Meanwhile Housse De Racket in the Gobi tent was dealing with Americans’ inability to pronounce French. “If we can manage to pronounce Coooochella, can you manage to pronounce Housse de Racket?” they asked, half in earnest. I hadn’t heard their brand of Strokes-esque garage before: it was two-piece jangle indie with a smirk, dressed up all in white, plus some percolating beats and keyboards from a small Korg. Good stuff, especially their unexpected Beach Boys cover!

I wish I could say the same thing about Greg Ginn’s solo project. I arrived late, and the sparse attendance warned me that something was amiss: this was clearly the same crowd who embraced fIREHOSE the day before, and you know that any guy from Black Flag should be able to draw a crowd, yet there were only 50 people at most in a tent that can hold thousands. People must have fled!

I feel bad, because the Ginn’s heart is in the right place. Rather than doing a revival of the old punk sounds, ala OFF!, he’s trying to express himself in a brand new format. But he chose the wrong genre to do haphazardly. When he started playing guitar riffs over a drum track, and occasionally waving his hand at a theremin, he immediately stepped into the realm of bands like Corridor, or Geoff Geis, or Bobb Bruno’s solo stuff, just to name a handful. Do you know how many one man bands there are in Los Angeles alone, kids three generations descended from his own music, who can beat the pants off Ginn in this department? Ginn failed, spectacularly, and it was ugly. Hopefully some day he comes to his senses and does something worthwhile, like reform Black Flag.

Wild Beasts next door at the Mojave were better, but only by degree—and unlike Greg Ginn, the audience was going apeshit. I don’t see why: at its best, these 80s imitators sounded like Bryan Ferry singing “More than This,” except with all the charm and twinkle sucked out, leaving a residue that stunk of congealed Spandau Ballet, When in Rome, Haircut 100—and before you start to think “Wow, I love those bands, and that sounds awesome,” remember that the best singles by those bands were great because they had such strong personality! Drain the personality, and you’ll have Wild Beasts. Henri Matisse wants to paint their noses red… with blood.

I should have stayed at the main stage, because Santigold was living up to every ounce of hype she’s ever gotten. It’s hard to peg a genre on Santigold aside from “awesome,” but on a fashion level, she was putting her love of the 80s into stark reality: her background singers had DEVO/Klaus Nomi outfits on, and she herself had crazy shoulder pads not seen since Tina Turner’s appearance in Beyond Thunderdome. And she wrapped up the entire thing with rim-shot rhythms that sounded quite a bit like Bow Wow Wow.

The Growlers at the Outdoor stage were dressed only as themselves, which is to say, like hipsters who live at the beach without necessarily ever going into the water. Singer Brooks Neilson was laying down his litany of lyrics like he always does, casually yet vividly, his flow a full frontal evocation of Jim Morrison. It also hearkens back to smartie-pants bands like the Smiths, though less so nowadays (his verbal pauses, like his fame, are expanding with every show). They concluded with the perfect song for the doe-eyed Coachella crowd, “Drugs Drugs Drugs,” in which Neilson told his adoring fans that “If you want to be free, you have to be a junkie.”

Whereas Thundercat didn’t need drugs to make you feel high—his outfit did the job just fine. Honestly, despite all the hype and all the amazing impromptu jams he’s done with some of my favorite Low End Theory denizens, I’m not the biggest fan of his act, just because the punk rock part of my brain can’t allow me to enjoy music with this much noodling. Seriously, even if you’re playing in the fusion/funk/R&B world, do you really need a six string bass? Actually, if you’re Thundercat, you do; and while it fits his style perfectly, it evokes a kind of proggy precision that just doesn’t move me. And I think he’s still working on getting memorable songs together.

Luckily his set segued into Gaslamp Killer’s, which was far more enjoyable despite being far less intricate. Though he did have some cool mixes, including a song that threw in a children’s record about learning the drums, this set was mostly about being a selector. He played “I Am the Walrus” by the Beatles, and had his captive audience dutifully screamed “WHOOOO!” during the chorus. Then he dug deep, and found himself some Eazy-E, and had the balls to play the diss track “Real Muthaphuckkin Gs,” with the sample “Motherfuck Dre, motherfuck Snoop, motherfuck Death Row.” Considering Dre would be playing the main stage in mere hours, it was a pretty punk rock selection, and laugh-out-loud funny.

Speaking of funny, did you know that Carrie Brownstein from Portlandia has a band? I’m kidding, of course, but only half-way: seeing Carrie Brownstein’s recent stints in her amazing comedy television show really did clue me in to a wit I’d found lacking in the work of Sleater-Kinney, her decade-long band that was always critically acclaimed but which I felt was locked into an anachronistic sound that needed to move the fuck on. Though Wild Flag still has a sound rooted in the Olympia-meets-Chapel-Hill-by-way-of-Fugazi guitar/drums method, it’s freed from the Corin Tucker vocals, and that would be refreshing even if Brownstein’s vocals weren’t far more enervating, full of energy and screaming anger and dramatic, emotional crashes. Brownstein was once in Excuse 17, one of the best bands to come out of Riot Grrrl, and I feel she brings some of that energy to Wild Flag. It’s a pity that she had to share the microphone with Mary Timony, whose vocals were only a fraction of as cool as Brownstein’s. Even she knew it.

The Hives, on the main stage, had no reservations at all about their ability to rock. Visually, their gig was all class and energy. They started in top hat and tails, gradually shedding components of their outfits as they played, their backdrop of a crazed man with strings coming from his fingers making them look like marionettes. I’d interviewed some of them earlier in the day, and the difference between their private conversational tone and their public persona was pretty vast—it seems unfathomable that the quiet Swedes I cornered in the back of the press tent could be the same guys ending their set with the explosive “Tick Tick Boom!”

At the Drive-In, by comparison, were actually less frenetic and energetic. That may come as quite a surprise if you’ve heard both bands’ recordings, and it’s not as though At the Drive-In was just going through the motions—they were putting as much energy into things as they ever had, fully regressing from the prog of Mars Volta back into their hard-edged punk rock youngster selves. But maybe the venue was just too big for a band of their stature. The only folks who really got the full brunt of the show were the poor photographers, as singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala dived straight into them, nearly breaking a camera or three and causing quite a few “don’t quote me” conversations in the press tent later.

And it was there in the press tent that I started sensing people all around me saddling up, preparing for the closing headliner of Dr. Dre and Snoop Dog. And suddenly I became aware that a phenomenon was about to transpire, something that would be talked about by millions, and yet which we all knew was going to be a bit silly, the way anything surrounding Snoop Dog has always been and will always be.

We had to wait a bit first for Florence & the Machine to finish—from the VIP section, I could see them at the Outdoor stage, way off in the distance, doing everything in their power to keep their audience from wandering off to the main stage early: fireworks, explosions, shimmering lights, confetti… I would have sauntered over to check it out, but the lines both in and out of the VIP section’s fenced-in internment camp were longer than the list of atrocities committed by the Turks in 1915. And so I was with my white brethren (really, the VIP section was more Caucasian than the Ural mountains), stage right, when Dr. Dre and Snoop Dog stepped onto the stage.

And immediately it was 20 years ago, and we were transported to a time when our minds were on our money and our money was on our minds. Laid back? Not really—these two cats were in top form, with tons of energy, and, oddly, a couple of live drummers in back of them to help bring the beats home.

And it was kind of like a Vegas review, a showcase of the last 20 years of the careers of these two pivotal gangsta artists. They ran through so many hits, hitting up a great verse and chorus before promptly moving on to the next, and constantly shouting out praises to L.A., the LBC, and Death Row records, which was a tiny bit odd to me considering that last I checked, Snoop Dogg still blames Suge Knight for the death of Tupac Shakur.

And oh, Tupac… yes, as the world knows already knows by now, there was a holographic image of Tupac Shakur on the main Coachella stage, sparring with Snoop and giving a shout-out to the actual “Coachella” crowd, that word no doubt compiled together from 100% Shakur phonemes of the past. It may be 50 year old technology (you’ve seen the Haunted Mansion Ride, right?), but I will say that the image actually fooled me: I thought the person on stage was a real guy who had been CGI’d for the big screens, until I finally realized there was a slight 2-D slant to the stage Tupac from my angle—“oh, I see, he’s being projected onto glass.” On the big screen, they introduced him with a close-up of his “Thug Life” tattooed chest, then zoomed out to reveal his shirtless, do-ragged body wearing khakis and boots and moving carefully, like one of the CGI monsters in an Ice Cube movie (really, wouldn’t that real-life reconciliation have been far more impressive than this CGI behemoth?). He did a couple songs, I believe “California Love” being one of them, and then disintegrated into the ether, like the mummy turning into sand to go attack Brendan Fraser at a future concert.

And who can say this was a misplaced move on Dre’s part? Though Dre’s imprint on hip hop was major, and indelible, his moment is over, and this whole concert was a nostalgia trip from the first recycled beat to the last. And even Shakur’s legacy has already been yanked and stretched across  8 posthumous albums (one where he even raps with the actor who played Biggie Smalls in a biopic), so at this point, there’s no integrity left for this holographic perversion to violate. Even if Shakur’s family had been upset by the resurrection of their dead child (and according to the press, they LOVED it), Shakur was a convicted, unrepentant rapist, so fuck him—I’m glad his image will live on in the pantheon of reanimated brands alongside Colonel Sanders and John Lennon in Forrest Gump.

But I was far more impressed with the real guest stars, who filtered in and out like a This Was Your Life montage the Rat Pack might have put together, so fast I couldn’t identify all of them: Wiz Khalifa, who shared a comically giant fake joint with Snoop on stage, then Kendrick Lamar, and 50 Cent, who appeared on stage in a hail of sonic gunfire the way Buffalo Bill Cody might have 130 years ago—though his biggest hit was “In Da Club,” not exactly a G Thang. Warren G showed up too, and Eminem, who laid down some of the tightest rhymes all night on “Forgot about Dre”—though Dre made that come out hokey, too, by scripting a fake “Hey, I’m leaving,” “Whoa, you can’t leave yet!” “I gotta go,” “No stay!” conversation with Eminem to lead into “Till I Collapse,” with a tribute to Nate Dogg.

Clearly, it was Nate Dogg, not Shakur, whose death was mourned the most by concert goers, even in my Aryan VIP area. Nate did get a tribute in the form of some yearbook-esque memorial photos on the big screens of Nate with a super-young looking Snoop, and a rendition of Snoop’s raunchy “Ain’t No Fun (If the Homies Can’t Have None)” somehow felt poignant, even during the lyrics about ball sucking.

Really, the show reminded me how much Dre had turned the gangsta genre on its head, taking the violent, grittier-than-real-life lyrics of N.W.A. and morphing them into party jams, of which there were plenty this evening: “Gin and Juice,” “What’s My Name,” “Nuthin’ but a ‘G’ Thang,” and “Drop It Like It’s Hot,” which was accompanied by video footage of an amazingly big-assed woman (with her head out of frame, ala R. Crumb) squatting and shaking her boobs. Actually, my favorite song may have been Wiz Khalifa’s “Young, Wild and Free”: “So what if we get drunk? So what if we smoke weed? We’re just having fun…”

It was the perfect sentiment for Coachella. And no shabby ghost could spoil the fun, not even after I stayed too late at the press tent and had to walk through the shambling, actively deconstructing Coachella grounds on my own, a ghoul in the dark, as monstrous trash trucks vacuumed yakisoba noodle dishes and $11 drink cups into their giant hoses.

The party was crumbling around me, and I would have a whole hour of traffic just to get to the 10 freeway. But the walk back to the car gave me some time to reflect over the weekend. And do you want my vote? Despite the exhaustion, and the rain, and the heat and the cold, and the expensive drinks, and Greg Ginn’s horrible performance, and the increasing nasty security measures, and the lines, I would still come back and do it again. I envision myself doing whatever it takes to cover Coachella again next year, even if it means stepping on some ghosts.

-D. M. Collins

I was wondering why the Black Keys the night before had failed to move me, but now I remember: there are two kinds of garage rock, just like there’s a difference between modern country and roots country. And though I shudder at talk of “authenticity” in music, because it’s usually code for hating the kids with their new-fangled contraptions, there’s no argument that there’s something irreproducible in the sound of the Black Lips. And the Black Keys are one word and one world away from it.

“I want to thank you for all the things you’ve done to your body,” Cole Alexander told the melatonin-starved space cadets in the audience as they jumped into “Dirty Hands,” a bizarro-world Beatles number. Then they moved on to “Oh Katrina,” that New Orleans epic, with pure Back from the Grave fuzz, and screams like Zachary Thax, almost approaching the screaming, Peruvian, coca-leaf tea insanity of 60’s Lima rockers Los Saicos.

And the Black Lips kept going on, moving from country-esque rockers to full LSD-echo vocals, with lyrics about blood and dumpster diving. My favorite tune may have been the one from the upcoming album, “Time,” a surprisingly hopeful number that reminded me a bit of a David Johansen-penned tune. But being Coachella, Alexander couldn’t resist ending with a golden oldie, i.e. taking off his pants and beating his instrument with his implement.

But I missed the meat myself, because I’d gone next door to the Gobi tent to catch fIREHOSE, where Mike Watt was slapping his bass with his erect fingers. For some slightly older gentlemen who’ve been broken up for the lifetimes of most Coachella patrons, fIREHOSE jammed pretty econo. Ed Crawford may look a bit like the “Life Is a Highway” guy nowadays, but his lyrics of pain and heartache made this less of what fIREHOSE is known for—being a continuation of the Minutemen—and more of a force on its own. As post-Minutemen projects go, I must say I prefer Mike Watt’s Secondmen, or even Dos, to the funk-rock of fIREHOSE. But it’s nice to see Watt backing up someone like Crawford, whose bright guitar noodling had an almost country flair.

They were, however, nowhere close to being a match for the Buzzcocks. What bandcould have been? Even Coachella’s schmoozing celebrities left the netherworld of the backstage trailers and ventured out to watch the action, like rats following the scent of a luxurious limburger. Tim Roth in the gated guest area politely let friendly photographers snap his photo, and Dylan McDermott let me know his favorite Buzzcocks song was “Ever Fallen in Love.” He was nice, though I wish his big noggin wasn’t blocking my every damn photo!

Of the remaining two Buzzcocks still playing out, Pete Shelley really looks his age, whereas Steve Diggle is youthful, gleeful, spasmodic, mod-looking; basically, he’s become the Flavor Flav to Shelley’s Chuck D. True, Diggle looked a bit like Roman Polanski when he smiled, and his windmill guitar riffs were completely Pete Townsend. But there was no imitation in the uproarious crunch he brought to his guitar with every sweep across the strings. He was jumping up on things, and pointing at the crowd, running back and forth into the light, all the while Shelley intoned his songs as lively as ever: “Fast Cars,” “Autonomy,” and even the post-Buzzcocks hit “Homosapien”—not sure if it was as good as the Big Dipper version on the Freedom of Choice comp, but that’s just me being a child of the ‘90s.

And maybe that’s the secret of the Buzzcocks, that everyone who has ever liked punk rock or even been a teenager (well, at least a teenaged boy) has loved this band. There were folks in the audience old enough to be my dad, who were screaming along with glee, as well as youngsters from bands like Images, all on the sidelines chanting with every chorus.

Oh, the sentiments of Shelley’s songs! “I just want a lover like any other/what do I get? I only get sleepless nights, alone in my half-empty bed.” It was just as true at age 13 as it is at 35. And while that kind of sentiment could be sad, you can’t cry when you’re shouting “ohh-ohh” in unison with hundreds of people in the spring sunshine. It was a chorus as loud as a soccer chant, only topped when they followed it with “Promises” and its extra “ohh-ohh-ohh.”

After a palate cleansing trip to the Safari tent to hear the bass-heavy, four-on-the-floor Canadian electronic duo Zeds Dead, I checked out Squeeze at the Mojave. And I was late—got there juuuuust in time to catch “Up the Junction,” possibly the best pop song ever to imbue a narrative with a false ending. Though singer Glenn Tilbrook had grown General Custer’s beard (which also dangled a bit like Col. Sander’s bow tie), and I wished they could have talked Paul Carrack into reprising his vocal on “Tempted,” these guys sounded exactly the same as I imagine they would have in 1982. The timeslot was perfectly 80s, too, as the sun had just set, and the polo field palm trees behind them were lit up in neon colors that matched their evening jackets, like in a Miami Vice nightclub scene. There was a little weirdness here and there from keyboards that didn’t quite fit, but if awkward keyboards aren’t the Squeeze sound, I don’t know what is.

I’d thought that Squeeze would be a hard-sell for the Coachella crowd, with a demographic that seems to be 18-30, too young to remember Squeeze. Looking around me, I saw a lot of crows’ feet and tastefully covered middle-aged midriffs belonging to people who wouldn’t seem like a fit for Swedish House Mafia or Dr. Dre. And there were hundreds of them in the Mojave tent, hundreds of folks who knew all the words to “Pulling Muscles from a Shell” and “Goodbye Girl.” Were these the parents of the glow-stick panda-hat generation? Was the Squeeze show basically a concession to the old folks, like one of the karaoke bars open until 11 at a Disney Resort?

Then again, the Shins on the main stage were just as gentle and careful with their pop craftsmanship, and they were perfect for a festival like this, far more so than the huge spectacles we’ve been seeing on the main stage during the other nighttime slots. Whether you watched the Shins up close, or watched them projected on those big ol’ screens, or just wandered around trying to find a vegan hot dog near the main stage, the Shins’ music followed you, lovingly wrapping itself around your ears like your grandmother’s quilt on a cold night. (And it was cold. It fucking was. Fuck. This article is based on memory, because my fingers were too frozen to hold a pen. Damn Al Gore and his lies. Burn down the rainforests).

New member Jessica Dobson was the Shins’ secret weapon. Her guitar playing and stage presence, and of course her glowing vocal accompaniment, made this a special show unlike the songs as you’d hear them on the albums. And while you’d think the acoustics of a big show would be too boxy and bass-y for a gentle string-based band, they sounded great, with every string-scrape and knuckle-rap captured perfectly and presented to us like a little package. Even the flaws were charming. When singer James Mercer couldn’t quite hit the high notes on their big hit “New Slang,” it didn’t feel like he’d fooled us with a take-in-a-thousand, as Ween once had on “Freedom of ’76,” it felt like a chance to acknowledge our graciousness.

I wandered from the main stage to the Outdoor Theater to see Feist, expecting more of the same. But boy howdy, she’s expanded her band into a literal orchestra, one with glowy red things strapped to the guitars and instruments and various other doodads. Perhaps because this giant collection of musicians on horn and woodwind and string instruments and strange percussion (was that a leather chiminea?) didn’t have a true conductor, it sounded a little bit like high school, a collection of friends with instruments rather than an ensemble. In fact, some songs, like “the Bad in Each Other,” featured a kind of Bow Wow Wow, rim-tapping percussion that felt very much like a pep assembly. But that seemed fitting, as if Feist had taken her Sesame street appearance from a few years ago and gone full-tilt kid friendly.

Well, sorta: she still has the womanly, slightly dry alto voice that made her famous, the one that abruptly gets caught in mid vowel change, like even just talking is going to make her cry. This time out, a trio of female singers (I almost said “weird sisters”) flanked her, cooing with a knowing glance during every chorus. And the orchestra had a sheen of tenor and bass saxophones to fill out the bottom end with a nice devilish growl. But my favorite part was when she decided to rock out on “I Feel It All,” reducing the sound to the bare rock band components and leaving her 30-some-odd piece ensemble with nothing to do but clap their 60 hands.

It gave me an itch for more rhythmic music, and Flying Lotus at the Gobi tent was ready to serve it up. When I got there, he was holding court over hundreds of people as though it was nothing (because honestly, compared to Low End Theory, it really wasn’t). The glitch-hop godfather was in the zone, breaking off new beats every forty seconds or so, a bottle of Jameson next to him and his mike at the ready, not to rile the crowd up so much as to express his thoughts. “I know sometimes my stuff is deep and emotional. And sometimes it’s fucking crazy. But it’s always hard!”

Suddenly he announced Thundercat, the jazz bassist (who was scheduled for his own show on Sunday). Thundercat, a man after my own flamboyant heart, was wearing an animal mask as a skullcap, crazy Hawkman wings jutting out backwards on the sides of his head, and raccoon tails hanging in front of each ear. This crazed P-Funk era looking creature jumped on bass, and an amazing drummer (whose name is TBD) jumped onto a huge drum set, and what had just seconds before been a glitch-hop performance now became spooky jazz fusion, with Flying Lotus laying down some haunting synths over a smattering of blippy bass and bombastic drums.

“Raise your hands if you’re going to see Radiohead after this!” exclaimed FlyLo, but first I had to get away and check out a band I’d never seen, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, who attracted less of an audience than they deserved just due to the timeslot preceding Radiohead. Their rock ensemble, with dark Americana tinges, played facing themselves, with no stage lights, with tattered black and white imagery behind them and the occasional clip of spoken-word sermons (maybe David Koresh?) breaking up their set, which moved me in ways I haven’t felt since my Cialis prescription came through.

Finally it was time to face the music and go see Radiohead. And while they were good, and Thom Yorke’s voice was in top shape, songs like the opener “Bloom” sounded best when they got tropical, reminding me almost, and this is odd, of the Growlers. Perhaps Radiohead is the Beatles of our time, or maybe they’re the U2, but this journalist would rather deal with bands than with cultural monuments. And so off I went to try and get some sleep, so I could enjoy more bands on Sunday.

-D. M. Collins

Mike Watt somehow knew that Thundercat was coming. When he said people thought the Minutemen were Martians from planet Jazz, well … that is pretty much exactly what we get with Thundercat’s The Golden Age of Apocalypse, made by a kid who played bass for Stanley Clarke and Suicidal Tendencies both. Thundercat speaks now about the sublime and the ridiculous, but not in that order. This interview by Chris Ziegler.

You recently posted a photo of a really colossal dick someone drew on a backstage wall at a show you played. As someone who has spent much of their adult life as a touring musician, what is it that makes people draw dicks on backstage walls?
I think it’s a code of silence—when you don’t see one, something tells you instinctively to draw one on the wall. The secret society of penis drawers—that’s exactly what it is.
How many dicks have you drawn?
A few hundred. Different sizes, different shaped penises, people’s faces shaped like penises—all kinds of stuff.
Do you get any kind of special hotel discounts once you’ve done like 500?
Oh—The Dick-Drawer’s Membership Club? Yeah, you get a membership card, a box of condoms and a vintage Playboy.
On Pitchfork, you reminded Flying Lotus that although PBS’ Bob Ross is a completely delightful, positive guy on camera, he may well be hiding a terrifying dark side off camera. Since you are also a delightful, positive guy … what terrifying dark side are you concealing from the world?
I try not to have one at all. But everybody’s had their point where they had all they can stand and they can’t have any more. There’s always that. Other than that, I just try and … you know, be cool. I’ll say it like this—as a kid, I wasn’t evil, but … I would hide things a lot. I’d have dual things going on. My parents would think I was at the studio, but I was really hanging out with my girlfriend. ‘Yeah, I’m at the studio—but I’m really Downtown, drunk, hanging out at the Standard!’
Did you ever get busted when your parents were like, ‘So, son—you’ve sure been at the studio a lot! Can we check out those demos?’
The sad part is I actually was working. I’d be doing this, and all this debauchery would be going on, but it’d go hand in hand. I’d come home and play my parents something new, and they’d have no clue that I was wil’in out. That I was butt naked on the street with a sword the other day!
What?
In the past. I used to be kinda crazy when I was younger. Take fireworks and shoot ’em into oncoming traffic. Run around naked.
Naked on the street with a sword? I couldn’t even pull off two-thirds of that.
It’s not something I planned out. I have tons and tons of random moments in life that occur, like, ‘How did that happen?’ I don’t know, but it happened!
Did you develop your mind-boggling mastery of your instrument simply because you had to fit music into the tiny amount of non-debaucherous time available to you?
No, no—growing up I spent a lot of time just being very exposed to different things.
Exposing yourself to different things?
Yeah, exposing myself to different people—all kinds of stuff! As a child, I was very much into my visual my art. They kinda went hand in hand. They had different emotional pulls on me. Playing bass—around the age of 10 is when I got really serious, from my dad playing me Jaco Pastorius’ ‘Portrait of Tracy.’ It blew my socks off. I couldn’t believe it was possible to be that beautiful on an instrument, so I took to my instrument even more. It developed naturally, but also there was part of me that wanted to get better—I’m still like that.
How did it affect you as a musician to have a parent who’d already done it?
Things were not very far off because I had an example to understand—‘This is how the business works, this is how these kind of people work, this is where you wanna be, this is where you don’t wanna be …’ I had all that at my fingertips. That’s part of what gave me an advantage in functioning properly in different scenarios and situations. It wasn’t new to me. When I started traveling, I just felt like it was part of what I was supposed to do.
What sort of hard-way things do you think you got to skip?
I was reared in a very Christian home, so it was more perspective. It wasn’t ‘DON’T DO THINGS.’ My parents were very open to me being who I wanted to be. They didn’t try to stop me. They just wanted to make sure I had these moral values before I left their house. They drilled it very deep into me, but at the same time I got an opportunity to be in the world—to be myself. They encouraged me to dress how I wanted to. My mom used to have purple hair! For the last ten years! Well, maybe last four or five years. She has a mohawk now!
Didn’t your mom name the record? You’re the second person in two issues to have a record named after the Apocalypse. Why is the Apocalypse on people’s minds?
Spiritually speaking, you can feel it in the air. Everything is just so weird. It’s almost like … something bigger than you moving faster than you. And then the different things biblically that are talked about going on that we’re seeing happening in front of us—wars and rumors of wars, people rising against each other, all that stuff that’s been talked about before. It’s not saying … we’ve been in the last days a long time. Just because they did a movie called 2012 and everyone’s paying attention to 2012—this has been going on for some time.
Supposedly every generation thinks it’s going to see the world end. Maybe I’m falling for that too. But it is a weird time.
Absolutely. We been experiencing the end age for a long time, and it has nothing to do with this generation. We never know the generation it is who’s gonna see it. But somebody’s gonna see it, even if it’s our grandkids’ grandkids. We’re seeing pieces of it. People can feel it in the air, you’re starting to see things come to the front. Creatively, artistically—that’s why it gets described by so many people in music. That’s how you feel! It’s not to be taken advantage or publicized like, ‘OH NO! THE END OF THE WORLD! OH NOOOOOO! THE MAYANS PREDICTED IT!’ It’s not one of those things. You can feel it in your spirit. And that’s all you got a lot of the time—your spirit. Calling the album The Golden Age of Apocalypse, it’s like a very … it’s a precursor. It means, ‘Watch what’s going on around you.’
What is your role as a creative person in these times?
A lot of the time, I just wanna be used by God. That’s just what I really want out of what I do. Whatever that entails. I try my hardest to listen to God and what he’s trying to say to me, or if he’s trying to say something to me—if there’s nothing to be said. It’s imperative that you pay attention and try and see where God wants you. It could be as small as … like when God told you to go left and you went right. And you know it was God talking to you! A lot of people try and downplay, like, ‘Wasn’t that just you talking to yourself?’ But the truth is—you can take it or leave it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true. He’s there. It’s just that time you should play closer attention, and try and figure out where you’re supposed to be.
A lot of times when we talk to people, we talk about how complete examination and knowledge of self can be a pathway to powerful art. But this is the opposite. It’s about total humility, about losing the ego to become a vessel.
Yes—absolutely. The more you can be selfless, the closer you can get to Him—where God wants you. You stop holding on to things that block you from trying to get further and get into different places. I try not to be blocked by anything! One thing that can be a block is money—it seems so funny, but it’s true.
Yes, I laughed painfully.
Your ability to feel comfortable in your own skin can sometimes be connected to the fact that you don’t know where your next check is coming from so you can’t think properly—I’m not saying that’s me, but there’s so many different places insecurity can come from that can hinder you from doing what you’re supposed to do. The key word in a lot of it is just having faith. Other than that, it does not make a lot of sense. There’s always the opportunity to not make sense of something—you can find a reason why not to do something, but sometimes it’s better for you to put yourself in the line of fire and figure out where you fit in. That’s how I treated everybody’s music I’ve ever worked on. I wanna be used and utilized by a person to convey what they wanna convey.
Mike Watt told me the same thing—the bassist is there to serve the song.
I know Mike Watt! Absolutely. Stanley Clarke said that to me: ‘Your job—you’re a servant.’ He was trying to explain the difference between being a servant and being the artist. I was so used to being a person who put myself in other scenarios. He was trying to get in my head like, ‘Look, you’re always gonna have a mentality in your head that allows you to be a servant. But that’s part of bigger picture of being an artist. You got to know when to pull it out and when not to because it can be easily taken advantage of.’ I was like, ‘Huh.’ I never necessarily looked at it like that but the truth is yeah, everything I’ve done musically … you’re finding where you go.
You’ve played with so many kinds of visionary people—is there anything that you can connect between them? Is there something they’ve done that could help other people make breakthroughs in their own work?
You just gotta be where you’re supposed to be. It sounds corny, but that’s all we got. One of my favorite sayings is, ‘It’s not supposed to be fair.’ You wish it was and you want it to be, but it’s just not supposed to be fair. Anybody that’s a hard worker is gonna see the result of what they put their hands to on whatever level it is, but you can’t define a person’s success in that they’re rich or everybody can see them doing what they’re doing. You gotta look at a little more than that and see where their head is and what their point was and what they were trying to get to and what they consider success. It’s the funniest thing on this planet when you see like a Michael Jackson. Let’s go with a dude that tall. Michael Jackson was a star since he was a kid. The truth is, it wouldn’t matter. You can try to follow the same formula, which the record companies used to do, and try and put a group together to find the one Michael Jackson and focus on him and try and make him into a star. Yes, you can definitely monetarily try to recreate that. But the truth is you can’t mistake the funk, and Michael Jackson was the funk. He didn’t need to be a formula that was created. This dude had four brothers that were killin’, and their dad beat ’em into shape. It was in his nature to be a star.
You can’t really plan it—you just have to make your work something you’re proud of. Because you could win the lottery the next day or get hit by a bus.
As funny as it is, that’s the truth. And here’s another thing. When it comes to how girls perceive guys that are musicians or stars—the girl gets with you—
This could be a whole other interview!
But the same scenario, where the girl gets with you cuz you’re rich and famous and then she leaves you. Is that really a successful situation? Or is it actually successful when you have a person who is genuinely loving and it has nothing to do with the money and the situation surrounding you? What do you consider success? ‘You know, man, I found that one girl I’m supposed to be with, and I could lose all my limbs, or I could have golden limbs dipped in platinum with lasers shooting out of the fingers, and she wouldn’t care.’
Those limbs just kept getting better.
Gold limbs? Platinum? Lasers? Garlands and wreaths hanging from them—all kinds of cool stuff, man!
Is there a 6-year-old Stephen somewhere deep inside you who is so proud you still sport Thundercat outfits?
I’m definitely like, ‘Hell yeah, I’m free enough in my own skin to dress the way I wanna!’ I love the association cuz the truth is it’s all love and it’s a beautiful thing, but people always tell me I look like Will.I.Am or like—‘Look, it’s Kanye!’ I’m gonna take the compliment, but that’s just people’s way of trying to associate what they see because they only see greatness like them. So if you see me like Will.I.Am, I don’t look at it as a dis or a downplay—I feel like I have the potential to be that great, too! I’m happy to do stuff like that. People are like, ‘You’re just trying to be different.’ But for me, it’s about connecting to what I’ve always been. I could show you a picture of me when I was 5 and I dressed the same way. I’d have a voice-changing helmet and some boots and a cape and glasses and a toy guitar with Lion-O hanging out of my pocket. Not to say I don’t grow, but certain things are the fabric of who you are. And the aesthetic is something I’ve held on to, and I’m proud to be able to be my own person in front of everybody.
Mike Watt says the Minutemen really confused people—that people thought they were Martians from planet Jazz. Do you think you’ve finally delivered the Martian jazz record planet Earth has been craving?
I don’t know if I put out the ultimate Martian jazz album, but I’d hope it definitely made some waves and changed the way people write and see and do music. A lot of the times people see music and see stuff that takes you a little bit out, and then they’re like, ‘Ah, this stuff is too difficult—this is not something people wanna hear.’ But there’s gotta be something there! It happened before. Jazz mixed with hip-hop and punk is nothing new! It’s not something I’m gonna take credit for. It’s definitely my take—my understanding. I’d hope I make an album that worthy of the title—‘This is the Martian album I’ve been waiting for for so long.’
The album is so fluid—the songs feel like they could flow in any direction.
I definitely have to give it up to Flying Lotus for his ability to hear things. I’m the kind of guy who’s scatterbrained naturally. I remember I’d be playing this stuff, but I never heard any sort of flow—I was just creating music. Lotus rearranged everything and put it in this order, and I was like, ‘Whoa!’ It all made sense. We’re very in sync with stuff like that.
Where’s the overlap? What matters most to you both about music?
Other than the basics which everybody would know … you have to have a certain amount of understanding to be able to go further, and not just be playing somebody else’s song or playing a bass line like, ‘Is this good enough?’ We hit points where we were just flowing. I remember when we were recording ‘MmmHmm,’ we were in the middle of doing stuff and that started coming out and he just started recording. Even with ‘Dance of the Pseudo Nymph,’ when we did that, I literally remember dancing around his living room, playing bass and dancing with the Indian headdress on. … And the funniest thing about ‘Dance of the Pseudo Nymph’—if you ever sit me and Lotus down, we will argue to this day where the ‘one’ is in that song. That’s how in sync we were! Neither of us could tell we were on a different ‘one.’ We were still in sync—but in two different places! When it came out, he was like, ‘No, this is where I was.’ ‘Well, this is where I was!’ We went through seven minutes of a song—we were just creating! In all honesty, that’s the fun part of the music to me—the unknown. There’s always a chance to know what you’re doing—‘Oh, OK, we’re gonna retake this part and you’re gonna slow down and …’ There’s always that. Let’s just go wherever we’re going. It’s the freedom in the music.
John Coltrane supposedly once said something like, ‘The more I know, the more I know I don’t know.’ One of those times when people asked him why he never stopped practicing.
I would never compare myself to Coltrane, but that’s super-freakin’-awesome. That’s the truth. You could know everything and still know nothing.
So is this what you want from music? As many of those moments as possible?
Heck yeah, man! I always wanna connect like that—have my heart in what I’m playing. As I get older … I think the word is ‘jaded.’ I always ask myself how to keep that zealousness about being a young artist. You can lose that. We just get old. I always say to myself, ‘I never wanna get old.’ When it comes to the music, I always wanna be in search of these moments where it’s … beautiful.
You were joking in another interview about hosing down crowds with DMT to help them break through—does that mean DMT is just a shortcut to get to the same place your music is going?
I just want people to break out of their stuff. I remember one time I saw my older brother taking a drum solo—he’s the most amazing drummer hands down in the world right now—and he starts taking a solo, and I see this guy jump out of his chair and start dancing. But not dancing—he was almost like a Deadhead. He was twirling—he was gone! Some people were making fun of it, like, ‘Look at this crazy guy!’ But they didn’t see what was going on—this guy was completely connecting to God through this music right now! He’s gone somewhere! And also just knowing it’s possible to be that connected. … Yeah, I wanna see people come out of their selves a little bit. Especially in L.A.—I definitely wanna see people go to a higher level.
So have you ever done DMT?
No—just watched a video on it one time.
You’re into gore movies—what’s your sentimental gore favorite?
Faces of Death! The first time when I got to watch Faces of Death—
Were you under 18 so it was illegal?
Oh, hell yeah. It was on the internet. I was with my cousin and we used to go get on the internet just to download crazy clips like that. It was so trippy. We’d watch some clip of a guy’s head being bit off by an alligator, then go eat Yoshinoya and write music.
You talked before about how you get frustrated with anime directors who deliver one masterpiece and then disappear—you seem obviously concerned with longevity. What is it you need to give people in the future so they aren’t like, ‘Man, Thundercat—there was so much more he could have done!’
I see the music as part of a bigger picture with me of course. I’m not just a musician—I’m an artist. I’m ready to start on my second album. I just wanna make sure people always know where to find me. Naturally I wanna be huge and all the crazy Hollywood dreams—
A bass-shaped pool?
Thundercat-shaped pool! Red in the hot-tub for the eye—hell yeah! Check this out. The rest of the pool is actually hot—like where the cat is. And the eye is actually cold as hell, but it’s red so it looks like it’s hot! You got me all excited—I sound like an idiot!
You once threw your bass into a crowd of 60,000 people—that’s got to be like throwing your child into a crowd of 60,000 people. What happened? Did you ever get it back?
No, I gave it away, man. This was one of Rage Against the Machine’s final concerts. It was Suicidal, Mars Volta and Rage Against the Machine, and we were on right before Rage Against the Machine. You think Europe has hardcore fans? South America … I don’t even wanna call it hardcore. It’s demonically possessed! Blackened hardcore metal fans! They’re insane! The emotion was so flying while we were playing—they were so excited because apparently Suicidal hadn’t been there in twenty years. You could feel the energy—it was so inspiring. It wasn’t that I didn’t love my bass, but what happened was … right at the end of the set, we were going off and I took my bass off and threw it in the audience! And the promoter told me no one had done that ever—they don’t really have instruments like that over there because it was kind of a higher-end instrument, and they don’t get those down there. I was so happy about that moment, I said, ‘I hope I blessed somebody.’ It felt like that to me—let’s go somewhere else, let’s take this further! The funny thing was it was like throwing a dead cow into shark-infested waters. When Rage Against the Machine went up on stage, people were like lighting stuff on fire. They couldn’t go on for an hour. It was like, ‘Oh, look—the Apocalypse is coming! Let me put on this bow tie and play the ‘Bon Voyage’ song like on the Titanic!’ When Rage started playing … they started the intro and couldn’t come on for twenty minutes. People were ripping chairs out of the stadium! But it felt like it was all in love. People weren’t trying to hurt each other. They were just so excited. It was intense! I felt happy to be part of that moment. I threw my bass out because that’s how I felt. ‘Take it—it belongs to you.’

THUNDERCAT WITH ROY AYERS, PETE ROCK AND J. ROCC ON THUR., NOV. 17, AT EXCHANGE LA, 618 S. SPRING ST., DOWNTOWN. 8 PM / $30 / 21+. EXCHANGELA.COM. THUNDERCAT’S THE GOLDEN AGE OF APOCALYPSE IS OUT NOW ON BRAINFEEDER. VISIT THUNDERCAT AT THUNDERCATTHEAMAZING.TUMBLR.COM.

Thundercat, Mia Doi Todd, Hanni El Khatib, Swahili Blonde, Tom Brosseau, the Club Pacific Band, and DJs Dan Collins, Tom Child, and Andres Renteria at the L.A. RECORD x dublab stage at Abbot Kinney Festival on September 24, 2011. Photos by Lainna Fader.

[View with PicLens]

—Kristina Benson

(Photos forthcoming!)

Download: “Happy Birthday, Flying Lotus!” Jam Session

L.A. visionary Flying Lotus just had a birthday, and in the true spirit of birthdays, ArtDontSleep delivers a gift in his honor to the world: the “Happy Birthday Flying Lotus!” jam session featuring Lotus, Exile, Shafiq Husayn, Computer Jay and many more. Download or listen above and more info below! (Also if you didn’t hear—Daddy Kev confirms that mixing on the new Lotus LP has already commenced!)

Flying Lotus’s birthday recently passed. In celebration of another year and many more to come, ArtDontSleep put together another heavy impromptu jam session in the Echo Park area of Los Angeles.

This 30 minute take from the jam session features some heavy hitter producers and musicians, including Flying Lotus himself, Exile, Shafiq Husayn (SA-RA), Stephen Thundercat Bruner (Erykah Badu, SA-RA, etc), Miguel Atwood-Ferguson (Suite for Ma Dukes) Computer Jay, and many others.

From all these musicians to you, enjoy the joint entitled “Happy Birthday, Flying Lotus.”

Credits:
ArtDontsSeep presents: Echo Park Jam Sessions

Track Title: “Happy Birthday, Flying Lotus”

Featuring:
Flying Lotus
Exile
Shafiq husayn
Stephen Thundercat Bruner
Miguel Atwood-Ferguson
Computer Jay
Isaac Smith
Jim Lang
Alla Koi
Andres Renteria
Matthew David

Recorded by: Benjamin Tierney and Jim Lang
Recorded at: Knob World

Mixed by: Jose Jurado