Crummy Coachella '08

After months of speculation, rumors and patient waiting, the Coachella Festival 2008 lineup was released yesterday to... shrugs? Is this the best Coachella can do? Where are the big bands, the "headliners", the draws that are supposed to attract thousands of people to make a pilgrimage to the desert to witness something important?
Now I'm not a Pink Floyd fan at all so Roger Waters (performing Dark Side of the Moon!) doesn't excite me. And if I was Kanye I might mutter that "I hate Jack Johnson more than a Nazi". Compared with past headliners (Radiohead, Pixies, Beck, Bjork) these won't do. What happened to My Bloody Valentine? I've been so excited with all the reunion rumors and the possibility of them playing "Loveless" in its' entirety. Or couldn't they get David Bowie or Prince or Belle & Sebastian or some other legend to headline instead of Mr. "Bubbly Toes"?
I am really excited for the Portishead reunion, although their performance had been confirmed for weeks and wasn't much of a surprise. And there are a ton of great smaller, independent bands that are playing this year. The only problem is that most of them have already played Coachella, some even last year, and I've already seen a lot of them. The bands I've already seen are: Tegan and Sara, The National, Animal Collective, Battles, Diplo, Cut Copy, Death Cab for Cutie, Rilo Kiley, M.I.A., Hot Chip, My Morning Jacket, Gogol Bordello, and Autolux. There are still a lot of bands I'd love to see there but most of them are on Sunday, which is almost impossible to pull off.
Another problem is that Coachella is opening up a "Coachella East" festival that is going to be in New York in August, and I think they are saving a lot of the big draws for that new, unproven festival this year, which is hosing the faithful that make it out to Indio every year. Radiohead are already confirmed to be performing at "Coachella East", we'll see how many other bands are drawn to the "other" Coachella this year.