"One man's attempt to dissect the method to 3 days of madness in the desert"
  - By Scott Butterworth

On the 3rd weekend of April my Coachella will give to me.....
.....12 DJ's DJing.....11 Angelenos....10 Duos Duet-ing....9 Debut Albums....

....and 8 "Don't I Know You From Somewhere?":  

Public Image Limited
She & Him
The Cribs
Perry Ferrall vs. Steve Porter
Major Lazer
Bad Lieutenant
Charlotte Gainsbourg
Owen Pallet

Music, good music, is popping up everywhere and I’m loving every minute of it. Dance music in particular is really having the best year ever. I’m not just talking about house and techno, I’m talking about music that makes you wanna boogie, music that really makes you wanna get down with the get down and forget all your worries. I don't exactly know who to give credit to for putting the fun back in music but one thing is absolute: everything eventually comes full circle.

Back in the day—we’re talking the 70’s—there was disco, a little bit of hip-hop, some more disco, what was left of modern jazz, rock-n-roll, and a little more disco. The best thing about urban nightlife at that time was disco. And you didn’t hear none of that A.D.D. DJ we hear so frequently today, where the music selector changes songs every thirty seconds (thanks a lot DJ AM). No, none of that. The DJ’s at the discotheques usually played the long versions of songs, nearly in their entirety, to keep the feet on the dance floor all night long. Oh, how things have changed.

At that time, people weren’t up on hip-hop like that quite yet; it was still pretty underground. You had to know where to go to find a DJ spinning hip-hop. And chances are, if you knew about it, you knew it was the only spot in town where you could go to hear that type of music. Not to mention the fact that that one and only spot was probably members only. You had to be affiliated with a crew to gain access. If you weren’t a part of a tagging crew, a breaking crew, or one of the emcees or DJs, chances were you didn’t even know about it. But, back to disco. It started mainly on the east coast in the late 60’s. By the early 70’s disco had cross-pollinated and spread like wild fire all over the globe. Most popular soul and funk acts like Earth, Wind & Fire and The Bar-kays soon jumped ship and found themselves chin deep in the disco trend. Unfortunately, like most fads, disco was finished quicker than morning coffee and soon disappeared from the radar. For the most part, I think the public wanted it that way. Disco Demolition Night, a promotional event that took place on Thursday, July 12, 1979, at Comiskey Park in Chicago, Illinois, was in part to blame for the end of an era. However, industry folk and even many consumers talked about the decline of the genre long before this event took place.