When it comes to New England talent, this year’s Coachella is more like No-chella.
As the massive Southern California music and arts festival gets set to kick off its first weekend on Friday with performances by AC/DC, Ride, Tame Impala, Interpol, Steely Dan, and a few dozen others, there is one glaring black hole on its 2015 lineup: Of the 164 bands and artists playing Coachella 2015, there are none repping New England.
And a new interactive map by Vanessa Franko of the Press Enterprise in California’s Riverside County really hammers this point home. There’s no Passion Pit, there’s no Speedy Ortiz, no Dropkicks or Pixies or Bad Rabbits or the Bosstones or J Mascis or Juliana Hatfield or whoever else.
“When Steely Dan is the closest thing to New England, that’s weird,” Franko tells Vanyaland.
Here’s a look:
Hell, if Steely Dan is out there repping the musical hotbed of Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, why not get Aerosmith or J. Geils Band up in the big font mix?
As Franko notes in her Press Enterprise piece, the United Kingdom and Los Angeles dominate the artist’ origins once again this year, which is no surprise, and other strong pockets of representation include New York City and Australia. Even Idaho gets in on the action with Built To Spill. Halifax, Nova Scotia has Ryan Hemsworth, and Hawaii will dance it up to DJ Harvey.
Based on Franko’s research in pinning artist origins to a specific place on a map, New England as a whole has been slipping since 2013, when Moby (“technically from Connecticut,” says Franko), Dinosaur Jr, Dropkick Murphys, and Passion Pit all played in the desert. Last year there were three artists with ties to our region: Neko Case, TJR, and MGMT.
This year? Zilch. At least we have each other.
