Live from the last day of Coachella - X & others rock, the plug is pulled on The Cure

April 20, 6:17 AMPop Culture ExaminerDominic Patten

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It took a while to get to the last day of this year's Coachella Festival, but just a few notes from the voice of Antony made it all worth it. Dressed in a baggy cream shirt & black pants, the leader of Antony & the Johnsons proved once again to be what I hope Heaven sounds like. His show on the Outdoor Stage, where more and more I think the truly best bands were this year, was a swirl of the romantic, the exotic and the amazing. 

That standard continued with the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs. Karen O, whose multi-leafed golden frock reminded everyone why she is the most captivating fashion forward person in music right now, held the Main stage masses in her hands & never let go through a string of Alt-rock classics and classics to be. As with TV On The Radio on Saturday, the NYC band showed the sunset slot is where the bands that will define this year's Coachella showed their stuff. Plus, there can be no doubt that the equally effortlessly cool Nick Zinner has become one of the great guitar heroes of our time and that in Brian Chase he is anchored by one of the best drummers around. If you weren't at Coachella this year, see if you can find a clip of the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs doing "Gold Lion" from Coachella 2009 and you'll understand.

Click here for a round up of Day Two of Coachella as the Killers fizzled and Atmosphere gave a truly unique show. You'll also find a link to a round up of Day One of Coachella and Paul McCartney's hit headlining & our Coachella slideshow, plus pre-festival Top Picks

Over at the Mojave tent, X, that little punk rock band from LA, were in the same league as the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs. Playing to enthusiastic fans of all ages and stripes, X showed they and their tunes, like "Johnny Hit and Run Pauline," have lost not an ounce of the energy or poetry they possessed over 25 years ago. With his Outdoor Stage set of old Jam tunes and solo material, the same could pretty much be said of Paul Weller.

My Bloody Valentine weren't anywhere near as punishingly loud as I remember them being back in the early 1990s, but they were certainly as good. Their set on the Main Stage seemed to start off almost tame and then it began to build and build over an hour into a 20 minute hypnotic frenzy that redefined what guitars should do. MBV then lapsed back into conventional song structure - conventional for MBV that is - before going right back into the madness.

By the time the Cure came out to finish off the night, despite rumors floating around that the Beastie Boys were going to make a surprise appearance to cap Coachella's 10th anniversary, the main field looked almost full of fans. Robert Smith, still significantly supporting the hair spray industry with his crazy puffed out hair, and crew put on an exhaustive show that bordered on the psychedelic. The girls all danced and the men they were there with tried to not let it show that they were remembering the bad depressive Cure inspired verse they used to write to pick up girls. Sadly for the Cure, slabs of the audience lacked the endurance the band had and started streaming out. The festival organizers lacked some of that enthusiasm too. The plug was pulled on the band at 12:30, leaving the Cure to end the last few songs of their set with only their onstage monitors as amplification. In true Coachella sprit, despite the Coachella organizers themselves, the band played on. They only finally left the stage, to wild applause from the loyal remaining few, when the stage lights were turned off and the field lights were turned on.

Before this year's Coachella, Jason Bentley, the Music Director of Santa Monica's internationally acclaimed public radio broadcaster KCRW and the host of the station's Morning Becomes Eclectic, told me that he felt that "when Coachella began, there just wasn't anything like it." Bentley, who spent part of his weekend at Coachella DJing at various offsite locations such as the Indioasis Party near the concert grounds, sees Coachella as a work in progress in the best sense. The organizers "have made the quality of the experience the priority,' he notes. "Now 10 years on, they have really got it down from every angle."

In more ways than one, Bentley is right. Which is why, despite The Cure being cut off for going past their set time, the whole weekend was a very fitting manner to celebrate Coachella's 10th birthday. The kind of party, from Paul McCartney and everyone else of all tastes, you wanna attend every year where the gifts are give to the guests -and who doesn't like that?

So, see ya in the desert in 2010.