Fifth annual Coachella diary

Every year, the A&E staff braves the heat and crowds of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival to bring you back a full report. Here’s our diary from Friday’s performances; Tuesday, we’ll bring you the rundown from Saturday and Sunday.

Comedians of Comedy

The first to go at Coachella are the ironic T-shirts, and occasionally the sweaty hipsters wearing them. Opening for Comedians of Comedy (and the Coachella festival), stand-up comic Patton Oswalt makes it his first priority to seat the standing “sea of hipsters” with the “power of communal love.” Singling out all of the Fab Moretti imitators by their faded Journey T-shirts, Oswalt initiates the first “intentional comedy show at Coachella.” Featuring nearly 10 comedians, the stand-out stand-ups include Howard Kremer, comically misogynistic rapper, and Maria Bamford, voice impersonator extraordinaire.

““ Natalie Edwards

Of Montreal

Outlined in front of the clear turquoise sky, Kevin Barnes ““ lead singer of Athens, Ga.’s Of Montreal ““ is something of a divine being. Dressed in matching sky-blue shorts and eyeshadow, Barnes gives the impression that he was sent from the sky to make people dance. An epic performance of “Gronlandic Edit” from the group’s most recent album, “Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?” features Barnes draped in silver on top of a ladder. Pulling off the present tour’s most novel installment in the desert degrees is all the proof the average person needs of this claim. However, for those unconvinced, the band’s final performance ““ “The Party’s Crashing Us” ““ causes the girl behind me to face Mecca, bend her knees to the ground, throw her hands up into the air, weep, and look up with a passionate ““ albeit drug-induced ““ conviction of Of Montreal’s “soul power.”

““ Mindy Poder

Amy Winehouse

With her telltale red Dixie cup in hand, Amy Winehouse takes the stage in front of a crowd that far exceeds the confines of the Gobi Tent, the smallest tent at Coachella. Winehouse tries to entertain the crowd with anecdotes and stories about where the songs came from; unfortunately, her thick British accent and her intoxicated manner make her words impossible to decipher. But what she can’t enumerate in words, she explains perfectly through song. Winehouse’s deep, soulful vocals captivate the crowd, who appreciatively sway to the beat. She woos the crowd with songs such as “Me & Mr. Jones” and “You Know I’m No Good.” It’s easy to forget the heat as the audience watches Winehouse drunkenly sway to her own music, backed by the cool jazz tones of her band. By the time she ends her set with her infamous single “Rehab,” the crowd has fallen in love with the black-haired beauty.

““ Michelle Castillo

Gogol Bordello

The members of Gogol Bordello are everywhere on stage: jumping, climbing, and playacting in some strange, updated Russian folk dance. The beret-clad violinist looks like a Clash-inspired Bolshevik after a bottle of vodka on the Russian New Year. The abandon of their live set is contagious. Bordello, which could alternatively make a successful career of marketing either vodka or bolshevism, is the reason Coachella is worth it for me: walking into a band you’ve never seen or heard and walking away astounded.

““ Natalie Edwards

Digitalism

Digitalism blows the crowd away with its high-energy electronic music ““ literally, as the songs are blasting out of the speakers, causing the ground to vibrate with sound and making concertgoers jump. Yet it isn’t just the motion of the floor that gets the crowd going. Digitalism spins the audience into a high-octane frenzy. Songs blend into each other in the nonstop motion set, calling for nonstop dancing. Apparently, there is no wrong way to groove as people go about converting the Sahara Tent into a dance club. The duo’s show not only aesthetically pleases the ears, but the eyes as well. A pulsating light show accompanies the music, mirroring the jerky dance movements of the audience.

““ Michelle Castillo

Arctic Monkeys

Shaggy hair, a button-down white-striped polo, around 20 years old. With his charming British accent and sleazy gold chain, however, Alex Turner differentiates himself from the average male Coachella-goer. Oh, and there is also the fact that he’s playing to a packed crowd still under the spell of Arctic Monkeys’ NME buzz. This is most apparent when the band plays songs from last year’s successful debut, “Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not.” Though Stephen Marley attempts to lure fans away with his loud, bouncing bass, Turner and Co.’s live renditions of “I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor,” “Fake Tales of San Francisco” and songs from this year’s “Favourite Worst Nightmare” keep fellow polo-wearers convinced that the Arctic Monkeys are, despite the Coachella heat, “a supercool band, yeah.”

““ Mindy Poder

Peaches

“She’s kind of like a modern-day Frank Zappa,” muttered a surprisingly suburban older woman to her equally out-of-place male counterpart. Like Zappa, Peaches is shocking and ideologically driven. Though she does tap into political criticism with her opener “Impeach My Bush,” her set exudes sexuality. Known as an electroclash icon, Peaches’ performance ““ as echoed by her half-naked performance of “Rock Show” ““ was centered around Peaches as an ’80s shock-rock star. Backup dancers idolized her via push-ups, but Peaches’ most outrageous moment involved her climbing and subsequently gyrating the stage’s sky-high rafters while chanting “Huh, what, show me what you got / Rub it against my thigh!”

““ Mindy Poder

The Jesus & Mary Chain

The set of The Jesus & Mary Chain, recently reunited after an eight-year hiatus, reaffirms both their place in rock music history and the reason for their original disbanding. The beginning and concluding songs underscore their status in the development of heroin rock, midway between The Velvet Underground and bands such as The Warlocks and Outrageous Cherry. Depressed melodies occasionally engage, enveloping the audience in a layer of mesmerizing drones; but the middle portion of the set drags with uninspired repetition. The JAMC may be a seminal band, but their song choices supplied the gaping reason why they haven’t maintained momentum since their inception in the mid-’80s.

““ Natalie Edwards

Bjork

Backed by a full orchestra and a whole lot of flags flapping in the desert wind, the Icelandic songstress takes the stage ready to give an eager crowd its first taste of her new album, “Volta.” And Bjork, seemingly dressed like some sort of Russian nesting doll before ditching her hat, doesn’t disappoint. Opening with her newest single, “Earth Intruders,” she tears into a set filled with old favorites, including “Joga,” “All is Full of Love,” showstopper “Pagan Poetry” and “Hyperballad.” Aside from the horns of the orchestra and the heavy electronic synths, the craziest part of Bjork’s set is the bizarre console that one of her band members appears to be using. This contraption can only be described as a turquoise table on which members of Bjork’s band place what appear to be ancient runes which somehow control the music. It’s about as esoteric as it sounds, but by the time Miss Guðmundsdóttir rips into the synth assault that is “Army of Me,” all I can think about is listening to every Bjork album all over again once I get home ““ and imagining that they’re being performed with this totally freaky, futuristic turntable.

““ Mark Humphrey