It’s Sunday, the closing day of the festival. People stagger through the Coachella grounds with forced bravado and as much cheerfulness as they can muster, but stop anywhere and you’ll hear one of any of the following: “I’m tired,’ “I’m so exhausted,” “I just want to go home,” “You okay dude? Get up, this isn’t funny,” etc. They’re trying to stay conscious for what will later prove to be one of the biggest shows of the entire 3-day package — an hour long performance by France’s Phoenix. I thought the crowd at MGMT’s show was huge; truth be told, they had nothing on these guys. Nobody did.
Attendees hoping for a break from the sweltering sun got no love — Sunday was the Festival’s hottest day, and pretty soon people had altogether given up on hope finding shade to rest in, or that friend/family member/significant other that seemed to have mysteriously disappeared; the entire festival grounds was game as people just decided to pass out or rest wherever they could. Phoenix’ arrival made that next to impossible. Out of all the bands, the Parisian juggernauts boasted the most diverse crowd in age; young and old wandered from the back of the park, the beer garden and even the Pavement/Spoon shows to catch one of the most revered acts in modern rock. If you were sitting down, good luck: even from hundreds of yards away, the band’s fanatical fanbase made it pretty hard to see anything. They played a predictably flawless set; pretty fantastic considering the boys almost didn’t make it due to that pesky Icelandic volcano eruption (their video artist, who usually coordinates the band’s visual presentation, couldn’t make it for the same reason). Frontman Thomas Mars insisted that the focus would be on the music, and no one seemed to notice the difference: “Lisztomania,” “1901,” and a few others from the new album Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix were huge hits with the crowd, even though I overheard a few people talk about how they hadn’t even bought it yet.
With the exception of MGMT, no other band had the crowd dancing their asses off like these guys. They packed their hour-long set with their reliably infectious, catchy anthems, and even people who didn’t look like they could dance couldn’t help but get into it. It was my last show of the festival, and if anything, made me realize what an important and communal experience this could be. There’s no way to say this without sounding sappy, but even as I’m not a huge Phoenix fan I think they helped me see what I was missing in the festival, and in my fellow humans in general: People just want to dance, dammit. And it was great to see them having lots and lots of fun and not a care in the world. A lot of shirts at Coachella bore that old Woodstock adage “Peace and Love”, and while times are still tough 40 years later, it’s clear that despite incessant volcanos, interminable earthquakes, whatever — some values never change.
Words by Jeff Nau
