Coachella 2013: Streaming Live Now!

If you aren't at Coachella, no problem: once again, the huge (and hugely popular) California music festival is offering a generous amount of its performances via live streaming on YouTube.

There are three separate channels you can watch, so at times you'll have to choose which of the overlapping acts playing at the same time you want to see—hey, just like being there! (Although you can easily switch from one channel to another, as opposed to running back and forth from stage to stage.

Watch live sets from Coachella 2013 this weekend. See Friday's schedule below.

 Head on over to the Coachella YouTube channel, www.youtube.com/coachella, starting at 3:30 p.m. Pacific time (6:30 Eastern) and settle in for a long weekend of live sets from acts like Beach House, Purity Ring, Earl Sweatshirt, Bat for Lashes, The xx, New Order, Jessie Ware, Cloud Nothings, Wu-Tang Clan, and Dead Can Dance.

Friday's schedule (all times Pacific):
3:30 p.m. – Jake Bugg
3:30 – Stars
3:30 – Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra
4:20 – Johnny Marr
4:30 – Beardyman
4:35 – Divine Fits
5:20 – Alt-J
5:20 – Metric
5:20 – Polica
6:10 – Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry
6:10 – Passion Pit
6:25 – Palma Violets
7:00 – Japandroids
7:00 – Local Natives
7:25 – Jello Biafra
7:50 – Sparks
7:50 – Of Monsters and Men
8:40 – Beach House
9:30 – Yeah Yeah Yeahs
9:45 – Purity Ring
10:10 – Grinderman
10:35 – Infected Mushroom
11:15 – Jurassic 5
11:25 – Foals
11:40 – The Stone Roses (highlights)
12:10 a.m. – Tegan & Sara
12:10 – How to Destroy Angels
12:15 — Earl Sweatshirt

Concert Notes: Coachella Cruises; The Who, Dylan Go on Tour

There are a couple of tours to talk about in this edition of Concert Notes, as well as a much more unusual kind of performance: the first-ever Coachella Cruises. Odd? Yeah, but at least all the endless jokes about the Coachella Cruise will distract us here in the U.S. from all the presidential election talk.

Here's what's news on the concert scene:

It may sound like a gag, but the S.S. Coachella is for real.

* Coachella Cruise to set sail: Building on the popularity of its first two-weekend festival this year, the folks behind the Coachella festival are sponsoring two rock-fueled floating parties. The "S.S. Coachella" will sail to the Bahamas this Dec. 16th to 19th and to the Bahamas Dec. 19th to 23rd.  Tickets go on sale this Saturday at 1 p.m. Eastern, 10 a.m. Pacific. Pricing starts at $500. See the Coachella Cruise FAQ for more details.

The lineup for both cruises features Pulp, Hot Chip, Yeasayer, Girl Talk, James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem (doing a DJ set) Sleigh Bells, Simian Mobile Disco, DJ Harvery, El-P, Black Lips, Grimes, and Cloud Nothings, among others.


Above: Townshend and Daltrey held a lengthy interview to announce the "Quadrophenia" tour.

* The Who to tour playing "Quadrophenia": Love live rock! The Who are getting back on the road after four years off to play "Quadrophenia" live in its entirety. Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey will play The Who's 1973 rock opera in more than 30 North American cities starting in November. Each show will conclude with some of the band's classic tunes. 

The NYC area will host five shows:  Brooklyn's Barclays Center (Nov. 14th), Madison Square Garden (Dec. 5th), Prudential Center (Dec. 6th), and Nassau Coliseum (Feb. 21st, 2013). There will be a presale July 20th; the public on-sale date is July 27th. (Link to The Who tickets.)

Related: There will be one-night-only screenings of a film on the making of the "Quadrophenia" album on July 24th. "The Who: Quadrophenia: Can You See the Real Me?" will be shown at theaters around the country, including AMC's Empire and Kips Bay in Manhattan and Edgewater and Secaucus in NJ. (See complete list of theaters here.)

* Bob Dylan announces more tour dates: Fresh off announcing his forthcoming album, "Tempest" (due Sept. 11th), Dylan has booked dates for some additional gigs in the Fall, with Mark Knofler. The only one in the NYC area is at the Barclays Center on Nov 21st; other dates not too far from the metro region are Bethel Center for the Arts (near the Woodstock site) on Sept. 2nd and the Mohegan Sun Arena in Connecticut on Sept. 8th. (See all Bob Dylan tour dates here.)

Live Music Notes: Watch Coachella Online, Springsteen Adds Tour Dates, More Baseball Project

Here's a roundup of recent concert and live music news, including great sets you can watch from your home and upcoming gigs you can see in the New York area:

* Sunday is the final today of Coachella's first weekend; you can watch three different channels live online at the Coachella YouTube channel. Over the last couple of nights you've been able to watch Radiohead, The Black Keys, Explosions in the Sky, and many more.



* As expected, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band have added Fall stadium dates to their Wrecking Ball tour. They'll play three dates at MetLife Stadium in the Meadowlands, Sept. 19, 21, and 22. Tickets for all dates go on sale at Ticketmaster.com on Friday, April 20th. (See all added Wrecking Ball tour dates here.)



* There are plenty of live shows in New York City tonight, but I'll be checking out part of the lineup at Rockwood Music Hall. At 6 p.m. on Stage 1 I'll be seeing up-and-coming Canadian singer-songwriter Darrelle London, who writes catchy tunes and has been getting some much-deserved attention for her song "Fine" (video above). At 7 the bluegrass band NY City Slickers plays over at Rockwood's Stage 2. And if I still have any energy later on, I'll check out Brooklyn-based singer Misty Boyce at 10 p.m. I think all these sets are free, too.

* Perhaps keeping the old Ernie Banks "Let's play two!" motto in mind, The Baseball Project played a second NYC-area gig on Thursday night at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, "An Evening of Baseball History and Music," just two nights after their concert at Maxwell's. (See a few photos below.) They played after a panel discussion on baseball featuring Sharon Robinson, the daughter of Jackie Robinson, and they played another great set. It's too bad they don't play more often, but it's been a treat to see them twice in one week.

The Baseball Project, all dressed up to play at the Met.

Coachella Announces 2012 Lineup; Expands to Two Weekends

Coachella fans, your wait is over: the lineup was announced last night for the festival's 2012 edition. For the first time ever, the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival will be held over two consecutive weekends, April 12th to the 15th and April 20th to the 22th. What's more, the lineups are exactly the same for each weekend (all bands playing on the first Friday are playing on the second Friday. etc.).

You'll see the full lineup in the poster below, and some of it in this post below the poster. (Since the poster photo here is small, see the Coachella site and click on the poster graphic at the lower left corner to see a larger version.) Check out the Coachella 2012 lineup in alphabetical order, with social media links for performers, on the festival's lineup page.

Coachella 2012 has a strong lineup each day.

Headliners for Coachella 2012 will be the Black Keys on Friday, Radiohead on Saturday, and Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg on Sunday. And the rest of the lineup is quite strong, too. Here's a brief look at some of the acts performing:

Friday: The Black Keys, Swedish House Mafia, Pulp, Refused, Arctic Monkeys, Mazzy Star, Afrojack, Explosions in the Sky, M83, Amon Tobin, Cat Power, Jimmy Cliff, Girls, and The Horrors.

Saturday: Radiohead, Bon Iver, the Shins, David Guetta, Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, Kaskade, Miike Snow, Jeff Mangum, Sebatian Ingrosso, Andrew Bird, Feist, Firehose, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, St. Vincent, SDTRKT, Kasabian, and Buzzcocks.

Sunday: Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg, At the Drive-In, Justice, Florence and the Machine, AVICII, La Roux, Beirut, The Weeknd, Girl Talk, the Hives, DJ Shadow, Wild Flag, and Calvin Harris.

And those are just the acts listed on the top three of the six or seven lines on the Coachella poster. Other highly popular performers include groups that have headlines arena shows or have had well-reviewed albums that showed up on many "best-of" lists in 2011.

This includes Texas psychedelic rockers the Black Angels, the quirky Tune-Yards, British pop-folk singer Laura Marling, and the all-female Mexican garage-rock group Le Butcherettes, whose album "Sin Sin Sin" was named best of the year by Jim DeRogatis of the "Sound Opinions" music podcast.

It's not unusual for defunct bands to herald their return at big festivals, such as Rage Against the Machine did at Coachella a few years back. This year the much-admired post-hardcore band At the Drive-In, which split up more than a decade ago, announced its return with a new Twitter account (@AtTheDriveIn_).

Coachella is held at the Empire Polo Grounds in Indio, California. Tickets go on sale Friday at 10 a.m. Pacific time.

Coachella Ends, But the Videos Live On

The Coachella Festival in California ended in the wee hours of Monday morning Eastern time, and I admit I was up quite late watching some of the closing sets. I caught PJ Harvey's entire set and part of Kanye West's, and even saw a song or two by Duran Duran (a group that seemed a very odd choice for Coachella).

Sadly, the festival is over for another year, but whether you caught any of the live webcasts or not you can watch the four dozen or so videos that are on the Coachella YouTube site (above, Broken Social Scene ending its set with "Meet Me in the Basement"). Among the other videos you can watch are more from BSS as well as tunes by Mumford and Sons, Two-Door Cinema Club, Chromeo (below), Health, and Jack's Mannequin (and yes, even Duran Duran if you like).

Music Notes: Spotify Signs with Sony; New R.E.M. Single Released; Lineups Out for Coachella, Bonnaroo, SXSW, & Jazz Fest

* R.E.M. on Tuesday released "Mine Smell Like Honey" (video with lyrics above), the first single from its forthcoming album "Collapse Into Now" (which drops March 8th). You can also preorder a deluxe version of the new R.E.M. album here, which includes a video and three bonus tracks (live-in-studio versions of “Discoverer,” “Oh My Heart,” and “Alligator Aviator Autopilot Antimatter").

* The music subscription service Spotify has signed a deal with Sony for U.S. distribution, All Things D writes. Spotify, which is now operating in Europe, will have similar terms stateside that it has across the pond: "A certain number of hours per month of free streaming music, with the ability to pay for an ad-free version, or a more popular one that lets users listen on mobile devices like Apple’s iPhone."

* The Spring festival season is warming up, and a number of big events have recently announced who'll be playing. See the SXSW Music lineup (March 16th - 20th), Coachella lineup (April 15th -17th), Bonnaroo lineup (June 9th -12th: not officially released, but here's a photo of the poster), and Jazz Fest (New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival (April 29th - May 8th)

And, what would the week be without some dismal news from the record business:
* Digital music sales are slowing, the industry's trade group says. Revenues were up 6% for 2010 according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, but in 2009 they were up 12% from the year before, and up 25% in 2008.

* Warner Music is keeping busy. The firm, one of the big four music companies, is looking to buy Britain's EMI, but has also hired Goldman Sachs to seek out potential suitors to buy it.

Coachella 2009 is Here: Previews, Streaming Video, and More

The Coachella festival is underway in Southern California, and Santa Monica's excellent radio station KCRW is all over it. The festival seems to be set to have another successful year, despite the economic downturn that has led other festivals to scale back or cancel this year.

The station's Web site features videos of performances that artists at this year's Coachella festival have made at KCRW's studios... including Franz Ferdinand, The Black Keys, M.I.A., the Thievery Corporation, Paul McCartney, Band of Horses, and many more.

KCRW also plans on having exclusive performances from Coachella at ita Web site ... check there for updates throughout the weekend.

AT&T Music is also showing live performances from Coachella throughout the weekend, which you can view online for free. Right now (11 p.m. Eastern time, Friday night) I'm watching the set from The Hold Steady. Later to come tonight are Conor Oberst, Morrissey, and Paul McCartney; check the AT&T Music Coachella page for the schedule for the entire weekend.

Ann Powers of the L.A. Times gives a guide to her must-see acts of Coachella 2009.