I was running some errands at Triangle Square in Costa Mesa. It was a gorgeous hot day, piercing blue skies and glowing sun. The sort of light that I’ve only ever experienced in Southern California where everything is really vivid and - when there’s no smog - you can see sharply into the distance.

Then I saw him. A bloke was standing outside a salon with a sign on a giant arrow - FREE TAN - it shouted. I looked up at the sun. ‘Surely that’s a free tan’, I thought to myself. I went over to him and pointed upwards.

“There’s your free tan mate,” I joked. He kind of smiled at me, probably not getting the joke, or just not hearing me as he had earphones on. It really did seem a ridiculous thing. Walking down the street here is a free tan. It’s always sunny. I forget what clouds look like. It’s not like England where when it’s sunny everyone goes doolally and rushes outside. Here I cower indoors to avoid the constant sunny days.

I’ve heard of silly business practices but this seems absurd. I’m moving to Antarctica and starting my free ice service.

In all the excitement I inadvertently missed off some bands on my Coachella review:

MARK RONSON
Bock rocking cover versions with a jaunty full piece band. Guy from the Klaxons joins him on stage, as does Tim Burgess from the Charlatans and Ricky from Kaiser Chiefs, who I saw on this very same stage last year. No Amy Crackhouse. Only saw the last song but wondered what his next step would be in the music world after debuting with an album of covers. Version 2?

LES SAVY FAV
Punky NY art house. Mad lead singer who climbed right up the stage onto the rig forty feet above the crowd. “it’s hot as fuck and I need a hug…It’s hot as piss and I need a kiss..” he sang.

ADAM FREELAND
I was actually at school with Adam. He wasn’t really into music at that time so it was amazing to see him lead the dance tent in a merry, er, dance. We Want Your Soul. I was going to say hi but thought it might not be the most opportune moment.

Every year’s the same with Coachella, at the time I always think I will never return but as the memories mature I’m already looking forward to next year. It’s not off the wall like English festivals and the crowds are very tame but it’s pretty much unbeatable for seeing a host of good bands. The curation is the best thing.  There’s also a few acts I would have liked to have seen but couldn’t due to clashes or laziness: M.I.A, Does It Offend You Yeah?, Diplo, Datarock, Santogold, Calvin Harris, Hot Chip…but you can’t have it all.

Actually I was reading a review on the OC Weekly - the writer was moaning about the cigarette smoke. What sort of person goes to a festival and complains about smoke? Let alone a supposed music journalist. I’d love to see how he would respond at a European festival. It’s all about the music mate! What next, complaints about pesky drunk people. Call the fun police.

SUNDAY
Linton Kwesi Johnson
Wow, I was so pleased he was on the lineup. I even studied him as part of my A-Level English course and had seen him in London in the early 90s. He’s a dub poet. Which sounds like a misnomer, how can poetry be dub? Great stage presence and wonderful background info between each poem. A faithful and appreciative crowd in the know, hanging on his every word and getting a lesson in post-War British race politics. Respec.

Sean Penn
Appeared on stage to try and rustle together some takers for a journey from Coachella to New Orleans to build houses and sing around camp fires on route. Slighty confusing. Perhaps the guilty obsessions of a mollycoddled Hollywood A-Lister.

I’m From Barcelona
I Used To Live In Barcelona so thought I’d give them a twirl. Had heard indie media good press. Seemed like a novelty en masse act for a kids party with fifty people on stage. Them crazy Swedes.

Duffy
New Welsh hotly tipped soul singer. Dusty Springfield with legs. This years Joss Stone / Amy Winehouse minus the crack / nu-yet-retro soul upstart. Great voice and good stage presence, like the song ‘Warwick Avenue’ didn’t hang around for much else.

Gogol Bordello
Saw them as part of Madonna’s act at Live 8. Didn’t think much then. Don’t think much now. Good energy but ultimately the gypsy punk schtick wore thin. Epic finales reached far beyond where the climax should have ended.

Spiritualised
A band I feel I should know more about but have never bought an album of. Oft mentioned in hushed, praise worthy tones by a lot of the media. Very mellow - which is welcomed in the heat and I liked the stage presence of six females playing violins and other string instruments.

SIA
Another revelation. Perhaps my second favourite set after The Verve. She used to be the lead singer with Zero 7 and has clearly come into her own. Amazing voice and a great, jokey, very sweet and endearing stage persona. Cheeky. Blown away by her voice. The crowd went nuts.

Roger Waters
Final act on the last night. I presumed all the other tents were empty as there was a mass exodus to see the geezer who hijacked Pink Floyd. I find Floyd frequently self indulgent, epic and overblown, but not without some quality moments. Roger was in good shape, great guitar player, very confident.

Amazing stage set up, lazers in the sky and 3D surround sound. At one point an aeroplane flew over the lazers sprinkling paper into the lights. Over the top. At a time when artists are trying to cut down their carbon footprints Mr Waters is doing the exact reverse.

He took a break and then came back to start playing Dark Side Of The Moon. Great trippy intro mixed in with the multimedia, flasing images on the screen, great timing between pre-programmed stuff and live. To beat the traffic jams we left after Money. I thought it an apt song to leave on considering how much Pink Floyd have rowed over it.

Carbon Silicon
Last year The Clash’s Tim Simenon took to the stage with The Good The Bad And The Queen. This year it was the turn of Mick Jones to strutt his stuff early on with some funny cockney banter and three bar blues. Old punks never die, they just come to the desert and play rock. Good to see a living legend.

MGMT
Hottly tipped dance rock act who started off slightly lame and then get better as they churned out their hits (three to date). Seemed nervous to begin with and announced it was their first festival. Another band with only one albums worth of material to play with. Main song is a synth disco workout which I like.

Kate Nash
This years shy version of Lilly Allen. Seemed to win over the audience despite a withering stage persona. Sweet but ultimately hard to relate to her teeny angst my-boyfriend-doesn’t love-me-anymore-boo-hoo themes. A folky Avril Lavigne with a London accent.

Cinematic Orchestra
Nu school soul funk outfit as frequently talked about by Gilles Peterson, a man I listen to. Great to see a band with space in the music, perfect for their sunset slot. Great saxophonist and lead singer. Lovely jubbly.

Kraftwerk
Excited to see the German electro pioneers. Music great but the static quad Teutonic stage schtick soon wore thin. Great visuals on the big screens behind the main stage. My way of paying homage to an outfit to whom 50% of the acts here owe a great debt. TransEuroExpress.

Portishead
I admit by now I was quite drunk and talked through a lot of it. I thought they might be quite boring - heavy soul headphone music that doesn’t relate to a live setting. But in fact it did. They were great. New material mostly superb too. Future music with soul and Beth Gibbons is an immense performer.

Prince
The man they got in to sell tickets. All the hits plus some interesting covers - you’d think he had enough back catalogue to work with. But I suppose it’s a festival of alternative rock lovers so why not bust out a version of Radiohead’s ‘Creep’? And the Beatles ‘Come Together’?  Amazing performance, great dancing, mind blowing guitar playing. Looks exactly like he did in 1985, not a hair out of place. Proto-James Brown dwarf funk here we go.

 

It’s that time of year again, time for the West Coast equivalent of Glastonbury - yet in the desert and with designated drinking areas. Before I start on the music, let’s get some of the customary moans out of the way. It was hot. Stinking hot. Not as hot as last year but still a lethargy inducing, bone numbing heat. Certainly not good for traipsing around a dusty valley watching the latest screechy indie whippersnappers. Not good for sleeping in a sauna come tent. Not good for plastic portaloos overflowing with effluent and flies by sundown on Friday. And also like saunas.

Sixty thousand Southern Californians and, judging by the accents, not a shabby amount of Brits and other nationalities descend to the valley which is near Palm Springs. It’s a funny mix of LA rich kids, faux punks, American crusties (not very crusty at all and certainly minus dogs on strings), tatto’d bros, hipsters, OC misfits, bohos, dad rockers (like me) and everything in between. I was amazed at how well a lot of the girls were turned out, especially considering the heat, as they didn’t seem to sweat at all, make up all in place and they smelt of daisys. A lot skipped around in skimpy bikinis - not that I was looking.

The great thing about Coachella is the line up. It’s really good programming. You also get to see a lot of up and coming British bands, in fact, the programmers seem to really like English music, or maybe it’s just because it’s the best in the world.

Here’s a list of who I saw sequentially day by day:

FRIDAY
Battles
New York post punk  - rabid instrumentals with one foot firmly in the dance camp with textured builds and funky grooves. One to investigate.

Vampire Weekend
East Coast art school, sunny ska with African rhythms and a great pop sensibility. Only one album to play with, but still sunny vibes on the Outdoor Theatre stage.

Dan Le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip
UK hip hop. Sounds like an oxymoron. Dan is no moron. I loved his song ‘Thou Shalt Kill’ which I first heard on the Rob Da Bank show. At Coachella Dan and Scroobius were more like a comedy duo novelty act - funny but ultimately cursory. They did a whole song about Tommy Cooper - which went right over most peoples heads. Another song samples Radiohead. New material needed.

Aphex Twin
Cornish electronica maverick who I have followed closely throughout his career and was excited to see. Only managed to catch about twenty minutes of his DJ set. Physically the most unenergetic DJ I have seen - he didn’t move a muscle. The section I saw him play was a circa 92 London jungle set, big basslines and military snares. The music of my youth.

The Verve
For me perhaps the best show of the weekend. I’d never seen them live - and now I know why Richard Ashcroft is such a revered indie God. He’s one of the best front men of the 90s. Enigmatic performer, mesmerising face even though it’s largely expressionless. He reminded me of a cross between an E’d up Bez and a snarling Liam Gallagher. Northern Soul as done by Northerners. Baggy beats and amazing guitar playing. All the hits - Sonnet, Drugs Don’t Work and Bittersweet Symphony - where there, plus some new material all of which was great; ‘I Sat And Wondered’ springs to mind. Knockout set. 

A man was killed by a Great White shark on Friday (April 25th) at Solana Beach in San Diego County. That’s about 45 miles south of us here in Huntington Beach. The worrying thing is that Great Whites normally live in the colder waters of Northern California so to reach San Diego (s)he’d have to brush the coast right where I live and surf. In fact a few weeks ago there were some alleged shark sightings in this area.

Perhaps it’s the start of a new trend? Perhaps one manifestation of global warming will be Great Whites migrating to different areas.

It won’t stop me surfing though - of course. The last fatal shark attack in Southern California was 1959. I run much more of a risk driving on the freeways here where fatalities are a daily occurence. But all the same it is a bit sketchy - eye witness accounts of the 1959 attack describe the free diver as being eaten whole, feet first, swallowed in one gulp. Gulp.

 Frequently at my local gym (Fitness 24 in Costa Mesa) I walk past an aerobics class and hear screechy happy hardcore pumping from the stereo. It’s exactly the type of music I used to dance to in the early 90s - fast breakbeats, helium-esque female vocals, rave synth stabs, pumping kick drums - although at the time for me it wasn’t part of a fitness regime. Oh no, it was part of very different culture of getting absolutely mullered whilst dancing like an idiot on sweaty dancefloors across London and smoking 60 cigarettes in one night. I used come home from a night out and my fingers glowed from the nicotine. Rave on matey.

I laugh wryly to myself as I look at the fit and healthy Californians stepping to the beat. It’s ironic how far this music has come from my mispent youth to this place Oceans away. Admittedly it does make for excellent work out music, the fast beats and hectic strings take some keeping up with. God knows how we managed it all those years ago? Well actually I do know, two pills and ten bottles of water, thanks very much. No wonder I lost so much weight back then, we used to dance for ten hours non stop. What are you on?

The lithe nubiles are in Jane Fonda-esque leotards. The fitness instructor is mic’d up and leading the dance. Very different from the MC back in my day: “This one for the raving massif, big up yo chests, E Possee come alive!”

The sounds of the London underground, fifteen years later, on a different continent and for different purposes. Life moves in very odd ways.

I accidentally slaughtered two goldfishes the other day and I feel dreadful. Tammy bought Tristan two fish back from the reptile centre she works at. They’d normally have been fed to snakes and giant lizards. By coming to mi casa the two lucky fish had found a way out - or so they thought.

They came home in a very small container, so I thought I’d upgrade their home and put them in a bigger bowl. I filled the bowl up with water from the tap and then transferred the fish. Half an hour later when checking up on them one of them was dead upside down. The other was swimming in upside down circles, clearly on it’s last fins.

I was on the verge of tears. I’d taken two lives. I am a strict vegetarian as it’s cruel to kill and now I had blood on my hands. Two souls no more - because of moi.

I honestly thought the tap water would be fine. I remember winning goldfishes at the fair back in England and they survived. I suppose they were more hardy. The fish out here probably need reverse osmosis filtered, free range, sodium free Fuji water to survive. Luckily Tristan didn’t see the fish as this all happened at night so we didn’t have to explain death to him and he didn’t experience thier loss quite like I did.

I just read (LA Times) about a night club in Long Beach that gives free boob jobs to ladies as part of a competition. If you’re interested it’s at the V20 nightspot in downtown and the “Spring Break Breast Augmentation Contest Series’ culminated with ’six finalists going head to head in an apple bobbing battle royal dubbed ‘Bobbing For Boobs’” The winner will get a new pair of boobs.

I’m trying to work out the apple bobbing free tit link. I’d more imagine the ladies shaking their booties to earn new breasts. There’s something very honest about it. Men and women go to nightclubs largely to cop off. Men are frequently attracted to women with big boobs. This competion just streamlines that process.

Only in California I suppose. I wonder when the ‘free penis enlargement’ competition will be started at a competing nightclub, or would the number of entrants to be too low amongst proud males? Perhaps there could be a free neck tuck at the over 60s night for the lady who shakes her booty the best? The combinations are limitless in the land where plastic surgeons can perform miracles and the quest for aesthetic perfection exhausting.

Obviously I’m not on the market, but from what I’ve observed going out and attracting members of the opposite sex here is purely a numbers game. By numbers, I don’t mean asking lots of girls out, in the hope that at least one will say yes. The old skool scatter gun affect, or more viley, the shit stick approach. If you throw lots of shit, some of it’s bound to stick.

By numbers, I mean the various digits that make up a part of your identity out here, which can almost be keyed in like a algebra equation. How much to do you earn (x). How old are you (y). What is your ZIP code (z). What is your area code within the ZIP code (g). What is your cock size (f). What will be your retirement plan at 65 (h). How tall are you (a).

Thus if we use the formula:

x + y + z + g + f + h + a = eligibility.

Mine came out at 113411 - which is quite good I believe, but slightly below average for the Newport Beach / Huntington Beach borders. If I moved slightly inland I’d be quids in, or dollars up as they might say out here.