Yes­ter­day, I arrived home to find a USPS missed deliv­ery notice in my mail­box.  The scrib­ble indi­cat­ing who it was from was illeg­i­ble and I couldn’t think of any­thing I was hav­ing deliv­ered that would need a sig­na­ture. I spent much of the night try­ing to fig­ure out what it could be.

This morn­ing I drove out to the hard to find “Air­port” Post Office to pick up my pack­age. Once I had it in hand I avoided the urge to rip it open and take a look. Instead I headed to the office, stopped and got some cof­fee, and then set­tled down at my desk to take a a look.

What did it con­tain? My Coachella 2013 pass!!!!

I am super excited for Coachella this year.  Not only do I get to see the Stone Roses, who I have waited 20+years to see, but also over­all I think the lineup is amaz­ing. Each year I go through the lineup and mark off the bands I want to see and then lis­ten to all the bands I am not very famil­iar with.  This year the list of “Yes” bands was huge on my first pass.

Some of the sets I am look­ing for­ward to include the following.

Fri­day

Alt-J, Band of Horses, blur, FOALS, Japan­droids, Johnny Marr, Of Mon­sters and Men, Pas­sion Pit, and The Stone Roses.

Sat­ur­day

Franz Fer­di­nand, Hot Chip, New Order, Phoenix, Spir­i­tu­al­ized, The Postal Ser­vice, The Wom­bats, The xx, and Two Door Cin­ema Club, Yeasayer

Sun­day

DIIV, Grimes, OMD, Red Hot Chili Pep­pers, Social Dis­tor­tion, Tan­lines, The Air­borne Toxic Event, The Lum­i­neers, and Yeah Yeah Yeahs

There are a bunch of oth­ers on my list to see, but I know I won’t be able to see every­thing.  Some of those above may even have con­flicts and I will have to make some decisions.

I hope it isn’t a zil­lion degrees this year!

Here is a small playlist I cre­ated last year. I recently queued it up again have been enjoy­ing it even more.

Last night I went down to the Launch­pad to see The Last Roy­als. They were sub head­lin­ing a show with The Hush Sound. Obvi­ously, given The Hush Sound was the head­liner the crowd pulled in a younger demo­graphic. Over­all I would say the turnout was pretty small for the sow. The over 21 sec­tion was pretty thin most of the night with most of the crowd being inside the “under­age” barrier.

The Last Roy­als were one of my “new music Tues­day” dis­cov­er­ies. Their debut album TWISTIFICATION, came out on Jan­u­ary 8, 2013. As is nor­mal on Tues­day I hit the “new releases” on rdio and started adding things to my queue. Of every­thing I added that day TWISTIFICATION was the standout.

When their tour dates came out I was excited to see ABQ on the list. Many bands tend to skip right over New Mex­ico, often doing a show in Ari­zona and then head­ing straight through to Texas.

The show was great! They sounded awe­some live and even did a cover of Dreams by The Cran­ber­ries, which was par­tially lost on the younger crowd. After the show I had a cou­ple beers with the guys from the band. These guys really enjoy what they do and were fun to hang­out with. After ABQ they were off to do a series of shows at SXSW.

http://thelastroyals.com

After a long break I finally fin­ished episode 3.  Already have some plans for the next cou­ple of shows.  Look for episode 4 some­time in September.

10 Tracks — Episode 3 by Carter on Mixcloud

Track List:

1.  Heat Light­ning — Icky Blossoms
2. Dirty Paws — Of Mon­sters and Men
3. SDP — The Kis­s­away Trail
4. Heart Attack — The Aster­oids Galaxy Tour
5. Never Let Me Down — Shad­ows On Stars
6. One — Yeasayer
7. 5–0 — Chappo
8. Span­ish Sahara — Foals
9. Steady Don’t Stop — The Kingsway
10. Now Hear This My Friends — Caan

–m@

Episode 2 is out!