Coachella 2007 Day 3 - second post

Are you sick of seeing blurry photos of musicians yet? We finally got up close for the band we were both looking forward to so much, Kaiser Chiefs! Yet another British band (do you see a theme for today?) that write catchy brit-pop songs that even I can sing along with. I had heard that they put on a great live show, so we managed to push ourselves to the very front (I had two short girls in front of me that were obviously waiting for a later group - I think I yelled their ears out). No watching from the sidelines for this band!


Ricky Wilson is quite the enthusiastic front man for the band. He really understood what his job was - he knew there weren't going to be that many fans at Coachella, so he tried his best to bring in as many people walking by as possible.

He sings at the top of his lungs.


Ricky loves the mike stand - he used it to jump really high in the air.


He gave some love to the people in front.


Then he climbed the scaffolding.


Of course, to top it all off, he surfed the crowd (which we didn't get a photo of). We loved every minute of it! It didn't hurt that we were surrounded by a bunch of crazy Brits. It was the most civilized mosh pit you could ever encounter. Even the security guys just pulled off the crowd surfers and gave them a pat on the back before sending them on their way.

After the show, we had to literally push and shove our way through the Placebo crowd (some big guy behind me helped us out) and ran over to see Willie Nelson.

Rob wanted to save his camera batteries for Crowded House so he used his phone for this photo - you can see Willie in his red bandanna. Supposedly all the celebs were there en masse for Willie Nelson, but I was too tired from Kaiser Chiefs to notice anyone. The crowd gave him lots of love.

We managed to be third and fourth in line to see Crowded House. I chatted with the security guards before the show, where I discovered that most of them were military personnel hired specifically because of the crowd anticipated for Rage Against the Machine.

Crowded House was great, but they were at the totally wrong time and day for this festival. Most of the crowd was waiting for Rage (they were two sets after Crowded House) and they were hot and tired. But all of us at the side stage loved them!

Pretty color.

Neil, Nick, Mark, new drummer Matt and Neil's son Liam seemed happy to be playing together.

It was great seeing them perform together.

Afterwards, we tried to catch Lily Allen, but her security wouldn't let us backstage (boo!). As I was climbing some equipment, trying to get a view, Rob nudged me and pointed out who was in front of me - it was Mika! I made Rob ask him if I could take a photo with him. Mika was very kind and so nice. I love him even more now!


We tried to wait around to see Air, but they were running late and we were getting tired. We hadn't decided whether to see Rage Against the Machine. Rob likes Rage Against the Machine, I support them because they are a LA band and I appreciate their conviction to their political views. However, neither of us wanted to deal with the crowd and traffic after the show. So we left with one last photo.

(By the way, if you have good eyes and you noticed I was wearing the same dress two days in a row, it worked so well on Saturday I washed it and wore it again on Sunday. I'm not crunchy enough to wear a sweaty, dirty dress two days running.)

We ended the day with a dip in the pool and jacuzzi - that's the way to finish off Coachella.

If you've actually reached the end of this post - congratulations! I really rambled on, but I just wanted to say one more thing. Support live music! The connection between artists and audiences is so unique and indescribable. As you can tell, music is a huge part of our lives and I hope everyone can have their own Coachella moments too!