COACHELLA REPORT

A friend of mine goes to the desert every summer to go to the Coachella festival. She loves her indie rock. She told me that this year's highlight was none other than Roger Waters, and that the crowd loved his performance, which not only included Dark Side Of The Moon in its entirety, but lots of other Pink Floyd tunes.

I have to admit I was suprised by that. I mean Roger's songs hold up to anyones, but still, the indie crowd has an aversion to artists that are firmly "classic rock." It's cool to like the Syd Barrett-era Floyd, but not the more commercially successful version that followed.

You can find reports on Coachella all over the web, I don't have to point to them. Most of them rave about Prince's performance: he covered Radiohead's "Creep" and The Beatles' "Come Together," and was joined by Morris Day and Sheila E. during the show. (My friend wasn't super-impressed with Prince, which I found shocking). Prince was a sort of last minute addition, and was allegedly paid north of four million - and also cut into the set time of the original day two headliners, Portishead, who haven't played the U.S. in like a decade or something. I like Portishead, but it's kind of weird that Coachella had to go so "off-brand" (to use the marketing term) to be successful - their headliners were Prince, Waters and scourge of indie rockers Jack Johnson.

UPDATE: I don't know if this is a joke, but as I published this last post, I got an email from Coachella's publicity firm offering a $1000 reward and four lifetime Coachella tickets for the safe return of Roger Waters' giant inflatable pig, which apparently "escaped" during his performance.

Anyone with information on the lost pig should email lostpig@coachella.com.