Hipsters, Hippies, Heat, Oh My! – Ink Tank spends three days in the desert

The music, the fashion. The hippies, the hipsters. The sun, the parking lot. All these words seem to equate to one thing: Coachella.

It’s hard to believe that it’s already been more than a week since one of the best music festivals (arguably) in the world has come and went. Now that our muscles are back to normal, the sun burn has faded and our hearing has returned, we can look back fondly and remember our three days in the desert. Despite losing our car for an hour and the horrendous parking situations, this year’s fest ended up being one of the best yet.

As the sun set over the polo field Friday evening, we strolled in as Tegan and Sara took to the main stage. With margarita in hand and the air getting cooler by the minute, their infectious indie pop went down as smooth as the tequila in our cups and it was official: spring break had begun. Over the course of the night, we raged to Diplo and Santogold, took a nostalgia trip with the Verve, who sounded better than ever, and visited wonderland with Fatboy Slim.

We saw far more music that we can possibly write about and frankly there are people that get paid to do that so we’ll leave that to them. However, we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention our highlights (in no particular order).

Hot Chip. One word… Wow. They took it to a WHOLE new level of Hot Chip-ness. At that moment, we did not care that we were being trampled by 15k other people, nor did we care that the sun was literally setting ON US making us feel like a piece of chicken on a skewer….

Prince – Arguably one of the biggest acts to ever grace the Coachella stage, Prince proved he is one of the greatest entertainers alive today. The sassy showman welcomed us into “Prince’s house” for the night as he performed hits like “Little Red Corvette,” “Cream,” “7” and dozens more with the help of Sheila E, Chaka Khan and Morris Day. His slowed down cover of “Creep” is sure to go down in Coachella history.

Justice – The French duo absolutely destroyed us over an hour-long set, which was easily one of the most fun performances of the weekend. It’s amazing that at the 11th hour, the festival was as strong as ever. (Photo courtesy of SweatPantsMoney)

Kraftwerk – As the sky turned dark Saturday night, the four men of Kraftwerk positioned themselves behind their laptops, appearing oddly enough like an Apple commercial, and went through an impressive set that spanned their revolutionary career. Their robotic beats and vocoder vocals were juxtaposed by rudimentary images of countrysides, bicycle races and autoways and robots took their place for the finale. This was the real robot rock.

Honorable mentions: Portishead, MGMT, Simian Mobile Disco, Roger Waters.

We made the Metromix page! Check out more photos from our friends here:

Some of our favorite moments of Chella ella ella ’08…

Juliana and Jenius Entertainment’s Jen Ross get ready to loose it to Hot Chip

Los Angeles Times’ Bronson currently offering lots of dough (ok, drinks) for anyone who can NAME THAT SHIRT.

UMMM, REALLY?

The Gray Kid chilling and relaxing…chillaxing.

Mr. Roboto himself: Steve Brodsky