127 Bands, 5 Stages, 3 Days and 1 Mean Sunburn.

"Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival - April 17-19th, 2009 or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Find 30 Reasons To Love a Weekend in the Desert."

- By Scott Butterworth


Day #23 - Artist #23 - Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band:

It's not the most recognizable name...yet it sits suspiciously high at the top of the Coachella lineup for Friday April 17, 2009, just under icons Paul McCartney, Morrissey, Franz Ferdinand, and Leonard Cohen.

Conor Oberst, born and raised in Omaha, Nebraska, started his professional music career in 1993 at age 13. His first significant project was forming the band Norman Bailer (which later became The Faint), while he was only 14 years old! After sharing this info with my roommate, he exclaimed, "That makes complete sense now. I've been wondering for years why The Faint was his backing band during his Coachella performance in 2005!"

I don't know if it was intentionally planned or not. But this week The Faint is in a battle with old label mate Conor Oberst for the number one indie album. It may not be as publicized as the album battle of Kanye West and 50 Cent, but it is no less significant...for me, at least. Conor Oberst was actually a member of the early incarnation of The Faint for about 5 minutes and they both remained on the same label up until now. Bright Eyes (Conor Oberst) has put out a couple more albums than The Faint. Saddle Creek helped to make them both household names across the world, at least in the indie rock community. I was always more of a Faint fan. I didn't give in to Conor until years after my Faint obsession began. But I became a Faint fun much like how I became a Bright Eyes fan. I was sort of forced into it-- I had resisted The Faint for a couple of years. I had heard about them and knew some of my friends were fans but just had not gotten around to listening to them yet. I was going through a big R & B phase in my life at the time, so indie rock was not as much of a priority. I was intrigued as soon as I found out that The Faint were using keyboards and sort of adopting a more synthy sound. My first Faint album was actually their third album, Danse Macabre. A friend of mine gave me the record for my birthday. It was actually just a couple of months before I made the first big move back to Los Angeles. He told me that he knew I would love it, and I fell in love with the album, as did many of us. Sort of like with the Teaches of Peaches album by Peaches, I became obsessed. The album just seemed to take over many peoples lives. I couldn't stop listening to it, it was so good. It was one of those albums that I was so glad to have discovered. I was just so glad that it existed.