Coachella '08 line-up announced, All Points West confirmed :: Music News :: Articles

After an agonizing weekend waiting for updates on the official Coachella '08 roster, Goldenvoice president Paul Tollett finally threw us a gigantic friggin' bone on Monday afternoon at a press conference in Mexico City, announcing the honest-to-goodness, no-for-serious-this-time list of bands that will travel to Indio, Calif. on April 25, 26 and 27 for three days of fun, funk, Frisbee and lots and lots of dancing.

Friday night's headliners are Jack Johnson, The Verve and Raconteurs; Saturday's are Portishead, Kraftwerk (Tollett: "If you haven't noticed, we're a fan of the robots."), Death Cab for Cutie and Café Tacuba; Sunday's are Love and Rockets, My Morning Jacket, and the festival's British-but-not-quite-Zep coup d'etat, Pink Floyd founder Roger Waters performing Dark Side of the Moon in its entirety (bookended by hits from other Pink Floyd albums). Neither the recently reunited Verve nor Portishead has performed on this side of the Atlantic since 1998, while Waters embarked on Dark Side of the Moon tours in the U.S. in both '06 and '07.

Here's a short list of some of the over 125 non-headlining bands performing at this year's festival: The Breeders, Tegan and Sara, Madness, Aesop Rock, Battles, The National, The Swell Season, Fatboy Slim, Animal Collective, Múm, Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, Vampire Weekend, Stars, Minus the Bear, Black Lips, Rogue Wave (Friday); M.I.A., Rilo Kiley, Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks, Mark Ronson, DeVotchKa, Sasha & Digweed, Islands, Flogging Molly, Hot Chip, Dwight Yoakam, MGMT, Akron/Family (Saturday); Spiritualized, Justice, Gogol Bordello, Chromeo, The Streets, Metric, Simian Mobile Disco, Booka Shade, Autolux, The Field, Les Savy Fav, Cool Kids, Black Kids, Black Mountain, Holy Fuck, Man Man, Manchester Orchestra (Sunday). Click here for a complete listing, with more bands to be added at an unspecified later date.

The hype surrounding this year's announcement reached a never-before-seen fever pitch, nearly overloading the Coachella website (From the Coachella.com forum: "Most users ever online was 2,313, Today [1/21/08] at 05:34 PM.") and making it difficult for listeners to connect to the live Internet stream of Mexico City's Ibero 90.9 in time for the 3 p.m. PST announcement. Regardless, it's all out in the open now, and tickets go on sale this Fri., Jan. 25, at 10 a.m. PST via Ticketmaster, with three-day general admission tickets priced at $269 and one-day tix at $90 (plus those pesky applicable service fees).

Tollett also confirmed rumors about the Goldenvoice-promoted East Coast shindig, revealing that the All Points West Music & Arts Festival will take place in New Jersey's Liberty State Park on Aug. 8-10, 2008. He didn't name any names, but he did (tellingly?) mention that "Radiohead played there in 2001 and there hasn't been a music event there since." Tollett, already being accused of abandoning "the loyal Indio crowd," assured Coachella regulars that even though All Points West will "be a really fun experiment for us...we're still in love with Coachella." Whether or not ticket buyers feel the same way remains to be seen.

Got news tips for Paste? E-mail news@pastemagazine.com.