So the beat goes on...or should that be heat?

On the weekend we headed due south, driving 400 miles to Los Angeles. We had to drive through a large swathe of central California with is flat, dull and very very hot. Like East Anglia except hotter. And no inbreeds around. It was 100 degrees outside the car and felt like a Turk's jockstrap inside, even with the Air Con up to the max.

Aftera six hour drive we hit LA late afternoon, driving through the Hollywood rush hour to meet with a friend. Discard any notions of Hollywood being a glam place - for the most part it's rundown, seedy and the sort of locale where you keep the windows wound up and don't stop for anybody. All the major film studios have upped sticks and relocated to Burbank (Universal Pictures excepted). And it hits home how car-dependent LA is - there's almost zilch public transport. You're a nobody without a car.

After a quick refill at a Cuban diner it's on for the two and a half hour schlep east into the desert, out past Palm Springs to a town called Indio where this big music festival, Coachella, is being held. We reach the hotel around midnight and we still sweat buckets in the heat. We later find out that over the weekend this is the hottest place in America - 106 in the shade, 120 in the sun. Harsh.

The festival is a two-day affair, a curious mix of dunderhead rock types (Rage Against The Machine, The Orgy, Morrissey) and cooler dance grooves (Chemical Brothers, Underworld, lots of bald, faceless DJs). It's held on this massive polo field (!), ringed by palm trees and with a glorious mountain backdrop. Fairly breathtaking. There are loads of tents and a couple of outdoor stages (even at night you can walk around in your Hawaain shirt and shorts - hardly Glasters) plus grafitti spots, skateboard parks, bongo hoedowns and all manner of cosmic space cadets. Meanwhile I'm running around trying to photograph it all.

Musical highlights? Defintely seeing DJs Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson and Derrick May all on the same stage together (for those of you who've been neglecting your History Of Dance Music classes, these three dudes invented Techno) - a pretty special moment for me. An abstract electronisist called Mu-ziq who makes the Aphex Twin sound like Doris Day and banged out 200bpm gabba techno to a delirious response. New York electronic music auteur Moby who ended his set with a song entitled "Thousand" which is in the Guinness Book Of Records as the fastest song in the world - it starts with a funereal beat before building to a 1000bpm crescendo and him stood on his keyboard bathed in pure blue light looking like the messiah. Cosmic spacerock revivalists Spiritualized were the one decent guitar band and LTJ Bukem rinsed it out for the jungle massive. One of the dunderhead rock bands was called Tool. What a daft name. Why not call yourself Div or Idiot and be done with it? They sounded horrible too.

So 48 hours later it was another 400 mile trek back to SF where I'm now putting the finishing touches to my new coffin-sized bedroom. Moving in very shortly. And to top a great weekend, Dan Marino, veteran quaterback of the Miami Dolphins, sparked an amazing last-minute comeback win over the Idianapolis Colts. And Sweden beat Poland which saved England's necks. Hurrah!

Peace,

Kieran

Work like you don't need the money.
Dance like nobody's watching.
Live life like there's no tomorrow.
Love like you've never been hurt.