photos – Andy Sternberg

Coachella 2013 Highlights, Videos and Photos

Andy Sternberg — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 18:35:33 +0000

This year’s Coachella lineup was underwhelming from the start, so much so that I didn’t plan on going until a pass fell in my lap about a week before the festival. It wasn’t necessarily the bands in the lineup that I thought was weak, it was the lack of originality and dynamics that I’ve come to expect from a Coachella. No Rolling Stones or David Bowie. No Replacments. Hardly any hip-hop, punk or imaginative electronic music. Too many wimpy “punch-me-in-the-face” bands like Phoenix, The xx, Postal Service… Basically, i feared Coachella had lost its edge. As much as the environment and experience was always more than fulfilling to me, I wasn’t ready to shell out $500 in support of a lineup that seemed staged for taking a big nap on the Polo Grounds.

Coachella 2013 Panorama from Ferris Wheel: Click to embiggen

In the end I had a blast — Coachella is one of those great experiences that triggers dopamine bursts just at the thought. The first heat of late spring under the desert sun, 100,000 people all out for good times, good music and big smiles. 6 stages (with this year’s introduction of the Yuma Tent) and all kinds of inebriating distractions.

The photos and videos below are evidence of my highlights from this year’s festival. As always, it was amazing. For those attending Coachella weekend 2 this weekend I recommend the following:

Highlights & Recommendations

The Make-Up: One of my all-time favorite bands, I never got to see them live before Coachella (they were active 1995-1999 and I just missed them when I lived in DC ’99-’00 and got all into the Dischord bands). Ian Svenonius is still a madman and one of the great frontmen of all time, evoking Jagger and Iggy Pop while standing on the crowd’s shoulders most of the set.

Grinderman / Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds: One of the great madmen songwriters of our time, Cave met and exceeded my expectations as a performer, especially the Grinderman set. The tent was virtually empty when the set began, which is how I ended up standing basically in Cave’s crotch when I caught this video. Know what else is awesome? The interactive Nick Cave Spotify app.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs — I hadn’t seen them live since a show at the diminutive Fireside Bowl over 10 years ago so I was more than a little excited to catch the older and more evolved version on the big stage. Guitarist Nick Zinner is a sonic genius and I especially loved how he’d fill in the empty space between songs — it felt like the literal (aural) echo of the “yeah, yeah, yeah” words/vibe. Karen O rules the stage, they played at least one cut from the original EP which I still love. It was probably my top main stage set of the weekend
Visit the Yuma Tent — Even if none of the DJs appeal to you, this tent (new this year) adds a very cool dynamic to Coachella. It’s a totally enclosed, air conditioned dome-like tent (so it feels like club night even in the middle of a hot afternoon) and has wood floors, bringing even more authenticity to the dance party.
Janelle Monae — If you’ve never seen her live, do it. Or even if you have (personally, I can’t get enough). Even after a 15-minute technical delay, Monae came bounding onto the stage and totally owned the crowd, in mid-set form, within minutes. It’s amazing what some bands can do in a short set and Monae and her huge band are something that must be experienced live. I can’t wait to hear her long-awaited follow-up (Sept. 2013?) to 2010’s The ArchAndroid.
Watch official Coachella footage and video via YouTube

What’s buzzing at Coachella?

The Shouting Matches — it’s a Carolina blues band fronted by Justin Vernon of Bon Iver. And it’s really good if you can get there early on Friday.
Of Monsters and Men — Pleasant, afternoon Icelandic folk/pop, I was surprised to see a full field at the Outdoor Stage for their set.
Major Lazer — Electro-dance, lights and jamz. The kind of good fun what you’re looking for while bringing on the night. The Mojave Tent was totally overflowing for this set.
∆ (Alt-J) — “An Awesome Wave” was last year’s Mercury Prize winners and righteously so, in my opinion. Their live show definitely stands up and an overflow crowd was enraptured in the Gobi Tent.
Jessie Ware — This should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with her work with SBTRKT and her solo album “Devotion.”

Second year of the second weekend

Last year Coachella expanded to 2 weekends with identical lineups and — one might think — identical experiences. But, outside of highly calculated gimmicks like last year’s Tupac hologram, any live music aficionado knows that no two experiences are ever exactly the same. And I think at least two bands (of the fraction of the bands that I saw) will benefit from a second weekend as well. Modest Mouse: Isaac Brock talked way too much about nothing as if he felt that his 50-minute set would somehow stretch into 90. It didn’t and the bands set ended up falling flat, with no real flow to the set beyond the second song. Tame Impala: Just a couple years ago this band was playing venues as small as Silverlake Lounge even though its sound is built for stadiums. Now on the Outdoor Stage at Coachella, it seemed they mis-timed the length of their set. Lead singer Kevin Parker seemed bummed that he couldn’t launch into one more song and the set felt as if it were cut short. The festival itself: Is weekend two even sold out? I was disappointed with the lack of diversity, depth and edginess to this year’s lineup and wonder if it has something to do with Coachella being too complacent about being able to sellout 2 straight weekends.

Already looking forward to Coachella 2014!

Summertime Get Up, Get Down

Andy Sternberg — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 14:04:17 +0000

Griffith Park Observatory during the annular solar eclipse.

It’s summertime in Los Angeles (and everywhere else in the northern hemisphere for that matter). Time to hit the beach and The Bowl and spend quality outdoor time with great friends across L.A. County’s 4,000 square miles, from Lancaster to Long Beach. I’ve covered lots of ground already as 2012 is already well on its way to being, yet again, the best summer ever.

But this is the first summer of Adler Integrated. Yes, myself and a dream team consisting of some of my best friends came together and started a company in January. More on that in my next post (or, uh, we do have a blog). I’m basically doing the same type of work I’ve been doing for some years now, only bigger, better and with more support and collaboration. It’s awesome.

I promised to share monthly playlists of what’s playing on our office Sonos speaker system and to date I’ve been way more consistent than I have with keeping up on blogging. Below, find my July 2012 playlist, a mix of old and new summertime jams to kick up to 11 (find the other playlists here).

Someone’s pool, barnsdall park and downtown los angeles from griffith park, June 24, 2012.

Video and Photos: LA’s Spirited, Peaceful Solidarity with Occupy Wall Street

Andy Sternberg — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 20:46:17 +0000

Los Angeles joined in protesting Wall Street and corruption at the crux of politics and corporate welfare on Saturday October 1 with a well-organized march and rally. As many as 1,500 took part in a march from Pershing Square to City Hall where #OccupyLA took to the Spring Street stairs leading up to the entryway before moving to the north lawn. Occupy Los Angeles unofficially began about a week prior, and roughly 15 people consistently showed up to nightly general assemblies (GAs) at Pershing Square to coordinate and plan for the best way to show solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street protest.

I livestreamed — 3 videos are below in chronological order — apologies in advance for Ustream’s super-annoying pre-roll ads

Marching from Pershing Square to City Hall:

Occupy Wall Street entered its 3rd week of protests in New York City this weekend but were met with some 700 arrests after thousands attempted to cross the Brooklyn Bridge. The arrests were a climactic result of testier behavior on the part of both protesters and police. In Los Angeles there was literally no LAPD presence, aside from assisting with patrolling both foot and auto traffic during the six block march to City Hall.

At LA City Hall North Lawn:

Careful advance planning by OccupyLA organizers with LAPD and city officials led to a peaceful day-in-the-park atmosphere. Organizers consistently called out through megaphones to not deface any property (although City Hall walls did get hit with chalk — see photos above) and had volunteer security kept people on the sidewalks during the parade. About half a dozen lawyers in neon green hats were present to negotiate and communicate between authorities and organizers. The mantra of the protest: “We are the 99 percent” was consistent and it seemed to be a message that both protestors and authorities could agree on.

It didn’t end there as many stayed overnight in City Hall Park to the south of the building with day 2 of the rally starting up early Sunday. Follow @OccupyLA on Twitter and hashtag #OccupyLA for more. Livestream below and at http://occupylosangeles.org.

Watch live streaming video from owslosangeles at livestream.com

Photos & Interviews from FYF Fest 2011: Dead Milkmen, Fool’s Gold, Future Islands, Explosions in the Sky, OFF! and More

Andy Sternberg — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 21:40:07 +0000

I took photos and interviewed several bands at FYF Fest earlier this month at Los Angeles State Historic Park. These interviews and photos originally appeared in LAist.

[See image gallery at andysternberg.com]
Click photos to embiggen / view as slideshow or click here to view all the photos on a single page.

Rayani on stage with Explosions in the Sky at FYF Fest 2011 (photo by Andy Sternberg)

I caught up with Explosions in the Sky guitarist Munaf Rayani before the band took the stage at FYF Fest last weekend and got the lowdown on surviving the deadly storm at Pukkelpop Music Fest in Belgium, how an art installation at Hollywood Forever Cemetery to debut the band’s latest album, “Take Care, Take Care, Take Care,” came to pass last April, and why they love Umami Burger.

AS: What did you guys think of the art installation at the cemetery? How did that come about?

Munaf Rayani: We only saw it through pictures and video but we heard it was a smash hit…. It was kind of a collective idea between us and some people that we’d worked with. We got in cahoots with the cemetery and they were cool with running it the week prior. A few creative minds, a few phone calls and it went through! What’d you think of it?

AS: I thought it was a great concept to have this walking tour of unique physical installations as a way to present the album as a first listen.

MR: That’s why I was most pleased that it was a true individual interpretation of these artists and the way we found them — a few we knew their names, others we looked at their work and were curious as to what they’d make of the six pieces. So it was exciting for us to see what these artists see in the songs. And if we picked six different artists it would have been completely different too and that’s the beauty of music and the visual interpretations thereof — to each his own. And it was exciting for us to experience what others “see” or “think” when they hear our songs.

AS: How’s summer tour been? Any notable stories?

MR: We just did a string of festivals in Europe and… a more troubling story — we were at Pukkelpop [music festival in Belgium, where five people died after a stage collapsed] and the storm came through and just kind of blew the whole festival away and shut it down. That was really strange and surreal because we had just finished our set and the storm came through about ten minutes later. When we went on stage, the sun was shining, we played a 45-50 minute set and it darkened up. We loaded pretty quickly into the trailer, locked the doors, and the rain started. We went underneath a tent and boy, it just blew everything away. The timing for us was crazy — how did we just miss that? But the collective experience of what other people went through was devastating, just disastrous. So, that happened.

But on the flipside we played the David Letterman show and that was very exciting. We felt very lucky that whoever was choosing the music there and whoever was pushing us made it work out. because there’s only two talk shows that we really wanted to ever be on and Letterman was #1 and Conan was #2. On our last record we got to play Conan when he was in New York.

Explosions in the Sky perform “Postcard from 1952” on Letterman:

AS: Did you have any directive to keep it under four-and-a-half minutes or anything?

MR: That was exactly it we had to edit a song to three-and-a-half minutes but to tell you the truth, Biff, the stage manager who’s in a lot of the bits and all the crew guys said that in the 20-30 years that they’d been working for CBS of this program they had never seen an instrumental rock band on the show. So it felt really good that, man, we made some sort of impression on someone to allow us that venue.

AS: You guys are based in Austin. Do you have any crazy LA stories?

MR: We just discovered the Umami Burger a couple trips ago and that’s really tasty so we try to make our way there. LA’s a cool place for us to come visit. Growing up in Texas, anything outside of Texas was almost make believe so even when we went to New York for the first time it felt really good. We’ve celebrity sighted a few people — saw Tim Allen get some coffee one morning that was pretty funny. The crowds in L.A. have been so good to us that it’s one of those checkpoints on the tour that we have a good feeling the shows going to go really well. The cemetery, Palladium, and even starting at the Knitting Factory and working our way up.

AS: How would you feel about doing the Hollywood Bowl with the Philharmonic?

MR: We used to want to play it but not anymore. We’ve heard enough about it that we kinda lost our interest. But I know it’s a beautiful place but if the opportunity came up it’s something we’d consider.

AS: Have you considered collaborating with an orchestra?

MR: We’ve batted around the idea of making an orchestral composition of the album — without us. Just a symphony playing it. It’s something we’ve talked about for a while but the execution is tough to pull off. We’re talking to a great orchestral transcriber right now out of San Francisco and if we all stay on course than it might be something that could happen in a few months or a year.

Metallica did it already where the band played with the symphony… this band we love — Mono, out of Japan, played with a symphony a couple times. If we could do it we’d like to do it a little bit differently. We’ll see what happens.

Flaming Lips at Hollywood Forever Cemetery

Andy Sternberg — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 16:16:18 +0000

My best photos from the Flaming Lips concerts at Hollywood Forever Cemetery on June 14th and 15th 2011. Click on images to view as larger slideshow.

[See image gallery at andysternberg.com]

Videos from other people:

Hiking Camelback Mountain’s Echo Canyon Summit Trail

Andy Sternberg — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 21:29:38 +0000

View Camelback Hike 3/27/11 in a larger map

The summit trail to the peak of Camelback Mountain is deceiving — it’s only 1.2 miles from the parking lot to the top. But a steady elevation gain (1,300 feet total) on a trail of boulders and loose gravel makes a rather strenuous adventure. It took a little over an hour to summit and a little more than half that to get back down. But my quads still feel as though they’ve both been charlie horsed after absorbing the shock of the descent.

Awesome hike, tracked here with MyTracks, an open source Android app led by a team at Google.

Total Distance: 4.54 km (2.8 mi)
Total Time: 2:12:13
Moving Time: 1:02:21
Average Speed: 2.06 km/h (1.3 mi/h)
Average Moving Speed: 4.37 km/h (2.7 mi/h)
Max Speed: 12.73 km/h (7.9 mi/h)
Min Elevation: 398 m (1304 ft)
Max Elevation: 794 m (2607 ft)
Elevation Gain: 426 m (1398 ft)
Recorded: Sun Mar 27 15:37:22 PDT 2011

[See image gallery at andysternberg.com]

SXSW 2011 Highlights

Andy Sternberg — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 15:48:33 +0000

In an eleventh-hour decision, I cashed in some American AAdvantage miles and caught a flight to Austin for spring break — or more specifically, the 25th annual South by Southwest Conference. With all of the networking opportunities, free food, drink, music and friends – some of whom i only see once a year or so – i’m glad i took advantage and visited the great city of Austin. It was a whirlwind four days but the photos and video below provide some flavor.

See my photos from past years at SXSW

The trip began with an amazing takeoff directly into the fading sun over the Pacific. This would be the last time the sun set before Daylight Savings time kicked in. Got in to Austin and met up with Jory, provider of a fine crash pad for the duration of my stay. Then began a serious of meetups, events, and parties: All Hat III, which was a priceless opportunity to visit with many of the folks I most admire in the interactive space who happen to share a passion and commitment to do-gooding.

Here’s a photo Geoff Livingston took of his partners at Zoetica Media. I was standing right next to them. No really. You won’t see me in any of my photos posted here (and I’m not sure who hijacked my camera and interviewed Jonathan Grubb of RVIPLounge – see at bottom). But as always happens, the aftermath of SXSW will carry on to Facebook and Twitter and into another season of opportunity and new connections.

I created a truly ridiculous agenda of all things I RSVP’d for or intended to go to. It’s included at the bottom of this post to give you a taste of just how extensively big corporations and smaller startups catered to SXSW Interactive attendees this year.

Among the highlights was the CNN Grill, which took over a restaurant two blocks from the convention center and turned it into a CNN Disneyland with free food and drink service throughout the afternoon and late night for industry folk and others lucky enough to have a pass.

That’s Percy von Lipinski in the video above. I was seated at his table on my first visit to #CNNGrill soon after he was presented with an award for CNN iReporter Original Reporting Award and naturally, had to stick my flip cam in his face.

I did not have a SXSW Interactive badge this year as I had in the past since I failed to apply as press by the deadline. I thought, maybe I could take a year off (ha!). But the other special badges, VIP treatment, and access I was offered for taking such menial steps as RSVP-ing via Eventbrite more than made up for it.

CNN — they must be made of money — ensured that everyone would be happy with their grill (at other times known as MAX’s Wine Dive). Everything on the prepared-to-order menu (food and drink) was gratis and there was WiFi and two power strips at every table. But even the service and hosts were gracious — imported from NYC via Danny Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group — and there were live performances throughout the day. I showed up at the perfect time (according to my particular tastes) and caught a 40 minute or so acoustic set from Wisconsin-based awesomeband Locksley, and then a set from The Civil Wars (see video above), who barely managed to get away from me and onto the next before I could – natch – stick my flip cam in their faces. The CNN Grill was apparently first conceived for the 2008 Democratic Convention in Denver. But man, what good buzz they built by hosting the mad swarms of geeks and mediaites at SXSW.

Video from the RVIPLounge below. I recommend checking out this one as well — from the inside (same night).

Click “show earlier events” and scroll up to view my March 13-17 agenda. Click on any event to expand details

That’s all I’ve got time for now with extra special thanks for making things happen to theMIX agency, SMC, Wine Library product and crew, The Force Agency (of which I’m now a card-carrying part of), Gowalla & Foursquare (I adore both equally but in comparison to the SXSW deluge of use checking in now feels relatively pointless), Nicole and all the great Summit Series rockers at dinner at Lambert’s. And as always, thank you Google for helping me to never get lost and for Android. Now I’m getting sentimental. Where’s my award already?

Photos and More From CitizenGulf LA – August 25 2010

Andy Sternberg — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 02:23:56 +0000

You’ll see more and more content here as the night goes on. And come on down — it’s going to be fun and it’s going late — here are the details.

Unable to attend a CitizenGulf Benefit tonight? You can still donate directly by clicking the icon below. Tag your tweets and photos #CitizenGulf so we can see them here. Thanks for your support.

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PHOTOS FROM AROUND THE COUNTRY:

The main DEETS:

The Central Social Aid & Pleasure Club — 1348 14th Street, Santa Monica (former 14 Below space, now fully revamped and reopened)

An 18-minute Katrina documentary will be screened at 8pm, introduced by the (Venice-based) filmmakers.

3 bands will perform! Le Switch, Big Moves, and Hiram Rimmer. Stranger Danger DJ duo will bookend the night’s music to keep us dancing until bar close at 2. Bar opens at 5 for happy hour. Event start is 7:30.

There will be an entire room of art inspired by and depicting the Gulf Coast from Katrina in August 2005 to the present day Oil Spill disaster. Some will be available for a charity auction.

HOW MUCH: Just $10 toward a fund set up specifically for this CitizenGulf National Day of Action. Citizen Effect and Catholic Charities of New Orleans will put forth all of the proceeds from these 20 events toward extending an after school program that was started in New Orleans after Katrina into coastal parishes and provide fifty children with a safe environment that will give participants access to interactive learning opportunities, self-esteem building workshops, therapeutic art activities and other activities and services needed by the children affected by the spill.

There will also be a food truck in The Central’s private lot — Dante Food Truck

All the main details and RSVP at http://citizengulfla.eventbrite.com (shorturl: http://bit.ly/CitGulfLA)

PHOTOS: Rome, Italy July 7-9 2009

Andy Sternberg — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 00:24:24 +0000

The final set of photos from our spectacular seven days of travel to Naples, Capri, Sorrento, Pompeii, and Rome. I’ll provide more detail later but want to get all of these photos up while they’re fresh. View the entire collection of Italy photos in my flickr collection, video from the trip can be found here.

PHOTOS: Pompeii, Italy, July 6-7, 2009

Andy Sternberg — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 07:43:33 +0000