Pavement gets one step closer to headlining Coachella

Indie rock fave Pavement has been rumored as a Coachella headlining candidate since the Stockton-bred act announced its reunion this fall. The band just got one step closer to making an appearance in Indio in 2010, revealed this morning as a headliner for Memorial Day weekend's Sasquatch Festival, located about three hours outside of Seattle.

Road trippers who want to sample festival food up in the Pacific Northwest can buy three-day passes starting this morning via Ticketmaster. Tickets are $170, not including surcharges. The rest of the lineup for the May 29-31 fest will be revealed Feb. 16.

Although a Sasquatch sighting doesn't guarantee that Pavement will perform at Coachella, artists increasingly perform a sort-of summer festival circuit. With a jump in multi-day festivals around the country, there simply aren't that many marquee festival acts to go around, and Coachella is known for booking artists on the reunion trail, from the Pixies to the Stooges. 

Phish to host multi-day Halloween fest at Coachella site

West Coast Phish fans may have been left out of the band's initial run of spring reunion dates, but the act is making a grand overture to its Pacific Time Zone-based fan base this fall. After much rumor and speculation, the band confirmed late Thursday that it would stage a three-day event in Indio, Calif., beginning Friday, Oct. 30. The jam band will take over the same Empire Polo Grounds that hosts the Coachella and Stagecoach fests for what Phish is calling "Festival 8."

The band will perform a total of eight sets throughout the Halloween weekend. Tickets are $199, not including surcharges, and will go on sale Monday, July 27, at 10 a.m. via MusicToday. Parking is free, but there is a camping option, which will run fans $15 per car or $125 per RV.

The fest, the first Phish is hosting since 2004, will also incorporate another Phish tradition: the Halloween show. The band has a history of staging concerts on the holiday, donning costumes and covering another act's album from start to finish. 

In the past, Phish has tackled such releases as the Beatles' "White Album," the Who's "Quadrophenia," the Talking Heads' "Remain in Light" and the Velvet Underground's "Loaded." No hints were dropped Thursday night as to which artist Phish may tackle, but fans are encouraged to bring their "smiles" (awwww). 

The Coachella site has been speculated as the location for the Phish fest for weeks, and hotels have reportedly been going fast. Billboard posted a link to a Desert Sun story missed by Pop & Hiss, which notes that hotels around Indio started filling up around mid-June. 

Phish is a powerhouse on the touring circuit. In 2004, the last year before Phish went on a five-year hiatus, the band grossed a stunning $27.5 million from just 25 shows, according to Billboard. The band last staged a festival in 2004 in Coventry, Vt., an event marred by torrential rains that closed roads near the festival site, forcing thousands of fans to miss the fest. Nevertheless, Phish played to 95% capacity and more through much of its career, according to Billboard data. 

The band is prepping a new album for the fall, said to be called "Joy." The set was recorded with producer Steve Lillywhite (the Dave Matthews Band, U2). 

-- Todd Martens

Photo: Phish's Trey Anastasio at a 2003 Forum performance. Credit: Ken Hively / Los Angeles Times

The Kills come to life onstage

Punk 'n' blues bandmates Alison Mosshart and Jamie Hince seem to lose their inhibitions during live gigs, and next up is the Fonda Friday.

The Kills are a band of barely controlled urges. Singer-guitarists Jamie Hince and Alison Mosshart step onstage most nights in a state of wild delirium, grinding out guitar riffs of pure punk 'n' blues, all sharp edges and raw sexual tension. Their only company is a vintage drum machine, which keeps an agitated beat as the Kills pace behind their microphones, singing of fast times and dark thoughts, kicking their amps or pushing at each other, lost in the moment.

They say the stage is a place of private escape for them, a mutual comfort zone.

"We're quite opposite from what we are onstage," says Hince (a.k.a. "Hotel"). "I think it's the curse of introverted people. I really, really lose myself. It's like a strange sort of hypnosis. I'd never do anything like that normally."

He's on the phone from Minneapolis, another stop on the band's current U.S. tour, which lands Friday in Hollywood at the Henry Fonda Theater.

Exclusive: Paul Tollett on the Coachella naked-wizard-Tasering

As you may have read recently, a naked man was Tasered at Coachella after refusing a police officer's request that he put on his wizard robes. There exists a terrifying video of the occasion that we cannot link to, for it contains images of this amateur Merlin's wand (thanks folks, I'm here all week, tip your bartenders please). Because Pop & Hiss has the naked wizard Taser beat on lockdown, we caught up with Goldenvoice grand poobah Paul Tollett for a comment on this occasion. His thoughts on this electrifying festival moment?

The Killers, Silversun Pickups on the Lollapalooza-Coachella circuit*

Chicago’s Lollapalooza has a couple things going for it that the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival doesn’t. There are in-and-out privileges, Italian beef sandwiches and a host of hotels within walking distance. When it comes to music, however, there’s plenty of similarities.

The 2009 lineup for Lollapalooza, slated for Aug. 7-9 in Chicago's Grant Park, looks a bit like Coachella circa 2006, at least when it comes to its top headliners. Depeche Mode and Tool will anchor the fest, which also features Coachella’s Saturday night headliners, the Killers.

Overall, however, Lollapalooza’s bookings are distinct enough to keep the 2009 overlap between the two festivals at just under 25%. Among the acts appearing on the Lolla-Chella circuit are Band of Horses, Friendly Fires, Ida Maria,  Lykke Li, Cage the Elephant, Thenewno2 and a host of locals, including the Silversun Pickups, No Age and the Knux.

Coachella 2009: Second biggest turnout ever

Summer music festival organizers, you can sigh a breath of relief.

Defying expectations at a time of global depression, when a number of high profile music fests have either gone on hiatus or out of business, the 10th edition of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival celebrated a banner year.

According to founder Paul Tollett, attendance for the weekend was 160,000, making '09 the second biggest Coachella to date. (The 2007 lineup, which included Rage Against the Machine, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Bjork holds that title, attracting 186,000 festivalgoers.)

If such a turnout is any kind of bellwether for similar "large footprint" destination festivals across the continent, summer music offerings such as Summer Camp in Chillicothe, Ill., and Chicago's Lollapalooza have reason to be optimistic.

Coachella 2009 Day 3: Etienne de Crecy says goodbye from 'The Cube'

While Roni Size was closing the Outdoor stage with his live British space-jazz and the Cure was rolling passed the fest's designated midnight end time on the Main stage with old-school memories, hardcore European dance fans were flocking to the Sahara tent to see the debut of Etienne de Crécy’s new trick, “The Cube.”

De Crécy is a French dance producer who’s been making music since the mid-‘90s, but it’s his current high-tech stage show that’s made him the buzz of DJ culture and even earned comparisons to fellow French dance stars Daft Punk’s now legendary pyramid. There’s even something of a feud brewing with Saturday night headliners the Killers, who wanted the Cube design team EXYZT to build one for them. When the De Crécy collaborators politely declined, the Killers still showed up at the MTV Europe Music Awards with something eerily similar. Needless to say, De Crécy was none too pleased.

Coachella 2009: Guitar heroines

The role of guitar hero has and continues to be an unnecessarily male-dominated domain, which made Sunday's offerings at Coachella an unusually rich opportunity to hear what happens when the best dude for the job is a woman.

My Bloody Valentine's Bilinda Butcher stood stoically at the mike during the Irish group's reunion set last night, calmly pealing off gargantuan towers of sound. Devoid of any cliched male-style hair-tossing, prancing or undulating, Butcher, playing as equal partner with MBV's Kevin Shields, must have approached or surpassed whatever world record exists for loudest guitars ever, thanks to the help of Coachella's 12-zillion watt mainstage sound system.

How loud was it? When I headed off near the end of their set to catch Throbbing Gristle at the opposite end of the Empire Polo Field a good half mile away, I could still hear -- and feel -- stacks of shattering chords. In the men's room. With the door closed. Over the air-conditioner.

Coachella 2009: Public Enemy brings the noise

Before launching into its late '80s smash "Rebel Without a Pause," Public Enemy's frontman Chuck D became conscious of a certain ageism in the air, cautioning the Coachella crowd: "This is from 1987, before some of you were born." Before launching into the song, though, he thought better of it, adding: "But you was here for Paul McCartney, which is before everybody was born!"

With acts such as McCartney, Morrissey, the Cure and Leonard Cohen accounting for this year's surfeit of "dad rock" at the festival, it fell to the Strong Island firebrands of Public Enemy to be the token "dad rap" booking of this year's event.

The group understood that expectation, however, and performed its 1988 opus "It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back" for an appreciative crowd.

Minus DJ Terminator X, who has not performed with Public Enemy in years, the original lineup was intact: Minister of Information Professor Griff made repeated references to the "Obama deception," hype man Flavor Flav appeared bouyant in a jester hat and signature giant clock necklace; he executed no fewer than four stage dives (to the chagrin of fans, no doubt, by going in feet first). And Chuck D, in New York Knicks shorts and a New York Mets cap, has lost none of his stentorian rhyme-spitting ability in the 21 years since the group's epochal album debuted. All of them (accompanied by PE's onstage security detail, the S1Ws, DJ Lord and a three-piece band) rocked the house even while some of the Cure's lugubrious guitar wash bled into their set.

By the time Public Enemy performed its Slayer-sampling anti-TV screed "She Watch Channel Zero," the audience exploded into a paroxyism of rap-metal jubilation. By reputation, Coachellans are looking for any excuse to rage against the proverbial machine. This time, they were collectively fighting the power.

-- Chris Lee

Photo of Chuck D by Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times

Coachella 2009: The Cure, still sad after all these years

You have to admire a man who has spent the entirety of his adult life, so far, in eyeliner and lipstick. Looking every bit the Ghost of Angsty-Teen Christmas Past, Robert Smith has changed very little since he stole countless confused and youthful hearts during the Cure's 1980s uber-Goth heyday. He's still got the same face and stubborn pout, but his cherubic roundness has hardened into the angular resolve of a middle-aged man who has loved and lost one too many times.

Watching Smith perform from my post in the cool, damp polo field grass, it struck me that just as Friday's headliner, Paul McCartney, represented my parents' defining musical moment, Robert Smith and the Cure represented mine. I wasn't 5 when I listened to the Cure's songs; I was a hormonal, aching, irritated, inspired, vivacious and cruel 13-year-old girl who needed a band like the Cure to help me make sense of the backward young-adult reality I was so suddenly encountering.

When the band played the ominous but classic co-dependent love-song-in-denial "Lullaby," with its most aching line, "The spiderman is having me for dinner tonight," I remembered how the passively creepy little ditty used to sound so feral and ahead of its time. Especially for a girl still going to Milli Vanilli and Sweet Sensation concerts. Sunday night,  the song, along with many others the band played, sounded slightly wan and uninspired. The Cure's churning wash of guitars, lamentful and plodding bass lines and Smith's signature voice of wavering sorrow never quite came together to punch you in the guts with its debilitating one-two of deep need and thunderous want.