I cut out a few days over the weekend to zip across country to attend the Coachella Music and Arts Festival. Today, I jotted down some impressions from the numerous artists who performed. Now, there’s no freakin’ way to see everyone — there were five stages going continuously for three days, so you’re bound to miss the majority of performances. I’ve noted those I missed that meant anything to me.

Friday

Caught:
The Breeders — out of tune singing. Sounded like they were still rehearsing. Maybe they’re always like that, though.

Múm — oddballs from Iceland. Talented, but not loud enough to compete with the dance tent next door.

The National — just a few songs from them. Competent but unspectacular.

The Raconteurs — wasn’t sure who we were going to see and they didn’t announce themselves, so I didn’t realize this was Jack White’s band. I thought “that guy reminds me of Jack White a little, but they’re better than the White Stripes.” Really good show that at moments reminded me of Zep with the heavy riffs and wailing solos.

The Verve — are these guys a Christian rock band or what? They were OK, but weren’t doing it for Dave, so we bailed after a few songs. As we walked away, they started some trippy guitar stuff that was actually pretty cool, but it was too late. Dumbasses.

Datarock — a fun bunch of wackos who’re happily stuck in 80s pogostick mode. They wore matching red Adidas track suits and bounced around a lot.

Sharon Jones and The Dap Kings — funk and old school r&b done right. Lots of energy and soul. Very hot, and highly recommended.

Fatboy Slim — took forever to get started and the dance tent was packed by the time he took the stage. I’m not a big techno customer, but there’s a major difference between hearing it in the car or even your local discotheque and hearing it ULTRA FUCKING LOUD AND CLEAR in a huge tent. Wore me the hell out with bouncing around with these damned kids half my age.

Missed:

Serj Tankian — we didnt have the schedule on paper with us, so I forgot when he was on. Would’ve liked to have seen him, probably a pretty good show. It would have meant missing The Dap Kings, though, who were the finds of the night.

Jack Johnson — Jack is actually pretty cool, and I caught him at Coachella back in 2003. But to me it’s date music. I didn’t have a date, so who gives a fuck?

Dan Deacon — He’s a real weirdo, basically plays Casiotone loops and stuff. My buddy Ernie’s really into him, so I would have liked to have been able to report back on his set, but I’m glad we spent time in Joshua Tree instead.

Saturday

Caught:

Minus the Bear — Didn’t really mean to see them, and in fact had never heard of them. They were pretty good in a Seattle-indie rock guitar sorta way.

Cafe Tacvba — Not as good as I remembered them from Coachella ‘03. Too poppy. Very popular with the Hispanic folks, who were singing along with every word of some of the songs. I bailed early to make sure I got over to see Dwight.

Dwight Yoakam — I’m in no way an expert on country, but I do recognize Dwight as one who plays actual country and not dance pop with a hokey twang. And his set was, in fact, the real thing. Would’ve gone over great in a smokey bar. He paid tribute to Buck Owens and covered Johnny Cash, Ricky Nelson and The Eagles.

Kraftwerk — Unless you’re just really deeply into German industrial whatever, you’d never pick up on these freaks. But they’ve been around forever, four guys and their Moogs or whatever. They literally just stand there motionless and manipulate their consoles while huge, primitive-looking computer graphics and silhouette them. For all you know, they just hit the play button and pretend to look busy. For one song, they are literally replaced by robots on stage. But you crank the knob up to 11 and it’s fucking impressive as hell.

Portishead — Portishead was the headliner for Saturday until Prince signed on. I could see why. The next day, the lead singer for My Morning Jacket said he was glad to see Portishead back together. “Whenever I listen to them, it’s like a nightmare jungle where demons are trying to get me. But Beth’s voice somehow guides me through like an angelic symbol.” Or words to that effect. I hated to leave early, but I really wanted to see Flogging Molly.

Flogging Molly — My legs were beat to death before; after FM, they were in tatters. You just can’t not bounce around to that blaring, drunken, belligerent Irish shit. some shirtless fucker tried to goad me into shoving him or taking a swing by crowding my space, but I wouldn’t take the bait. I’m thinking, ‘if you’re man enough to fight, there’s a whole fucking mosh pit not 10 people away from us who’d gladly take you up on the offer. Why fuck with a fat dude who’s twice your age, you pussy?” He eventually gave up on me. The sound was loud and clear, but the lead guitar drowned out the banjo and fiddle — my only complaint about the sound for the whole festival.

Prince — Prince is one of those guys I respect more than I like. But I can’t deny he puts on a fuckin’ show. It started with Morris Day and The Time doing their two hits from back in the Purple Rain days, which was pretty cool, because it’s actual funk. Sheila E got a song and a timbale solo. Funniest moment: Prince covers Radiohead’s “Creep.” Best parts were the funky parts and the blazing guitar solos — lil dude can wail on a Strat.

Missed:

Half of Portishead’s set.

Death Cab for Cutie — Interested mainly cos I’ve heard of them and because we used “Death cab for cutie” as a headline about a chick who drives an old hearse.

Sunday

Caught:

Gogol Bordello — Rocked out Ukrainian folk, basically. Another band where you can’t NOT dance. Didn’t hurt that there were three possibly Ukrainian, definitely cute chicks also bouncing around me. I’m not sure where they were from, but they spoke with Cyrillic accents.

Metric — only caught a couple songs. I think with more time I could get into it, but it didn’t grab me by the balls right away. Super cute chick fronting the band, though.

My Morning Jacket — Another unannounced band, so I had no idea what I was getting into. Fortunately, they turned out really good with some heavy, psychedelic moments.

Roger Waters — Holy fucking shit, man. Roger’s band plays Pink Floyd note for note, the phrasing, everything, is dead on. Except the sound is huger, louder than you ever got from your headphones. A couple guys behind me were whining they’d prefer to hear the musicians put their own spin on it. Fuck ‘em, the show was monumental. Two and a half hours, including the entirety of “Dark Side of the Moon.” And an encore.

Missed:

Love and Rockets — I remember ‘em from the late ’80s. Woulda been interesting. Glad I “discovered” My Morning Jacket instead.

Sean Penn — From a distance, I could hear the pugnacious Mr. Penn ranting about whatever political. Roger said it better. And louder.

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. — City Council members voted Monday night to raise bus fares and vehicle taxes to fund extending bus routes and expanding the fleet.

This should go over well with gas at $4 a gallon. 

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C.—The Fayetteville City Council is planning to discuss a new vehicle tax hike and bus fares during their next meeting, Monday April 7.

Thanks to my friend Charles Apple for dredging up this one:

The rush to export newspaper jobs overseas takes a new turn today.

From a press release we received this morning:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Moxbury, Pa.
April 1, 2008

NEWSPAPER CHAIN TO OUTSOURCE
CORPORATE MANAGEMENT POSITIONS

The Patriot-Herald newspaper group will eliminate 45 jobs in the second quarter of 2008 when it outsources corporate management positions to a company in India, the Moxbury, Pa.,-based chain announced Tuesday.

A former first lady who’s padded her resume with a soundbite about arriving in Bosnia, years ago, under sniper fire. A town with more than its fair share of people who really have been shot at by snipers. The two come together on Thursday at Terry Sanford High School. Good times.

Finally found out where Ashley Alexandra Dupré lived when she was in North Carolina: Manteo, which is on the Outer Banks. No surprise she was a beach hottie, I guess. Here’s what People Magazine has to say about Ashley Youmans’ (pre-name changes) N.C. time:

But once in high school, something changed. In her sophomore year, she abruptly left home to move in with her dad and his new wife, attending Manteo High School in the Outer Banks in North Carolina. “It was my decision,” Ashley wrote on her MySpace page. “And I’ve never looked back.”

“She was a normal cool girl,” says former boyfriend Wayne Hunter, who dated Ashley until 2003. “She wasn’t a saint, but I would put her better than a lot of girls that I’ve known. [The recent scandal] has surprised me because she wasn’t really like that.”

While Ashley was popular with the boys, she had trouble making female friends while there. “She was the hottest girl in town when she was here and all the other girls gave her hell,” says Hunter. “They were jealous. The girls wouldn’t hang out with her. It was ridiculous. The girls here were really mean to her.”

Apparently, it was while she resided in N.C. that Dupre (then Youmans) got her first taste of naughtiness for pay:

According to a press release, Dupre visited Miami in 2003 to celebrate her 18th birthday. After fighting with a friend and getting thrown out of her hotel, Dupre found a nearby “Girls Gone Wild” bus, the company said. She signed legal papers and spent a full week on the bus, filming seven full-length tapes which included nudity and same-sex encounters, according to the company.

“I personally ended up buying her a Greyhound bus ticket back home to North Carolina,” said Girls Gone Wild founder and known douche, Joe Francis. After the footage turned up in the GGW archives, Francis rescinded a $1 million offer to Dupre to pose for his new magazine.

Salon.com’s Farhand Majoo says the NYT picked up a lot of bio on Ex. Gov. Spitzer’s prostitute from her Myspace page. And, the NYT sez, she lived in N.C. in 2003, but I’m damned if I can find out where. Working on that. She would have been known as Ashley Youmans back then, so if you knew her some years back, drop me a line, eh? Since then, according to the NYT, she’s changed her name legally to Ashley Rae Maika DiPietro, her stage name is Ashley Alexandra Dupré and, of course, she’s known in court documents as “Kristen.” The best part of her story, right now, is the commentary that wags have left behind.

From amiestreet.com, where you can buy her crappy dance tune:

an angel and a devil with the sultry voice of a high class woman from the streets, ashley brings out the uncivilized man in you as she rides you to ever higher moments for an intense ecstatic release. sensual and satisfying she earns diamonds in accolades. highly recommended and worth every penny. — client9 

And:

Not your typical New Yorker! Seriously, I wonder what it would take to make this young woman a household name? She has a wonderful throat and more women need to be like her. Bravissimo — Edna_Bambrick (Edna Bambrick is a minor Web phenomenon.)

From Ashley/Kristen’s Myspace blog (she just has the one entry from back in August):

From P-Drizzle Fo Rizzle: “Would you charge me $4,300 too, or can we use some of the time Spitzer didn’t use?”

From Silda: “Did he make you do that thing with his socks? I am SO not doing that again.”

And then there’s the Myspace profile of Client 9. I’m uploading a screen grab on the off chance Myspace takes it down.

Well, sort of. If he were truly Fayettenam, handguns would have been involved.

Kid Rock Pleads Not Guilty to Battery

ATLANTA — Kid Rock has pleaded not guilty to a charge of battery from a fight at a Waffle House in Atlanta. Robert James Ritchie, better known as the musician Kid Rock, was not present for the plea. His attorney, Darryl Cohen, waived an arraignment hearing and entered the plea on Ritchie’s behalf in DeKalb County State Court, according to Cohen’s office.

Newspaper folks don’t get a whole lot of credit for it, but they tend to be pretty morally upright. Journalism courses in America focus a lot on ethics (supposedly, training in Britain is more practical, less theoretical; I have no idea about the rest of the world, but it’d be interesting in an “Inside Baseball” way to dig into that, but I digress), journalists love to hash out the ethics of this or that editorial decision, and trash the living hell out of their colleagues should they cross the line.We at SmartNews may have crossed said line. Not in a Jayson Blair way, or even a Judith Miller way (props to the Gray Lady for botching it so horribly), but in our own, inimitable fashion. We accepted a favor from a local business. And we mentioned that business in a news story.Here’s how it went down: A tuxedo shop offered SmartNews free tux rentals for all its black-tie engagements. As of this writing, I don’t know whether this was done in part as a trade for ads. Well, this is blue collar, Army-town Fayetteville, N.C., and we’re SmartNews, the smart-alecky upstart. How many opportunities for black-tie are we even going to have?Our correspondent, James Johnson, got wind of the offer first, and jumped at the opportunity to do a goofy piece on unlikely stuff one could do in a tux. I guess he knew that reporters are seldom invited to formal events. So he wrote a silly item on wierd stuff to do in a tux, including bowling. We ran a photo of James bowling in a tux. The story mentioned the rent-free tux.Then SmartNews sponsored an Oscar-night charity fundraiser. Formal attire preferred.Next thing you know, I’m getting fitted for a rent-free tux. As she hems up my sleeves and pants, the proprietor (a really sweet, Southern lady) regaled us with bits of her life story. She makes it clear she’d like to have that story told in print. And it is, in fact, a good story. I make no promises. As we leave, the proprietor (a really sweet Southern lady) insists we take some of her business cards to distribute at the event.

… more to come, but I gotta run …

Screw the legal arguments. The skateboard tree (see below if you’re not familiar) deserves an exemption for being cool.

David Beasley and Dorian Motowylak put their hearts into this weird work of art that, in its homespun way, transends the commercial purpose of the current resident of 500 Blount St., a skateboard shop. Fayetteville’s Board of Adjustments should have shown a little respect for these guys Monday evening. Unless the trees are destroyed, what these guys have created will be in evidence long after that building no longer sells skateboards.

It’s hard to see who’s harmed by a tree with a bunch of skateboards nailed to it. Let’s face it: Blount Street is a dump. It’s not like the trees are in King’s Grant, whose well-to-do residents minutes earlier at the same meeting won a reprieve from a development they felt would tower over their backyards and spoil their views.

Frankly, arguing about whether the trees constitute a “snipe sign” feels petty. The question: What if all businesses felt free to do similar projects? Fayetteville should only be so funky and cool. The secret to a great city is not enforcing the same, boring design standards that can be found in every city code book in America. The secret is citizens creating something unique and wonderful, something that can’t be found anywhere else. You can’t legislate or even much hope to control that impulse, but you can nurture it when it crops up, or you can beat it down.

Beating down the skate shop folks isn’t going to improve Fayetteville one iota. It’s not going to rescue Fayetteville — or even Blount Street — from ugliness. It will alienate a small group of citizens who’re emotionally invested in a work that might not meet a bland, Thomas Kincaid/Norman Rockwell criteria for beauty, but which surely is no uglier than the Tallywood Shopping Center sign on Raeford Road, and is definitely less cheesy than the Bordeaux mini-Eiffel Tower. What’s the value in that?

Amanda Briggs, assistant city attorney who argued for upholding the order to take down the “sign,” says she and the city don’t hate skaters. The city council has the opportunity to put its money where Amanda’s mouth is. Save the trees, make a few folks happy, harm none.

And maybe someone else will do something unexpected and cool to make this town a tiny bit cooler.

- Jim McBee, managing editor

[The text of our story, which ran 02.15.08 in print, in case you're not familiar with the Board Tree.]

Shrine or sign: A downtown shop (and its loyal fans) can’t believe the city expects it to de-skateboard its trees.

For centuries, man has argued: Who can truly define what can be considered art?

Fayetteville city planners, that’s who.

500 Blount St. Skate Shop (located, appropriately, at 500 Blount St.) has attracted unwanted attention from the city with its monument to skaterdom, the Board Trees.
The tree project began a month after the opening of 500 Blount St. (then called Duh! Skate Shop) last year, when skater David Beasley was struck with inspiration.

Beasley would take the broken skateboards of kids who used the park, and nail them to the four trees just outside the shop. Soon, other skaters, and skateshop employee Dorian Motowylak took over much of the trees’ reconstruction. Naturally, the trees have been embraced by local skaters, and according to Motowylak, passersby who often stop just to take pictures.

The trees have also been dedicated to fallen skaters, including John Buchanan, a skater who died after being hit by a car. His broken board, with a stencil of his likeness, is attached to one of the trees.

“There are so many different things about it that have made it special to people,” Beasley said. “It depicts all the dedication of the skateboarders in the community.”

Drive-by critique

One man’s art is another’s eyesore. A passing motorist was apparently so offended by the sight that he felt it was time to call the city planners to the rescue.
City planners seem to agree with the motorist’s assessment.

“It sure don’t look like art to me,” said Jim Alexander, assistant inspections director.
But wait a minute, art isn’t illegal, is it? There’s no way the city can ask someone to destroy six months worth of work based purely on a subjective opinion, right?
Ah, but that’s why God made loopholes. The city planners have come out calling the tree a “snipe sign.”

Traditionally, snipe signs are what they call those wooden light posts, or trees, with all sorts of flyers and signs nailed into them.

“Anything attached to a tree is a snipe sign,” said Alexander.

That’s right. Hammock lovers beware, you may just be napping on a sign.

Nailed

In order to comply, the skate shop will have to remove each board from the trees, thereby removing the nails, which Beasley said would kill the trees.
Alexander is less than sympathetic.

“They should have thought of that before they did it,” he said. “They can remove the nails and then maybe try pushing them back in. I don’t know, I ain’t a tree expert.”

Support from high branches

The trees’ supporters aren’t willing to let their trees go without a fight, and have taken to filling out various petitions. So far, Beasley says that they’ve collected more than 300 names.

“The city has better things to do than pick on these folks about a tree that’s not hurting anyone,” said Councilman Charles Evans, who has come out in support of the trees. “You caught me on a good day. I’m really not feeling the city right now.”

500 Blount St. owner Ross Roggio will be showing his support for the shop’s loyal customers by going before the Board of Adjustment in City Hall on Monday, Feb. 18, hoping to appeal the findings.

“We want as many people to show up as they can,” Motowylak said. “That’ll be a huge help.”

For more information or to find out how you can get your name on the tree petition, call 868-3233.

James Johnson can be reached at jamesjohnson@smartnewsnc.com.