MOST FABULOUS: As if this superlative could belong to anybody but the Scissor Sisters. While other festgoers were feeling the mellow, ethereal vibe of Arcade Fire on the main stage, the disco-pop outfit started a dance party in the Mojave tent that got everybody’s booty shaking and heart palpitating. We’d place them right up there with Robyn as an act that deserves a bigger stage to strut their stuff on.

BEST DRESSED: Jake Shears of the Scissor Sisters, sporting a shimmering disco ball hoodie, seen above. (What did you expect him to wear, cotton? Pshh!)

MOST RIDICULOUS: A few wacky energy-creating devices were spread throughout one section of the grounds – a swing, a see-saw, and a bunch of bicycles, all said to create energy that helps power the lights when activated by manual force. Basically, this is the only way you can get hipsters to exercise.

BIGGEST RELIEF: Everyone seemed to know who Arcade Fire was!

PEOPLE I DIDN’T SEE: All of these celebrities.

MOST DAZZLING LIGHT SHOW: Animal Collective began their show on the Coachella stage with a magnificent, foreboding light spectacular. If you weren’t on drugs while watching it, you probably felt like you were.

BIGGEST SELF-REVELATION: I like Mumford & Sons! I’ve been aware of all the good press and outstanding reviews that the English folk rock band has received the past year, but never thought it was much my cup of Chamomile. But last night, the group busted out one of the most passionate, enthusiastic performances of the whole weekend (complete with debuting a new song, “Lover In The Light”), getting the massive crowd to jig along to their knee-slapping tunes — myself included. You just picked up a new fan, fellas!

MOST INTERACTIVE: Arcade Fire hoisted a mysterious black box above the stage, and only revealed its contents at the end of their show (right before a four song encore) – out poured hundreds of glowing balloons, many of them changing color in sync. You felt like the belle of the ball if you were lucky enough to snag one.

THE MOST DELICIOUS THING I HAVE EVER EATEN: A red velvet cookie ice cream sandwich with red velvet ice cream. I’m drooling all over again looking at this photo. I may just buy another one today as I’m baking in the 100 degree heat and pat the sweat off my face with it like a gym towel.

Come back tomorrow to get the full scoop on the final day of Coachella, including just how late Kanye West will inevitably begin his headlining set. (We’re taking bets – my friends say 45 minutes late, I’m putting my money on a solid hour.)

I don’t mean to seem like I care about material things like a social status
I just want four walls and adobe slabs for my girls

Sure, in hard economic times, it’s rockcrit 101 to champion dudes who sing about the joys of simplicity and domestic life. What twentysomething who just got laid off from his graphic design job doesn’t want to occasionally be reminded that there are more important things in life than bottle service? (Conversely, politics blog The American Scene is paints Sr. Panda as a crunchy conservative in his “longing for property and for home.” What?)

But, really, fuck the economy. Is this dude saying “adobe slats” or “adobe slabs”? And what does that even mean?

Says SongMeanings.com commenter tonyjames:

adobe slabs refers to building a home from the ground up like way back in the day. basically stating that as father he’s going to work hard in providing for his children. but yes i agree that while most animal collective songs are a little difficult to interpret on the first try, this one is way easy to understand. its in general a song about a man providing for his family and making his father proud in the process.

So yeah, I love the sentiment and, hell, I even love this bloopy-bloppy mess of a song. But even so, I just can’t look past the fact that this is a crappy lyric. And I overlooked “Are we human or are we dancer.” Dig it:

1. By its very definition, social status is not a material thing. At all. Remember when David Cross tried to buy a house on “indie hipster cred”? Doesn’t work!

2. It’s a line about growing up and taking care of your wife and kids but still sung with that Peter Pan syndrome fake-naïveté that these guys haven’t abandoned since they were murmuring “I am the pantha!” through a Line 6 pedal.

3. To force the rhyme of “slat” and “stat[us]” they sort of leave off the “-us” reducing it to “a social stat” which is really like cutie-poo Hollertronix board slang given new life as song lyric. Nix social stat? Totes awes fam bros!

4. “Adobe” is like the least musical word humanly possible, next to maybe “coprophagia” or “phlegmatic” or “weltanschaung.”

5. With four walls and some slabs (or slats), the Panda Clan still doesn’t exactly have a roof.

I dunno. After looking at that cover for seven hours, maybe he means Adobe Photoshop?

Aaron’s only evidence seems to be that a lot of the people have written about it, and that Entertainment Weekly gave it an A-. (An A minus, you guys!) Unlike Aaron, we have the advantage of writing after the album’s release, so we can look at its position on iTunes. After a week of availability there, it’s the No. 5 best-selling album—behind the Twilight soundtrack, Taylor Swift, and the Bon Iver EP, which was released the same day as MPP and is sitting at No. 2.

Ah, but maybe, like Play, it will be licensed to lots of commercials and get noticed that way? Even Aaron admits this is unlikely—”it’s hard to imagine them licensing ‘Lion in a Coma’ to Nokia,” he generously notes in a parenthetical—and there seems to be a world of difference between Moby’s yuppie-friendly blend of blues samples and house and Animal Collective’s hippie-derived drones and group singing. But the overexposure, in Aaron’s reckoning, is going to come from a different source than with Moby’s album. Instead of being forcibly informed that people he dislikes have an emotional connection with a piece of music he does like at “a Starbucks on the New Jersey Turnpike,” the overexposure here would be more virtual.

And now, an oversaturation similar to what Moby willfully engendered via multi-platform licensing over more than a year could be happening, somewhat organically, to Animal Collective — even before their album’s official release and without the attendant financial windfall — via blogs, websites, YouTube, and assorted online jabberwocky.

Aha! What we’re talking about here, then, is not actual success, but Internet success, which is a different beast entirely. By that measure, of course, Animal Collective are already wildly successful. But it seems a little strange that this is what constitutes making it for the modern musical enterprise: not the awareness of casual listeners, the monetary rewards of actual sales, and the cultural ubiquity afforded by a presence on television and in movies, but the warm glow of blogged concert pix, fan-made videos, and people having “SummertimeClothes” as a username on discussion boards.

If this is the success Aaron is worried about, then he has nothing to fear. This is a safe form of acclaim, a small-stakes version of selling out that leaves everyone but the artist satisfied. If Animal Collective never crosses over to the real world, then no one drinking latte in an SUV will ever be playing the album; all we will have to contend with is the affection of other people on the Internet, who are not so unlike you and me, after all. If the band doesn’t get the reward of real-world sales, then it can never leave us, the cossetted bosom of true admirers that have made it what it is. It can stay small, stay in its little hometown and never escape. And if all its ubiquity is on Web sites, then these are easily avoided. We never watch something we don’t choose to watch, after all. This could only be a problem if we spend all our time on the Internet.

But, of course, we do. This is the odd bifurcation of the moment in which we find ourselves: a fragmented musical landscape in which “crossover” means only a jump from the country charts to the pop charts, but we are all loath to admit the new reality. We yearn for the days when we could complain about a band selling out—when Nirvana could cross over and make us all argue about the wrong people liking things. Maybe it will happen for Animal Collective. But if it does, will we even notice? Or will we just assume it’s successful because it’s successful on the Internet?

Is Animal Collective the New Moby? [Spin, via PGWP]

There was some bad shit going down with counterfeit tickets at the Bowery show. As I was going in some people got stopped when the guy scanned their tickets. He asked them if they’d bought them from a guy (he said his name, but I can’t remember what it was) on Craigslist for $100 (!) and they said yes. He said they were the tenth people that night who’d got caught in the same scam. So someone out there made a LOT of money from last night’s show.

Uh-oh! Sounds like trouble in paradise and a major bummer! Anonymous, part deux, also got jobbed… and this time he has a name:

Yeah, I unfortunately bought them. The name on the ticket was Seth [redacted]. By the time I got there they said it was over 20 people who got turned away

I’m not as mad about my money (well I really am) but the fact that the band didn’t get any of it.

Seth’s been a bad boy! And isn’t it charming how this guy really just cares about the band, not his own loss of money? Oh, wait. Never mind. He is mad about the money. Or something.

mp77 chimes in with a reasonable argument:

I heard about that ticket scam, sucks for those people, but I do question who thinks buying a scalped e-ticket is a good idea in the first place.

…but the mob is readying its pitchforks! Another anonymous:

That sucks about that scam – any way we find out this guy and fuck him up?

joe finds a way:

hhaha that dude seth [redacted] tried to sell me tickets but i caught him scamming and told him to fuck off.
[phone number redacted]
thats his phone number
[email redacted]
thats his email
search him on facebook too and spam his ass.
DONT FUCK WITH ANIMAL COLLECTIVE FANS

Wow. All of Maura’s worst suspicions, confirmed in that final sentence from joe. Are AC shows gonna turn into Dead shows when the frat boys started coming? Eesh.

There’s more! Another anonymous is getting litigious:

Thanks joe, unfortunately not everyone was as diligent as you. Good thing at least some people didn’t get scammed. Does anyone know the manager or promoter so this info can be forwarded on so they can take this dude to court?

jeff doucette crosses various lines here:

Seth [redacted]. Haaaaaaaaa !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Kid went to UPenn…he works at [business name redacted] on E 11th St.

[business name redacted]

[address redacted]
New York, NY 10009
United States

PH: [phone number redacted]

Seth’s cell, as someone posted already, is [phone number redacted]

emails:

[email addresses redacted]

he also uses [redacted] as his ID for everything.

I think he lives in TriBeCa somewhere.

Anonymous 3:41 really has the NYPD’s priorities out of whack:

I cannot believe this Seth dude is stupid enough to actually pull this scam and think he could get away with it. In all probability this could land him in jail, I bet Police have already questioned him.

Uh, right, 3:41. A few voices of reason percolate near the end:

I’m not Seth, don’t know him….I swear. But, What if he sold them to the dude who scammed you all? Never, ever buy these ticketfast tickets from CL.

I agree with whoever made the point that Seth sold that ticket to someone, and then that someone perpetrated the scam. I think seth is an IDIOT for selling a ticketfast ticket, but I highly doubt he’s the scammer

Whatever, dudes, you don’t eff with Animal Collective fans! The mob cries “vendetta!”

Has anyone filed a police report yet?
A buddy of mine got scammed by this guy & has had no luck reaching him. He tried calling both offices where he used to work, but this kid no longer works at either place.

You have to call the police, call the precint where Bowery is located I dont know which number it is, most likely its already being investigated. You will probably have to go down there and file a police report.

My take? It’s Craigslist! If you didn’t want to be scammed then don’t use it. It’s like the Wild West in there. Posting people’s personal information? Hmm. A tad gauche, if you ask me. Also, slap a big [sic] all over this story, okay?

Animal Collective @ Grand Ballroom – NYC – pics [Brooklyn Vegan via nervousacid]

Animal Collective – My Girls [HT: Every blog ever]
[Also, HT to Matthew Perpetua for the headline, which was inspired by his assertion that Merriweather Post Pavilion is way more inspired by Underworld than people have wanted to admit yet]

Well, that depends whether we’re talking about an actual effect or an assumed effect, and when it comes to the ’60s, we always seem to be talking about the assumed effect. That decade’s hagiographers have been very successful at encouraging the idea that music helped to end the war, but just because people were listening to Bob Dylan doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t have opposed the war without him. As for our current decade, the implication seems to be that because the Dixie Chicks got into trouble for making a snide anti-Bush remark, the powers that be must have a vested interest in suppressing music that expressed opposition to the government—which would then mean that protest songs are indeed dangerous. This was a real perception, certainly real enough to have a chilling effect, as Brownstein remembers:

My own band, writing and recording our fifth record during the winter of 2001, put more than a few songs about Bush and the war on what was to become One Beat—specifically “Combat Rock” and “Faraway.” It’s interesting to note that, upon the album’s release in early 2002, interviewers focused on the so-called risk we were taking by including those songs.

Ultimately, though, it’s unlikely that the administration’s effort to stifle dissent was aimed at music specifically. More likely is that it was aimed at the press (successfully) and at partisans more generally; pop was just collateral damage. Still, maybe it was ignored because music has gotten so toothless that it’s not worth worrying about anymore, right? Well, not really. The dominant view of the ’60s always forgets all the bubblegum and parent-pop that was even more popular than the politically engaged stuff, and overstates the reach and importance of the artists we’ve come to value. It seems more likely that music wasn’t more politically engaged in the ’60s; rather, it was more culturally prominent, more of a megaphone for the values of the majority, and thus more representative of public opinion. When music is smaller, why should politics pay attention to it?

The funny thing about all this, of course, is that the election of Barack Obama represents a rejection of “the ’60s,” or at least its dominance over our political and cultural dialogue. By picking Obama over Hillary Clinton during the primaries, Democratic voters seemed to indicate a desire to move away from arguments about culture war and identity politics. Music, on the other hand, still seems stuck in the boomer mire; even the supposedly transformative album of 2009 can be legitimately described as “psychedelic.” There seems a disconnect here.

Eight Years Gone [NPR]