2007

As expected, the Coachella Festival quickly became the most blogged festival of the season. Rolling Stone had correspondents Brian Hiatt and Rob Sheffield reporting from the field, as well as Ed Droste of Grizzly Bear checking in sporadically. Spinner had full coverage with a team of bloggers onsite. More locally, the OC Register and San Jose’s Mercury News provided constant updates. With all those people on site and the free AT&T webcast, I almost felt like I was there.

But what else is goin’ down? Let’s check in with some non-Coachella news today:

• Bjork speaks with Jon Pareles about her new album
• An appreciation of Lester Bangs, 25 years after his untimely death
• Poison is releasing an album of covers, including a take on David Bowie’s Suffragette City and Marshall Tucker’s Can’t You See
• A review of Widespread Panic at the Wharf
• Shell will sponsor the New Orleans Jazz Fest until 2010 (and the Lovely SuperDee is down in NOLA enjoying this year’s JazzFest as we speak, so make sure to check out her coverage)
• Pete Townshend performs White Light, White Heat with Lou Reed
• Free music from the Grateful Dead and Umphrey’s McGee
• Neddy lists the shows of the week
• Aerosmith before they sold out
• We have two weeks left to SaveNetRadio
• A look at the past and future of Neil Young’s archive releases
• Thanks to Andy Gadiel for turning me onto the Jack Black soundboard

And remember to read on for some of this weekend’s setlists from Bjork, Roger Waters, The Slip, WSP, Gov’t Mule, Disco Biscuits, Yo La Tengo and more…

Quite a Saturday for the ol’ Cowboy — the setlist looks like this: Reveille > English football > NFL Draft > Kei Igawa’s Yankee victory > NFL Draft > Mo’s

The kind folks at ownyourphone.com know how much you wanna hear a bitchin’ Frankenstein every time the phone rings. A real Frankenstein, not that Muzak for Cellular Telephones shit. Ownyourphone’s

Yesterday we offered a photo gallery from the third-annual Wanee Festival in Florida. Today we continue with shit that shoulda been posted two weeks ago…

Umphrey’s McGee rocked a sold-out crowd at the Nokia Theatre in New York City on April 13th. Things have been heating up for the boys from Chicago, selling out most of the shows they’ve played this year. The Nokia seemed much more crowded than usual, signaling perhaps the need for a bigger space the next time Umphrey’s comes around. Oh well…you can’t stop progress, and this band is clearly progressing in every aspect of its game.

UM came out spittin’ fire, jamming out versions of JaJunk and In The Kitchen. For each of the songs, Umphrey’s raced through the tune before establishing a new chord progression and tearing it a new asshole. Guitarists Jake Cinninger and Brendan Bayliss switched to acoustics in the middle of the JaJunk jam for a change of pace before segueing into In The Kitchen. The guys abandoned Kitchen midway through the song and once again tore off on an extended Jazz Odyssey.

Read on for more great photos from Coach and the rest of the Nokia review…