the soundtrack of our lives

was played live for us last weekend at the Desert Trip 2016 festival in Coachella CA- and this is what it sounded like-

Dylan:

1. Rainy Day Women #12 & 35
2. Don't Think Twice, It's All Right
3. Highway 61 Revisited
4. It's All Over Now, Baby Blue
5. High Water (For Charley Patton)
6. Simple Twist of Fate
7. Early Roman Kings
8. Love Sick
9. Tangled Up in Blue (alternate lyrics)
10. Lonesome Day Blues
11. Make You Feel My Love
12. Pay in Blood
13. Desolation Row
14. Soon After Midnight
15. Ballad of a Thin Man
16. Encore: Masters of War

The Stones:

1. Start Me Up 
2. You Got Me Rocking 
3. Out of Control 
4. Ride 'Em on Down (Jimmy Reed cover) (first since 12 July 1962)
5. Mixed Emotions (first before a public audience since 25 Aug. 1990)
6. Wild Horses 
7. It's Only Rock 'n' Roll (But I Like It) 
8. Come Together (The Beatles cover) (live debut by The Rolling Stones) 
9. Tumbling Dice 
10. Honky Tonk Women (followed by band introductions) 
11. Slipping Away (Keith Richards on lead vocals) 
12. Little T&A (Keith Richards on lead vocals; first since 28 July 2007)
13. Midnight Rambler
14. Miss You
15. Gimme Shelter
16. Sympathy for the Devil
17. Brown Sugar
18. Jumpin' Jack Flash
19. Encores: You Can't Always Get What You Want
20. (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction

Neil Young:

1. After the Gold Rush 
2. Heart of Gold 
3. Comes a Time
4. Mother Earth (Natural Anthem)
5. Out on the Weekend 
6. Human Highway
7. Neighborhood
8. Show Me
9. Harvest Moon
10. Words (Between the Lines of Age)
11. Walk On
12. Texas Rangers
13. Powderfinger
14. Down by the River
15. Seed Justice
16. Peace Trail
17. Welfare Mothers
18. Rockin' in the Free World

Paul McCartney:

1. A Hard Day's Night (The Beatles song)
2. Jet (Wings song)
3. Can't Buy Me Love (The Beatles song)
4. Letting Go (Wings song)
5. Day Tripper (The Beatles song)
6. Let Me Roll It (Wings song) (followed by instrumental snippet of "Foxy Lady" by The Jimi Hendrix Experience  )
7. I've Got a Feeling (The Beatles song)
8. My Valentine
9. Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five (Wings song)
10. Maybe I'm Amazed
11. We Can Work It Out (The Beatles song)
12. In Spite of All the Danger (The Quarrymen song)
13. I've Just Seen a Face (The Beatles song)
14. Love Me Do (The Beatles song)
15. And I Love Her (The Beatles song)
16. Blackbird (The Beatles song)
17. Here Today
18. Queenie Eye
19. Lady Madonna (The Beatles song)
20. FourFiveSeconds (Rihanna and Kanye West and Paul McCartney cover)
21. Eleanor Rigby (The Beatles song)
22. Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite! (The Beatles song)
23. A Day in the Life (The Beatles song) (with Neil Young)
24. Give Peace a Chance (Plastic Ono Band cover) (with Neil Young)
25. Why Don't We Do It in the Road? (The Beatles song) (with Neil Young) (Live Debut)
26. Something (The Beatles song)
27. Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da (The Beatles song)
28. Band on the Run (Wings song)
29. Back in the U.S.S.R. (The Beatles song)
30. Let It Be (The Beatles song)
31. Live and Let Die (Wings song)
32. Hey Jude (The Beatles song)
33. Encore: I Wanna Be Your Man (The Beatles song) (First time since 1993)
34. Helter Skelter (The Beatles song)
35. Golden Slumbers (The Beatles song)
36. Carry That Weight (The Beatles song)
37. The End (The Beatles song)

The Who:

1. I Can't Explain
2. The Seeker
3. Who Are You
4. The Kids Are Alright
5. I Can See for Miles
6. My Generation (with 'Cry If You Want' snippet)
7. Behind Blue Eyes
8. Bargain
9. Join Together
10. You Better You Bet
11. 5:15
12. I'm One
13. The Rock
14. Love, Reign O'er Me
15. Eminence Front
16. Amazing Journey
17. Sparks
18. The Acid Queen
19. Pinball Wizard
20. See Me, Feel Me
21. Baba O'Riley
22. Won't Get Fooled Again

Roger Waters:

1. Speak to Me (Pink Floyd song)
2. Breathe (Pink Floyd song)
3. Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun (Pink Floyd song)
4. One of These Days (Pink Floyd song)
5. Time (Pink Floyd song)
6. Breathe (Reprise) (Pink Floyd song)
7. The Great Gig in the Sky (Pink Floyd song)
8. Money (Pink Floyd song)
9. Us and Them (Pink Floyd song)
10. Fearless (Pink Floyd song)
11. You'll Never Walk Alone (Gerry & The Pacemakers song)
12. Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts I-V) (Pink Floyd song)
13. Welcome to the Machine (Pink Floyd song)
14. Have a Cigar (Pink Floyd song)
15. Wish You Were Here (Pink Floyd song)
16. Intermission on tape (Sirens intro; Battersea Power Station chimneys rise up on stage )
17. Pigs on the Wing 1 (Pink Floyd song)
18. Pigs on the Wing 2 (Pink Floyd song)
19. Dogs (Pink Floyd song)
20. Pigs (Three Different Ones) (Pink Floyd song)
21. The Happiest Days of Our Lives (Pink Floyd song)
22. Another Brick in the Wall Part 2 (Pink Floyd song)
23. Mother (Pink Floyd song)
24. Run Like Hell (Pink Floyd song)
25. Brain Damage (Pink Floyd song)
26. Eclipse (Pink Floyd song)
27. Why Cannot the Good Prevail (a poem by Roger Waters)
28. Vera (Pink Floyd song) (Acoustic version)
29. Bring the Boys Back Home (Pink Floyd song) (Acoustic version)
30. Comfortably Numb (Pink Floyd song)

so there it is for posterity in case we ever forget a single moment LOL- like we haven't already LOL- tomorrow a play and a film... from the Chicago International Film Festival... more to come - as always...

two plays

So last night and tonight we spent our evenings at the theater- and we saw one excellent play and one play that was pretty much unintelligible to us.

First - last night we saw the excellent production of City of Conversation at Northlight Theater.

 from the playwright

every performance was excellent but those by Greg Matthew Anderson and Lia D. Mortensen were outstanding! (and in a strange circle - the first time we ever saw Greg and Lia they were playing in Night and Day opposite each other - with Lia as the wife of the David Darlow character and Greg as the journalist who she becomes involved with during a south African political coup. I will be that was nearly ten years ago! yet the performances were memorable enough that it stuck with me.)

Snappy and on-point for today's political world, the duologue was the highlight of this play.  This is a perfect example of why we love theater. thought provoking, shaded in greys not black and white rhetoric, that creates an evening of intense entertainment.

from the Tribune review by Chris Jones:

"The City of Conversation," the truly superb, deeply involving 2014 play by Anthony Giardina about the death of inside-the-beltway conviviality, is set in the comfortable home of a Washington hostess and Democratic political fixer — she's called Hester Ferris here and played at the Northlight Theatre by Lia Mortensen. It's 1979, the beginning of the end, you might say. The first crack in the formidable Hester's armor appears when her son Colin (Greg Matthew Anderson) arrives home from the London School of Economics with a new fiancee, Anna Fitzgerald (Mattie Hawkinson), whom his mother immediately recognizes as a dangerously ambitious climber. She's also a conservative. Colin — a malleable child of privilege who lacks his mother's drive and ideological determination — is entranced by Anna's beauty and brains. Sides are taken.

When the fight over Robert Bork's nomination to the Supreme Court erupts and further trashes civility — all politics now being personal — Anna pulls out the most powerful weapon, access to Hester's young grandchild. Whom Hester loves. Is it worth folding your political tent for the love of a child?

The question makes you shiver, does it not?

So. There you have a very juicy, well-made play that is no font of formative experimentation but is nonetheless a rarity in American theater — a sharp commentary on Washington politics and personal behavior, then and now. Giardina clearly sympathizes most of all with Hester, who has to fend off this Minnesota Eve Harrington, but it's not an adoring portrait nor a characterization oblivious to the flaws and inequalities of the old system. To its credit, this sharply written drama allows for the notion that all politics should be personal, especially since those legislative matters often make their way into the bedroom or the doctor's office. And it also acknowledges the argument that the old ways of drinks and persuasion were anti-democratic.

The director obviously figured out that Anna could not be a harpy, and she found Hawkinson, who comes armed with a performance that's at once appealing, warm and totally terrifying, because of the way (she) captures, without resorting to stereotype, those who just are so certain of that in which they believe that they genuinely don't understand shading and nuance.

Mortensen's performance still had a way to travel at the final preview, but the building blocks were there. And as the third member of this love triangle pulled until his head explodes, Anderson's work is also very clever in the way it reveals the truths of his man only over time. There's also a rich cameo from the formidable Natalie West as Jean, Hester's sister, and a gentler character who is there to remind us that power is fleeting, aging follows youth and that we might all do better to be guided by deeper values.

This is a play worth seeking out- highly recommended as the perfect perspective on the political process - especially as we near November 8th with it's pitched frenzy of vitriol and venom....

The second play was Tom Stoppard's adaptation of Pirandello's Henry IV.... an examination of reality and madness in the form of ???? a comedy - a tragedy? a??? why all the question marks....because I just don't know.

so here is my review-

I have no idea what this was - was the guy a madman? was he "cured" and if so. when exactly did that take place and he become a sane man playing mad? less than a week ago I was thinking the same things at the Roger Waters concert at #deserttrip2016 LOL... This play was an interesting intellectual exercise perhaps but in the immediacy of our situation in America today I wonder if we really need this level of mental masturbation... Admittedly a distraction from the madness we witness on TV every day these days might be a welcome respite but given the madman dominating the media right now I am not sure I needed a night of yet another version of tyrant crazy or cured reigning his manipulation on those around him.... perhaps in the end it hit a bit too close to home...


from a Variety review when the Stoppard play premiered-

Truth to tell, there are diminishing returns to be found in the Chinese box-like structure of a narrative about a modern-day Italian who is presumed mad only to reveal that his insanity was itself a ruse.

Though severely concussed several decades before in a riding accident, McDiarmid’s nobleman has in fact long been perfectly well. What, then, can explain the persistence with which he clung to the eleventh-century German emperor (and Papal adversary), Henry, who, play’s title notwithstanding, has nothing to do with the Shakespeare monarch? Easy: this “Henry” took solace in living as “a madman of sound mind,” his entire life a deliberate masquerade.

The play turns on Henry trumping those who have come to cure him, starting with his once-beloved, eternally chic Matilda, her teenage daughter, and a psychiatrist who bears the brunt of the ringmaster’s venom. But for all those who join the gathering, which includes a young quartet of “privy counselors” cursed with such Hobbit-like names as Ordulf and Landolf, “Henry IV” is by definition Henry’s play this time around, just as it was in its last, far more conventional London outing, starring the late Richard Harris, in 1989.  A short evening may be nearly one-third over before the title character arrives, but from McDiarmid’s first abject appearance, shuffling on barefoot, the rest of the cast barely stands a chance.

So inherently theatrical is this star in a role that has always attracted stars — before Harris, Rex Harrison was considered a notable Henry in 1974 — that McDiarmid lessens the pathos that ought to accompany Henry’s revelations, once the mask of performance falls away to deliver the shrewd yet sorry man beneath. Although Henry upgrades his clothing from the sackcloth in which he first appears to the floor-length velvet number that opens act two, McDiarmid doesn’t entirely forsake a tricksiness that may, in the end, be that bit too much for such a tricky play.

So on we go- with the Film Festival starting this weekend and another play on Sunday at Theater Wit... you won't have to wait long to erase that craziness from your mind... Go to see the City of Conversation and marvel at what you can do with a straightforward story line and character development...

I will get back to you as we progress, son Jeremy is in for the weekend and next week I am off to open the Florida house for the winter... there and back in forty eight hours... and then we are in the northern count down - with many nights out and company from Denver and NC along the way.... stay tuned.

truffle season!

White truffles have arrived and we had the truffle menu at Osteria Langhe tonight- the four course menu was as follows - all with the white truffles -

a country egg- a pasta course with butter - a steak and pureed potatoes and panna cotta with truffled honey....

we also had a course of plin to share before the menu and the pulipo...as well...

we had a variety of excellent wines-

 the plin

somehow I missed the pulipo - I went to the ladies room and when I came back the plin were waxed off (Phil had saved me some) and the pulipo was being eyed ravenously by the table mates- who told me I had to divide it- LOL so I went right in for it - forgetting the picture...

a wine compliments of the house for the truffled panna cotta dish-

before we left home we sampled two wines -

the tasty freeze across the street usually looks quite appealing but I think tonight the truffle menu made it something to joke about but not consider seriously although I am a huge fan generally of soft serve ice cream and custard...

so tomorrow a night at the theater and then the following night a night at a different theater and then we get ready for a visit from Jeremy and my trip to Florida to open up the condo... time is flying by- soon Lucy and I will be on the road south... but stay tuned because we hit all the faves before we leave town- goosefoot, 42 grams,  oriole and more!

we go to the desert! a post from long ago that lost it's original date October 2016

Legends of rock and roll came together for a three day music festival in Indio California last weekend in the Coachella Valley's most famous venue - the Empire Polo Club (home to the Coachella Festival.)  And somewhere north of 75,000 fans came to worship at the feet of the icons of an era.

We expected old folks (the festival - in reality called Desert Trip- was known online as "Oldchella" LOL) but the attendees were from 0-80+ with an average age well younger than we are.  There were infants in chest carriers and people who clearly were the parents and grandparents of some of the lucky folks who scored tickets to the event.... in our row alone we had three generations - a kid about ten, his parents and his grandparents and an uncle.... next to them were a youngish couple with two children of roughly the same age- maybe 8-10 years old.  The woman in front of us had her four best girlfriends there to celebrate her 50th birthday and the two women next to us were a mother an daughter.

On the shuttle bus of the logistically well run event, we met four Brazilians, two Brits, four Aussies and a variety of north American folks.  Over the weekend we met people from as far away as South Africa and as close as Indio the town which hosts the festival.

We had heard about the festival about a week before tickets went on sale and said to each other - we should try to go - the billed performers are all "getting up there" (the youngest one was the only one in his 60s at 69 years of age- the rest were in their seventies) and who knew how long they would be around.... so on the appointed day and hour I went online and somehow scored two seats in the front reserved section not too far from the center stage in Section 105! This was a complete coup that I still can't really explain other than I have experience from years of Forks-n- Corks ticket buying on hitting the refresh button.... LOL

So we have nothing but praise about the way the logistics were handled - shuttle buses pick up from many locations throughout the Coachella Valley and bring many attendees to the site with no risk of impaired driving and make it convenient to leave the car behind as the shuttle drop off is the closest place vehicles can drop off - camping locations were closest to the entrances but we had no interest in camping (from the looks of it many thought this a perfect way to solve the problem of hotel room shortages)

People rented houses (high end and less fancy), they did air bnb, hotel rooms, condos, tee pees (yes tee pees) and pretty much every option one could imagine for their overnight stays.  Food ran the gamut as well with state fair like stands scattered around the venue and two higher end dining options for those wanting a bit more food and bit less crowd.  I am sure there are details on all the choices online someplace but I will stick to our experience.  Even before we actually got tickets to the festival I began a hotel search.  We ultimately ended up renting a condo in a Marriott Vacation Club in Palm Desert about a half hour from the festival and served by the shuttle.

But we spent almost no non-sleeping time there - because the events started at 2 PM and ran until roughly 1 AM- so outside of the festival we basically slept and had an early lunch each day.  We chose the  dining option called "Outstanding in the Field" which is apparently known around the country for their al fresco events (we had never heard of them) and were happy with the sit down meal we had with them each day.  Ten teams of well known chefs prepared menus for their allotted number of patrons which I would estimate to be somewhere between 80 and 100 people for the family style dining at tables seating eight.  Each day new menus were provided so we were not disappointed in our choice of this dining option for all three days.

here is what the dining venue looked like for us-

on day one we arrived at around 2:30 and picked up our Shuttle passes at will call and picked up our locker key with our prepaid receipt - stashed our jackets and extra gear in the locker and went to find the OITF (Outstanding in the Field) venue -

 this map shows where the parking was located versus the shuttle service lot- it is hard to get an idea of the distances but the walk was a good twenty minutes from the closest corner of the lot to the entrance by the ferris wheel-

inside the venue - again the scale is difficult to comprehend from these diagrams - the place is HUGE

here is a picture I took off the FB feed for #deserttrip2016 - an aerial view of the venue packed during the evening concerts -

here is a blurb from Rolling Stone on the event-

Last weekend's Desert Trip is on its way to becoming the highest-grossing concert event ever, having moved advance tickets worth more than $150 million. Those who attended the festivities in Indio, California, certainly got their money's worth, taking in performances by six legendary acts while enjoying unforgettable collaborations – such as Neil Young sitting in with Paul McCartney – and once-in-a-lifetime set lists. See exclusive photos from the classic-rock summit, featuring McCartney, Young, the Rolling Stones, Roger Waters and the Who, as well as shots of fans, food and other aspects of the fest's unique desert ambience.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/pictures/desert-trip-see-photos-of-historic-classic-rock-summit-w444254

We were seated in Section 105 in the fourth row from the back

From the NYT-

INDIO, Calif. — The past loomed, long and weighty, over Desert Trip, a three-night festival here with a lineup of baby boomers’ rock heroes. It was simply two sets a night: the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan on Friday, Paul McCartney and Neil Young on Saturday and Roger Waters and the Who on Sunday. That lineup is to be repeated Friday through Sunday and perhaps never again.

The musicians are among the last of a very limited breed. They all got their start in the 1960s, delivered songs that became cultural touchstones, have kept recording into this century and can fill arenas on tour. 

Yet the headliners were performing live music, which takes place in the present tense, and they played as if they still have something to prove: not just longevity but a die-hard rock spirit. Although they are in their 70s, they have stayed on the job, fighting physical limitations and the temptations of routine — and at Desert Trip, they are still battling. All of them delved beyond their surefire hits, digging out songs that deserved another airing or, as Mr. Young did, performing a handful of new ones. And none took their songs, no matter how popular, for granted.

Facing a crowd of about 70,000 people (not to mention the other acts on the lineup), they shrugged off the jokey label immediately attached to the festival — “Oldchella” — and placed their music in the here and now. During the Rolling Stones’ set, Mick Jagger teased that the festival was a “retirement home” for the musicians. Actually, they were still testing themselves in real time, on a stage where every lapse — and inevitably there were a few sour vocals and slapdash guitars — would be very public.

The chance to see all six acts in one weekend brought out tens of thousands of gray-haired fans who haven’t had a major rock festival tailored to them before, along with a younger contingent whose members weren’t all dragged along by their parents. The promoter behind the Coachella Festival, which is held on the same site and is geared to musicians and fans who are decades younger, catered to the mature crowd with a superb but not overbearing sound system — including surround-sound effects for Mr. Waters — along with a lot of reserved (and padded) seating, upscale food and wine, and other comforts.

The songs were almost entirely familiar, but they didn’t aspire to mere comfort. When the headliners first made their mark decades ago, they were heard as disruptive, forever changing the ways listeners would respond to sounds — distorted guitars, untrained voices — and to lyrics that might be startlingly blunt or downright inexplicable. Even the genial Mr. McCartney, in and out of the Beatles, had aggressive songs like “Helter Skelter” and “Live and Let Die,” both part of his far-ranging set on Saturday.

But the headliners’ hits have been played on the radio for decades and mined for musical ideas by countless successors. Their songs are also ingrained in a generation’s nostalgia for both its own youth and for the aesthetics of analog-era rock. To work right, they need at least a little shaking up.

For Mr. Dylan, the Rolling Stones, Mr. Young and the Who, that meant spiking their songs with improvisation. Mr. Dylan has always restlessly rearranged his songs, toying with lyrics and leaving only a few of his recordings’ musical landmarks intact. On Friday night, he recast and zeroed in on some of his most caustic and merciless songs — among them “Masters of War” from 1963, “Ballad of a Thin Man” from 1965 and “Pay in Blood” from 2012 — and sang them with deep cunning and venom coming through his much-weathered voice.

Mr. Young has expansive psychedelic jamming in his DNA — his set included a 22-minute “Down by the River” — while the Stones and the Who are built around guitarists who constantly claw at their songs from within. Keith Richards and Ron Wood, the Stones’ guitarists, played nonstop games of syncopation and suspense amid the band’s well-known riffs, while Mr. Jagger raced all over the stage without missing a note. Pete Townshend of the Who set off countless controlled detonations in his songs — trilling, jabbing rapidly, bending notes, scraping his strings, flinging and windmilling a dozen kinds of power chords — while Roger Daltrey swung his microphone on its cord and flaunted his lung power.

Although he reveled in the stuttering that has always been part of “My Generation,” Mr. Daltrey took care to enunciate one line quite clearly for the Oldchella audience: “Hope I die before I get old.”

For Mr. Waters and Mr. McCartney, whose music is more meticulously controlled, executing old songs anew meant updated spectacle and significance. Mr. Waters did a full set of material from his former band, Pink Floyd, often playing groups of songs to revisit the way the band’s concept albums inexorably build. He has a rare ability to make slow songs majestic rather than tedious; his rock dirges can open like chasms underfoot, accompanied onstage (as they have been through the years) by up-to-the-minute video technology. Mr. Waters placed opposition to Donald J. Trump at the core of his set, showing images of the candidate (in, among other things, a Ku Klux Klan hood) on video and on a flying inflatable pig during the bluesy, condemnatory “Pigs (Three Different Ones).”

The election was on other performers’ minds, too. With British understatement, Mr. Townshend said a weary, wary, “Good luck with your election,” while Mr. Young mockingly suggested his “Welfare Mothers” for a Trump campaign song. Most of Mr. Young’s set — performed on a stage that held tepees and a cigar-store Indian — was devoted to songs with environmental concerns, warning about polluting the earth and exhausting natural resources; it was also a showcase for his current band, Promise of the Real, which can handle both loud, impetuous jamming and folksy ballads.

Desert Trip tacitly raised the question of what keeps a musician in broad demand for a half-century. Skill and longtime productivity are part of the answer; all the headliners have gigantic catalogs, holding far more good songs than they could cram into any one set. Another requirement may well be a combative attitude, a streak of hardheaded resistance.

Mr. McCartney was the exception, radiating aw-shucks kindliness and preaching heartfelt peace and love in many of his songs. Perhaps his musical gifts — his innumerable melodies, his harmonic convolutions, his endearing voice — are so prodigious that they overwhelm any skepticism. But his affability was outnumbered 5 to 1: by the Rolling Stones’ raunch and cynical sass, by Mr. Dylan’s dire visions, by the Who’s fury and self-inquisition, by Mr. Young’s pragmatic bluntness and by Mr. Waters’s sullen, broad-spectrum opposition to authority. The skills of an entertainer may be good for a hit or for a streak of them. But for lifelong companionship, listeners choose songwriters who help them keep up the fight.

That sums up the music better than I ever could so thanks to the NYT review and John Pareles.

Also available to while away the hours was a terrific photography exhibit celebrating the acts performing during the weekend-

in order of appearance at the festival - Dylan, the Stones, Neil Young, McCartney, and the Who...

the food from the three days of OITF-

 the Sunday menu was our favorite -

and now just a few photos from the concerts - I have tons and also videos but there is only so much an audience can take in at once (I am talking about mine - LOL not the musician's LOL)

again in set order - Dylan at the piano

"Keef"

 Sympathy number - Mick

Neil -

Paul and Neil having a blast -

Neil Young actually smiling LOL-

Pete Townshend - and then Roger Daltry

Roger Waters-

So there you have it from us- the sound system was astounding and the HD screens gave everyone an up close and personal view.... except of Dylan who was not "ready for his close up" LOL- the guy was the only one who didn't seem thrilled to be here and who didn't pour himself into the music of the moment.  But at least he sang things we knew- which was only a remote possibility going into the evening LOL...such is genius -

my synopsis for a friend -

amazing trip - time machine to our youth and I only felt sad when there was only one Beatle on stage-

Stones still have it all-
The Who - Daltrey still hits the notes even if he can't hold them as long and Townshend is at 100% the guy looks and sounds the same LOL
Roger Waters did Dark Side of the Moon and the Wall and a huge political statement anti-Trump performance number - surround sound was astounding!
McCartney was wonderfully warm and sang his heart out but the voice is gone- still we all loved him...
Neil Young was completely himself - as usual and
Dylan actually sang songs we knew - but said not a word to the audience - looked jerky next to the rest of the bands who thanks the audience for following them for FIVE fucking DECADES!

wow wow wow- it cost the same as a week long trip to Europe and was a once in a lifetime experience... really worth the effort to get there

and it was - in every way.... despite debilitating heat of  96-99* each day - and unrelanting dust (we came home with the well known "coachella cough") - we were so very very very happy to be there - to see and hear the soundtrack of our lives done live by musicians who cared about us as much as we cared about them.  #lifeisgood