties electro act was created equal.

And, oh boy, Tegan and Sara are there again. Yay. Do those girls just live at Coachella? Their shrill and annoying acoustic rock will make you wish that Sheryl Crow was playing. Or that you were dead.

And then there’s Dwight Yoakam. Country superstar Dwight Yoakam, who has sold millions of albums, getting lower billing than Death Cab For Cutie at a festival that is utterly lacking in country music and country music fans. Anybody wearing a cowboy hat at Coachella is just trying to be ironic. How did Dwight even end up on this bill? Was there some sort of bizarre trade between the indie rock and Country music worlds? Somewhere out there, is Built to Spill nervously playing a set between Garth Brooks and Tim McGraw, trying to avoid beer cans tossed at their heads when they criticize President Bush between songs?

As a sidebar though, Mr. Yoakam was quite amazing in the Jason Statham action junk movie “Crank,” playing the doctor who provides Statham with the movie’s exposition and explaining that he needs to inject himself with adrenaline…or his heart will stop.

It just feels like the festival planners don't know who their audience is anymore now that Coachella has grown so massive. Or maybe they have figured it out, and I'm just not part of that audience anymore, which is kind of sad. And what do I know? Maybe all the hipsters will show up to see Dwight’s set... but you know, ironically. And only because there’s nothing else good to see at the festival this year.