By the time you read this, the lineup for the 2006 Coachella
Festival may or may not have been announced. For many people,
myself included, this is the equivalent of Christmas. Not Christmas
in January, just straight-up Christmas. Outside of South By
Southwest in Austin, I can’t think of an American music
festival that consistently brings together so many high-quality
artists into one weekend of musical insanity in the desert.
With that said, the wait for a lineup to be announced every year
is always a contentious experience and not just because of the
obvious waiting game. Instead, the wait for a lineup to be
announced is made more unbearable by all the fake lineups that crop
up on the Internet in the days and weeks leading up to an official
announcement.
Last year was a pretty good example of what I’m referring
to. At this time a year ago, a fake lineup leaked and was purported
to be real. Of course, people started going crazy. And for good
reason.
The lineup got some things right but mostly missed. It
essentially read like a hipster’s concert wish list, and if
you could name a hip, high-profile act, it was on this fake lineup.
The dead giveaway was that the most obscure bands on one day of
this lineup were Doves and Moving Units, and there were very few
hip-hop acts present. In fact, I think Mos Def was the only one on
it (never mind that he actually did end up at Coachella). All in
all, looking at it now you can just tell it was a fraud.
That’s not to say everyone, including myself, didn’t
buy into it. I mean, if you see a lineup with the Arcade Fire,
David Bowie, Franz Ferdinand and Nine Inch Nails all in the same
place, of course you’ll get excited.
The problem is that when the actual lineup came out, some
people, spoiled by this fake lineup and others like it, were
surprised that it was mostly off the mark. Some people I knew even
refused to go on the grounds that the actual list of performers was
“disappointing.”
Then again, I’m not sure if I can really blame them for
being disappointed with last year’s lineup. After all,
Coachella 2004 was such a once-in-a-lifetime collection of music
that I’m not sure the festival can ever do anything to top
it, short of somehow resurrecting Ian Curtis and Kurt Cobain.
Seriously, how can you ever top the Pixies playing one of their
first shows in more than a decade, blowing the crowd away and then
almost unfairly being followed by Radiohead? That’s simply
not something that can happen every year. And that’s only the
most obvious thing. The fact that these two bands and The Cure were
present just made the festival that much more ridiculous. Hell, my
parents even went. I mean, come on now, this festival was so packed
with talent that Beck was a random throw-in at the last minute.
In some ways, the fact that 2004 was such an amazing lineup
creates something of a conundrum for the festival. Every year from
2000 on, the lineup got consistently stronger, with headliners like
Björk, The White Stripes, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Tool. The
problem is that now a lot of people are going to be disappointed
with the lineup every year unless the promoters pull something out
of their hat like Radiohead or David Bowie, who is rumored to
appear every single year.
And let’s face it: While I admit that the popular group
has a few good songs, Coldplay does not have nearly the same kind
of consistently devoted, rabid fanbase as a band like Radiohead,
The Cure or R.E.M. If anything, their presence at last year’s
show caused many people who would not normally attend Coachella to
show up, leading to some interesting confrontations between
mainstream, clean-cut Coldplay fans and underground, edgier fans of
bands like Bauhaus and Nine Inch Nails. It was interesting, to say
the least.
Regardless, the one thing we are guaranteed at this point is
that Depeche Mode will headline one night of the festival, which
I’m totally down with. My only hope is that people
don’t get overly excited by fake lineups that include
Interpol, Franz Ferdinand, a rumored Smashing Pumpkins reunion
(though I’ll gladly eat my words if that happens) and The
White Stripes. A few of these names could end up at Coachella, but
they’re all so big that I doubt they would all happily share
a bill.
Though that doesn’t mean I can’t cross my fingers
and hope that the Flaming Lips, David Bowie, Dinosaur Jr. and
““ oh, I don’t know ““ Tool all show up. I’ll
just have to know how realistic to be in hoping for that
outcome.
Humphrey hopes the hunk of metal that people bang on in the
middle of the Empire Polo Field makes a triumphant return this
year. E-mail him at mhumphrey@media.ucla.edu.