Furr
by Blitzen Trapper (2008)

“Furr” was one of those songs that I discovered completely by accident.  Somehow I had downloaded it, and it was on my iPod, but I had never really listened to it until early 2009 when I made a couple of Genius mixes to listen to , and it started appearing regularly in those.  And then once I played it a few times, I was completely obsessed with it, and later I got their whole CD, also called Furr.

What I didn’t know until recently, was that Furr was actually their fourth studio album, and the band has been together for over 10 years.  The band’s sound is described on Wikipedia as experimental folk, but there are many styles of music on the CD, as well as their brand new 2010 release Destroyer of the World.

But getting back to the song, it’s one of those songs that I just don’t get tired of.  In fact, according to my Last.Fm page, which charts all the music I listen to, it’s currently sitting at #3 for most listens on my top songs chart.

Most songs that I end up liking have a memorable chorus or hook, but “Furr” is instead the ulimate storytelling song.  And what’s not to like from a song about a teenager who drives into the woods and turns into a wolf, and stays that way for 6 years before meeting a girl and marrying her!  Yes, that tired story again.

My only problem with Blitzen Trapper is that on their CD’s, including the new one, I only end up liking a handful of songs. But the songs that I do like, end up being some of my favorites of the year.  Check out “Furr” and let me know what you think. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Funny Little Frog

Belle and Sebastian formed in Glasgow in 1996.  They were a band that I had always heard of, but didn’t really OWN anything by the band until ten years later.  In 2006, they released their most recent CD called The Life Pursuit. I don’t really know what prompted me to purchase that disc, but it went on to be one of my favorite CD’s of the year, if not the decade.

There are a lot of amazing tracks on the disc, but my favorite has to be “Funny Little Frog.”  According to Wikipedia, the song went on become their highest charting single in the U.K.  I had this song on my old MySpace page around the time that my wife and I had taken a trip to Vegas.  For some reason, to this day, I still think of that trip whenever I hear this song.

After purchasing The Life Pursuit, I went back and bought several of their previous albums, which are all amazing.  Unfortunately, they haven’t released a new disc since 2006, but I seem to remember hearing that they were recently recording something new, so I am definitely looking forward to that.

I had never seen the video for “Funny Little Frog” until now.  Hope you enjoy it.

I’ve been enjoying the song over the last couple of months. But now that there’s a video, featuring Ronald McDonald of all people, the song just got even better. Check out our music video of the week, for the dreamy “When I’m With You.”

Fred Meyers
by Glen Phillips (2001)

Glen Phillips is best known as the lead singer of the band Toad The Wet Sprocket. They had several hits in the 90′s, before breaking up in 1998.  In 2001, Glen released Abulum, his first solo album, which included the song “Fred Meyers.”  Living in California, I had never even heard of the department store, Fred Meyers, which are located in the North Western United States.  

The song, about a guy who lives inside a vacant Fred Meyers store, has always been one of my favorites.  It’s a weird concept for a song, but I love the lyrics and vocals.  I don’t think at the time I would have thought this would still be one of my favorites almost ten years later, but it’s really held up over the years.

After getting to the festival fairly early on our first two days, we decided to sleep a little later on Sunday.  Normally, in the past few years, we would always stay at our hotel from Thursday night to Sunday morning, and check out before heading to the festival for the final day.  The problem with that is that by the time the day was over, we would have to drive home, which is about two hours away, and I would always have trouble staying awake for that drive. This year we decided to stay one extra night, and I’m glad we did.  It really helped out, and made the weekend even more enjoyable than it already would have been.

We arrived at the polo fields around 3:45, just in time to check out De La Soul on the main stage.  I’ve been a fan of De La Soul ever since the early 90′s.  To be honest, I really don’t know much of their material, other than their big hit “Me, Myself and I.”  Recently, they’ve returned to the public eye as guest collaborators on the last two Gorillaz CD’s, but as a band they’ve actually been together for over 22 years.

De La Soul

I always hate when the first bands that we want to see each day are on the main stage, because it can be so hot outside.  Luckily, as I mentioned before, this year the weather wasn’t nearly as bad as in previous years, and we were able to lay out on the grass to watch their set.  De La Soul put on a great performance, reminiscent of old school hip hop, and they were able to get the midday crowd dancing and singing along.

After De La Soul, we had really wanted to check out Florence and the Machine, but the tent was overflowing with people.  So we decided to wait for it to empty out, and we made our way into the Gobi to watch Charlotte Gainsbourg perform.  Charlotte is a french actress and singer.  Her latest CD was produced by Beck and he co-wrote most (if not all) of the songs. He also duets on “Heaven Can Wait,” the first single from the CD.

Of course, being huge Beck fans, we wanted to make sure we caught Charlotte’s set.  We were really hoping that Beck would be there to make an appearance, and to at least perform their duet.  Unfortunately, he didnt show up (as far as I know), and we left a bit early so that we could return to the main stage to get a good spot for Spoon.

Spoon

Spoon is another one of those bands that I have listened to for a number of years, but I had never seen them in concert before.  The band put on a great show, playing all the songs that I wanted to hear, but I think they are also one of those bands that I would probably enjoy more in a smaller venue.  I really can’t put my finger on what was missing from their performance, but overall I was glad to finally get to see them play.

After Spoon’s set we decided to head over to the Outdoor stage to get a good spot to watch Phoenix and Thom Yorke.  Even though I have the Phoenix CD, I realized while I was watching them that I should have gotten more familiar with it before seeing them in concert.  I luckily at least knew all the songs that have been getting radio airplay (“Lisztomania,” “Lasso” and “1901″).

Phoenix drew a huge crowd.  From what I heard later, there were probably more people at the Outdoor stage seeing them than seeing the Pavement reunion over at the main stage.  I’m sure that if the organizers had to do it again, they probably would have had Phoenix on the main stage instead.

After Phoenix, my wife held our spot and I went to get us some dinner.  Why is this important to my story, you might ask?  Well, it’s because I have to tell you about the great food that we had, courtesy of Cowboys and Turbans, who were serving their Mexican/Indian cuisine at Coachella this year.  My wife had actually first tried their chicken tikka masala burrito on Friday, but I didn’t get a chance to try one of my own until Sunday.

Usually the food at Coachella is hit or miss.  You’re there mostly for the music, but you have to eat at some point, so a lot of the vendors charge a lot of money for food that’s not always so great.  I don’t know if Cowboys nd Turbans have been there for any other years, but I hope they come back for years to come.  That burrito was delicious, and reasonably priced as well.  They have a couple of actual restaurants in L.A., so I hope to visit those some day soon.

After dinner, we found it hard to believe that there were only two more acts remaining, and then Coachella would be over for another year.  Our second to last act of the night was Thom Yorke.

Thom Yorke

I’ve never seen Radiohead in concert, so it was cool to see Thom Yorke.  He and his band, Atoms For Peace, which included Flea on bass, started by playing songs from Thom’s most recent solo release.  I understand that he finally started playing a few Radiohead songs in the second half of his set, but since we wanted to get a good spot at the main stage for Gorillaz, we had to leave about halfway through.  It was still amazing to be able to see him perfom.

I don’t know why, but this year they had decided to shut down all of the other stages BEFORE Gorillaz performance, which meant that when they took the stage, the rest of the polo fields were dark.  And because we figured that a large portion of  the 75,000 in attendance would be watching it, I think we got over to the main stage about 45 minutes to an hour early.  But, luckily we found ourselves a decent spot.

After the fact, a lot of people online were disappointed with Gorillaz performance.  It might have been because they were actually performing as THEMSELVES (and not behind their cartoon alter-egos, as in the past), or because people weren’t as familiar with the material (which was mostly from their latest CD, Plastic Beach).  Me, I thought it was brilliant.  Of course, it didn’t hurt that Plastic Beach IS probably my favorite CD of the year so far, and I love all the songs on it.

Gorillaz – I liked this animation!

I actually thought that Gorillaz performance was one of the best things I’ve ever seen at Coachella, in all 6 years that I’ve been attending, and I stand by that opinion.  It was great music, great visuals (animation and other videos were shown to go along with each song), and great guest performances (De La Soul, Bobby Womack and Little Dragon among others).

We decided to stay until the end of the set though, and when it was over, with all the huge crowds trying to exit at once, it took us 45 minutes to get out and back to our car (which was probably parked over a mile away from the entrance). Somehow though, once we got to the car, it only took me two whole minutes to get out of the parking lot.

Overall, Coachella 2010 was a wonderful experience.  I enjoy going every year, but some years are better than others.  2008 had been my favorite year so far, but this one comes pretty close.  Like I said before, there were definitely some logistical/organizational issues that will hopefully be fixed next year, but it didn’t detract from the experience overall, at least for me.  And now that it’s over,  I have to wait another year to experience it all again.

Finally, since I mentioned our hotel a few times, I thought I’d share a few photos of it at the end here.  We stayed at the Caliente Tropics motel in Palm Springs.  It was a very nice place to stay, and not too expensive either.  We actually took advantage of an offer that allowed us to get to book three nights, and get the fourth one free.  This tiki themed motel was popular in the 1960′s and was a favorite hangout of many celebrities, like Elvis Presley and The Rat Pack.  If the price was right, I could definitely see us staying here every year.

And for some reason, most of the commercials that we’ve featured here are not only bad, they fall under the creepy/disturbing category as well.  And that’s definitely how I’d describe this new commercial from Crocs.

Now, I don’t think that it’s because I hate Crocs in general.  This commercial is just plain disturbing.  I know it’s not real, but if I owned a pair of Crocs and one day I came home to THAT, I don’t think I’d ever have a good night’s sleep ever again.  Most of the people commenting on YouTube seem to think the commercial is more cute than creepy.  Personally, I have to disagree.

What are your thoughts?

After a very packed Friday at Coachella, in terms of music AND people, we had originally planned on getting to the polo fields a little later on Saturday. The first act we wanted to see didn’t even go on until 3 p.m., but despite leaving a little bit later, the parking wasn’t nearly as bad and we made it there around the same time. Being a 3-day only festival this year, there were a few differences from past years. The most noticeable difference was that instead of three separate tickets for the whole weekend, you instead redeemed your one ticket for a wristband that you wore for all three days.

Another difference is that because of the wristband, they were allowing ins and outs. In past years, if you left, there was no getting back in, so you had to make sure that you were ready to leave.

In my review of day one, I mentioned our re-usable water bottles. We had purchased these last year too, but this year, unlike almost everything else, it was a bit more organized. Basically you would buy the bottle and then bring it back as many times as you wanted for “ice cold” (their words, not mine) Arrowhead water. While last year, you had to wait in a long line each time you wanted it filled, this year you just entered one of two refill tents, where they had 15-20+ coolers of “somewhat cold” Arrowhead water inside, and you filled it yourself. Or, like we did, filled it and drank it immediately, and then filled it again.

Since we got there earlier than we expected to, we decided to go check out John Waters. Yes, THAT John Waters, the film director. We had noticed when the line-up first came out that he was going to be there, but didn’t know what he would be doing. Well, he was actually quite entertaining. His 50 minute set was just him on stage, talking… telling jokes and stories. It was a great relaxing way to start our second day.

John Waters

After that, we headed over to the Mojave tent where we wanted to get a good spot for Camera Obscura, and Beach House after that. For the second day in a row, we had to sit through a country act to do that. This time it was Shooter Jennings, the son of country legend Waylon Jennings. By the time Camera Obscura started, we had been able to get really close to the stage. It was probably the closest we got to anyone all weekend.

Camera Obscura

Camera Obscura has been one of my favorite bands for the last few years. In fact, my wife and I included one of their songs on the CD that we gave out at our wedding. They were one of the bands that made it out of Europe, even though the volcano that had erupted in Iceland had grounded several others. This was another one of my favorite sets of the weekend, and I was glad that we finally got to see them in concert. They did all of my favorite songs.

Beach House was up next, but we were starting to get a bit smothered up by the front, so we worked our way to the back of the tent. We got to hear about the first three or four songs. I really like Beach House, and they sounded about the same as they do on their new CD.

After taking a little nap, laying by the Outdoor Stage, we listened to some of Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros and then made our way to the Gobi to watch Danish indie rock group The Raveonettes, who were another band affected by the volcano. Luckily, the main duo of Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo were able to make it, even though their backing band was not. It didn’t seem to affect the show too much though. In fact, I think it made it even better, with them simply performing as a two-some. My wife and I had seen them a couple of years ago at the Fonda in L.A., with the full band, but I actually preferred the stripped down Coachella version much better.

The Raveonettes

Now, two of my favorite bands of all time were both playing on Saturday… Hot Chip, who are one of my favorite recent bands, and the reunited Faith No More, who are back together after spending the last 10 years apart. And of course, because they were the bands I wanted to see the most on Saturday, they just HAD to be the only two bands that overlapped for us.

We decided to check out Hot Chip first, who were performing at the Outdoor Stage. Luckily they played most of the new songs that I wanted to hear before we had to leave. We had seen them at Coachella in 2008, in the Sahara tent. I much prefer seeing them in a smaller venue than one of the main stages, but they still put on one of the best performances of the weekend. We hadn’t heard them do anything live from their newest CD, One Life Stand, so that was nice.

But after 5 or 6 songs, we headed across the polo field to the Coachella Stage to watch Faith No More.

This was what I was looking forward to the most. I had been a huge Faith No More fan in the 90′s, and even saw them in concert several times back then, but that was a long time ago. They had broken up in 1998 and I never thought they would get back together again. But last year, they did just that, starting with shows at festivals in other countries. Since lead singer Mike Patton almost always appears at Coachella in some form or another, I knew they’d be on this year lineup.

I originally thought we’d miss about the first half of their set, we lucked out and only missed their first song. Watching them, I felt like I was a teenager again. This was one of my top five acts of the weekend. The band played the hits that people would want to hear (“Epic,” “Midlife Crisis,” “We Care A Lot”) and cover songs (“Reunited,” “Ben”) like they had always been known to do. My only complaint was that they were only given 50 minutes. I hope that they will eventually come back to L.A. and play a proper club show at some point. I know the normal length of their reunion sets has been about 2 hours long.

After killing a couple of hours where we had nothing to do but use the wi-fi in the KROQ tent and eat cookie pie (like a pizookie at BJ’s but without the ice cream, and served by the slice), we finally made it to our last act of the night, which was Sia.

Cookie pie is a yearly “must have”

It’s no secret that I’m a big Sia fan. I’ve written about her more than anyone else here at Cuter Than Pie. My wife and I had seen her at Coachella in 2008, and were excited to see her again. Even though she had been getting over a cold, as she pointed out on twitter, she still put on an amazing performance.

Sia performs

Like LCD Soundsystem on Friday, she has a new CD coming out soon, so she played several songs from that, including her new single “You’ve Changed.” But, she also played a lot of her older material, including fan favorites “Breathe Me” and “Buttons.”

After Sia performed, we headed back to our car, worried about having a lot of traffic like the night before. But luckily we got out of the parking lot within 20 minutes. And by the time we got to the end of Saturday night, we couldn’t believe that two full days had already passed. All that was left was Sunday, our final day.

Read about day three next Tuesday…

From a logistical standpoint, this year’s Coachella was FAR from perfect.  Months before the festival began, people were already upset that there were no single day tickets this year.  If you wanted to attend, you had to purchase a 3-day pass for the whole weekend.  Then, when the first day finally came around, there were problems with parking, ticket/wristband exchange, bands who had to cancel due to the Icelandic volcano, and a huge sold out crowd (75,000 people as opposed to 60,000 or less the last few years).  If you want to read complaints, there are other sites for that, including the official Coachella message board.  While this year WAS a bit unorganized, for me it was one of my favorite years overall, so I’ll focus on the (mostly) positive instead.

This year there was a ferris wheel!

After waiting about 45 minutes to park, the longest that we waited all weekend, we arrived at the Empire Polo Fields at around 1 p.m. on Friday.  We purchased our refillable water bottles ($12 each, but refillable for free all weekend), and checked out the merchandise tent, then we headed to see our first act of the weekend, DJ Lance Rock from the TV show Yo Gabba Gabba!

I’ve been meaning to write about Yo Gabba Gabba! for some time now.  I’m not ashamed to admit that I watch the show regularly, even though it’s on Nick Jr. and is aimed towards toddlers.  The best part of the show are the musical performances.  Most of the bands and artists that have appeared on the show have played Coachella in the past (including Of Montreal, I’m From Barcelona, Chromeo, etc.) so the fact that DJ Lance was playing there seemed like a perfect fit.

He started his set by doing some simple DJ-ing and dancing. Then, about halfway through, he brought all the characters onstage to sing/perform some songs from the show.  I have to admit that I was hoping they would be there, but never thought that they actually would. And on their official blog, they’ve posted photos of the Gabba gang hanging out at the festival for the whole weekend.  This was a great way to kick off the first day, and is still a highlight of the weekend for me.

After DJ Lance, we headed over to the Gobi tent to see Sleigh Bells perform.

Sleigh Bells seem to have a lot of buzz going on right now, and I have to say that they definitely live up to the hype.  I had heard a few of their songs, on the internet and played on Sirius XMU.  They packed a lot of noise and energy into their set, playing songs from their upcoming major label debut CD that comes out in May.

Sleigh Bells

Reading through the Coachella message board after the festival ended, Sleigh Bells was in the top five for a lot of people who saw them.  They are definitely a band to keep an eye on over the next few months.  I am predicting that they will be the next band from the indie scene to blow up huge, and will be coming soon to a radio near you.

Next up for us was the band Yeasayer.  The Yeasayer CD is one of my favorites of 2010 so far.  Their single “Ambling Alp” was one of our featured music videos late last year). Maybe it was because we had a spot that was pretty far away from the stage, but their performance was just “okay” for me.  It wasn’t bad, in fact, I don’t think we saw ANY bad sets over the weekend, but it just didn’t blow me away.

After Yeasayer, we made our way over to the Outdoor Stage to grab a spot on the grass, and catch the set by She & Him.  She & Him is in reality the band made up of actress/musician Zooey Deschanel and musician M. Ward.  We basically sat for this whole performance, but at one point I did walk up to the stage to take a few photos.

She & Him

She & Him have a retro 60′s sound, that can be a bit sugary-sweet at times, but I enjoyed the performance overall.  They were one of those bands that I didn’t NEED to see, but since it fit into our schedule we decided to check it out.  I do enjoy their new single, “In The Sun.”

We knew that there would be a huge crowd for the band Grizzly Bear, so we headed to the Mojave tent to find a spot.  Unfortunately that meant sitting through the last half of Lucero, the alt-country-ish band that was on before them.  Luckily there are no similarities between the two acts, in music or in their fans, so as soon as Lucero ended we were able to get up pretty close to watch one of my most anticipated bands of the weekend.

Even if you haven’t heard OF Grizzly Bear, you probably know their single “Two Weeks” from the new Volkswagen Commercials that have been airing the last couple of months.  This was a great performance.  They did all the songs that I wanted to hear including “Cheerleader” and “While You Wait For The Others”

By this time, I had noted on my twitter, where I was live-tweeting all weekend, that this year’s festival was already miles ahead of what we saw in 2009.  I’m not sure what was wrong with last year, but we didn’t really enjoy it that much.  By comparison, 2010 had so many great bands, and it didn’t hurt that the weather never got above 90 and was even cool/breezy when the sun would go behind the clouds.

After Grizzly Bear, we played a human game of Frogger, trying to navigate through the huge crowds that were in the polo fields by the end of the night.  As I mentioned earlier, there were about 75,000 people this year, and you could feel it.  I’ve never seen so many people there at one time.  If I had any suggestions for next year, it would be to cut back the attendance to where it’s been the last few years.

We arrived at the Coachella Stage to see LCD Soundsystem.  My wife and I are huge fans of LCD Soundsystem. We had seen them at the El Rey in L.A. a couple of years ago.  It was a bit weird seeing them on such a big stage.  As with the band Hot Chip, who we saw on Saturday, I think I much prefer seeing them in a smaller venue.  The new LCD Soundsystem CD comes out in May, and you can now listen to the whole thing online, but at the time I had only heard the first single from it, “Drunk Girls,” which James Murphy and his band performed on Friday night.

I wish I had heard more of the new CD before I saw them there, because they were in the odd position of playing new stuff from a CD that nobody even owned yet, but their performance was full of energy and they were another highlight of my weekend.

LCD Soundsystem

Vampire Weekend was playing the Outdoor Stage after that, so we went over to watch that.  When Vampire Weekend had performed on that same stage a couple of years ago, I really wasn’t a fan.  I didn’t warm to their first CD for quite awhile, and while we had the chance to watch them that year, I remember simply walking by, not really understanding their popularity.  This year was a little different, and I have to say that Vampire Weekend did a very tight performance, which included my favorite song from their new CD, “Giving Up The Gun.”

My only complaint is that Vampire Weekend were one of those bands who sound almost exactly the same as their CD’s.  I like that, in a way, but sometime I feel like I could have just listened to the CD and had the same experience.

Finally, we were getting tired, but decided to check out Jay-Z’s headlining set before we left.  We hadn’t necessarily planned to see him, but figured we might as well see a little bit before trying to beat the traffic out of the parking lots.  Well, I have to say that he totally rocked.  My biggest regret now is that we didn’t stay for the whole thing because he was a total rock star up there.  I guess adding to that regret was that when we got to the car, it still took almost an hour to get out of the parking lot, so it really didn’t make much of a difference.

Jay-Z … Really!  It is!

Once we did get out of the lot, we headed back to our hotel to get a good night’s rest in preparation for day two.…

Read about day two on Thursday…

Well, after that didn’t work out, they brought good ol’ Mr. Six back for new advertisements in the last year or so. And now, well, they’ve really topped themselves again, by bringing out one of the most disturbing commercials ever.

You’ve got double the creepy, and add to that the rumors that Mr. Six is now actually played a female dancer, and I have to proclaim that this is one of the worst, weirdest commercial campaigns EVER! And what does this really have to do with Six Flags and its rides anyway? Does this commercial actually bring people to their theme parks? What are your thoughts?

On the other hand, their new video for “I Feel Better” is simply amazing, thanks in part to the video being directed by British actor/comic Peter Serafinowicz (Shaun Of The Dead, Spaced, Look Around You).  I’m a big fan of Peter’s.  In fact, he is easily one of the funniest people on the planet (just check out his twitter account if you don’t believe me).  So when I heard that he was directing the video for this song, I knew it just had to be good.

The song relies heavily on auto-tune, which is a first for the band.  I know some people don’t like auto-tune as a whole, but I’m fine with it if it’s used for effect.  The video features a fake boy band, who are the type of singers who might NORMALLY use auto-tune on their recordings.  The guys from Hot Chip appear in the crowd scenes, in this amazingly funny, insane video.  Check it out…  It’s also the free iTunes video of the week right now, so make sure to grab it for your digital device!