"Madonna killed Coachella," proclaimed a homemade T-shirt at last weekend's Coachella Music & Arts Festival at the Empire Polo Fields in Indio, California, but from my vantage point, its wearer could scarcely have been more wrong.
Coachella absorbed performances not only from the dance-pop diva on Sunday, but also from superstar rapper Kanye West on Saturday with surprising ease, retaining its prevailing independent vibe while embracing a pair of the world's top-selling acts. Bleak forecasts of impending doom for America's premier music fest notwithstanding, I witnessed no brawls between Ms. Ciccone's devotees and the Tool army in attendance for Sunday's headliner, nor did I hear reports of a 60,000-man stampede toward West's Saturday evening set.
Seven years into Goldenvoice's grand desert experiment, Coachella regulars are far too discerning to let a marquee name or two steer them off course. Sure, swarms of Johnny-come-latelies sauntered in around sunset for Madonna, West, Tool or Saturday-night headliner Depeche Mode, wolfed down a churro and headed for home; and lots more showed up simply to be seen on the hipster scene, trying hard to look as if they happened to wake up in their retro T-shirts, boho skirts and bikini tops.
But plenty of others—the Southern Nevadans who painted "Coachella or bust!" on their car's side panels among them, I'd reckon—turned out to see acts most Americans have never heard of, with strange names like Animal Collective, the Juan Maclean, Be Your Own Pet and Murs. Those serious fans of underground have been plotting two-day scenarios in their heads for months, and have no qualms about walking half a mile across the Coachella site to see two songs by a band they first discovered when the lineup was unveiled a couple of months ago.
As for me, I'll remember Madonna as a heroic figure at Coachella '06, not for her brief, six-song performance, which I skipped, but for the dance-tent rubberneckers she drew away from the festival's other four stages. She cleared the way for me to experience Mogwai's gorgeous four-guitar soundscapes five feet from center stage, an aural assault I'll not soon forget (and from which my eardrums will likely never recover).
I rocked out in a side tent to TV On the Radio, a genre-bending Brooklyn band that previewed songs from its brilliant, soon-to-be-released second LP.
I caught bits and pieces of Tool and Depeche Mode, but I saw more of avant-garde San Francisco quartet Deerhoof and Venezuelan Latin-dance ensemble Los Amigos Invisibles. Same goes for Malian afro-blues combo Miriam & Amadou and Aussie electro-pop trio Infusion.
Other points of interest along my winding journey included Australian heavy-rock trio Wolfmother, soul outfit Gnarls Barkley—which featured crooner Cee-Lo backed by a surprisingly large battery of musicians and vocalists—and Rob Dickinson, the ex-Catherine Wheel leader whose solo gig included that band's signature tune, "Black Metallic." I veered over to check out the Cheshire cat smiles affixed to the Octopus Project and Kristina Sky, a Texas-based instrumental band and LA DJ, respectively, who won myspace contests to secure their slots at Coachella. And I heard some interesting cover versions, including Giant Drag's ironic take on Chris Isaak's "Wicked Game," Youth Group's sugary rendition of Alphaville's "Forever Young" and Damian Marley's capable, if somewhat predictable delivery of his father's classic "War/No More Trouble."
Memorable as all that was, though, I'd have traded it all in for the performance that defined Coachella 2006: Daft Punk. Elusive Parisian DJ duo Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter thrilled the delirious Saturday-night crowd with their mere arrival onstage, appearing atop a pulsating, lighted pyramid garbed in their trademark robot gear. For the next 75 minutes, thousands in and around the giant dance tent thumped and shimmied to a hits-laden set that included "Da Funk," "Around the World," "One More Time" and "Human After All." Daft Punk played nearly 20 minutes beyond Coachella's longstanding midnight curfew. "They were so great we told them to keep going, and the festival would cover the possible fine," event organizer Paul Tollett reported to me later.
Of course, with more than 90 acts on the bill and five stages running simultaneously, there were loads of quality artists I simply couldn't work into an already hectic itinerary that ultimately blistered the soles of my feet. A few of the roughest casualties: dark, post-punk throwbacks Editors, legendary British DJ Carl Cox, synth-popsters Ladytron and Brazilian singer Seu Jorge. Ideally, I also would have seen more than three tunes from renowned trip-hop act Massive Attack, who brought along guest vocalist Elizabeth Fraser, of Cocteau Twins fame.
As for Madonna, I wouldn't have minded observing her somewhat stripped-down festival setup, in light of the production excesses of her 2004 Re-Invention Tour. Nabbing a decent vantage point for that would have meant skipping two or three other acts, however, and that indeed would have killed Coachella for me.