Coachella Recap: Sunday, April 30

Despite an impressively high-wattage amount of Sunday star power this year (the first performance by Tool in nearly half a decade, an equally rare appearance by reclusive trip-hop pioneers Massive Attack, a surprisingly intimate side-stage set by easy-listening chart-topper James Blunt, a career-making performance by Hassidic reggae wunderkind Matisyahu), day two of the 2006 Coachella Music & Arts Festival was for all intents and purposes Madonna Day. Ever since it was announced that the leotarded diva would grace not the main stage but the comparatively teeny-tiny dance tent for her first-ever festival performance, the subsequent megahype and seriously out of control Craigslist ticket-scalping proved this would be the Coachella event to end all Coachella events. The re-emergence of the Beastie Boys and Iggy & the Stooges in 2003, the Pixies reunion of 2004, Bauhaus's Peter Murphy dangling from the ceiling in a vampire-bat costume, the Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne crowd-surfing inside a clear plastic bubble...not even these memorable moments of Coachellas past could possibly compare with a chance to see the one-and-only Divine Mizz M on a scaled-down stage previously reserved for techno headliners like Fatboy Slim and Basement Jaxx.

However, Mrs. Richie wasn't scheduled to justify all that Coachella love until 8:10 p.m. (or more specifically, 8:33 p.m., according to this impatient writer's wristwatch), so Sunday's lineup was packed with plenty of worthy distractions leading up to the main event. Highlights included Australia's Youth Group (featuring moonlighting Vines bassist Patrick Matthews) winning over the early-afternoon crowd with a unexpectedly un-ironic cover of Alphaville's goopy prom ballad "Forever Young"; fey Frenchies Phoenix rocking the Gobi Tent with "Too Young" (even more entertaining than when

Bill Murray warbled it in Lost In Translation); British brother/sister act the Magic Numbers warming up the uninitiated but highly receptive main-stage audience with their sunshiny harmonies; and post-punk press darlings Bloc Party unveiling some stunningly good new tunes to quickly quash any rumors of an impending sophomore slump.

But there were really only two Sunday acts that had any chance of upstaging Madonna. First was the avant hip-hop duo of Cee-Lo and Danger Mouse--aka the superhyped Gnarls Barkley--whose Gobi Tent spectacle swiftly let any out-of-towners attending Coachella know they weren't in Kansas anymore. They kicked off their brain-boggling Wizard Of Oz-themed showcase (witnessed by noted fan

Danny DeVito, incidentally) by strutting onstage to the strains of Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon intro "Breathe," Cee-Lo resplendent in a Cowardly Lion outfit, sidekick Danger Mouse dressed as the Tin Man. Accompanying this dynamic duo were a colorful cast of characters that included a string quartet of Flying Monkeys, a bevy of Dorothy and Scarecrow backup singers, and a band of Wicked Witches. And while the sweltering, sweaty heat inside the triple-packed tent had many suffering spectators on the verge of howling, "I'm melting, I'm melting," it was still a truly magical, over-the-rainbow event.

The only other band able to steal any of Madonna's seemingly un-steal-able thunder was the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, whose Karen O once again proved she is just as much a femme-fetale superstar as Madge. Hair shorn in a Joan Of Arc bowl cut, face smeared with Adam Ant warpaint, lanky frame wrapped in sequins, slashed harlequin tights, and a puzzling batik romper (only this chick can rock a tie-dyed skort and an Emo Phillips bob and still look cool), Karen took total command of the main stage, even writhing around on the floor like Madonna in her "Lucky Star" heyday.

But it was soon clear that Madonna's heyday is far from over, because the minute the YYYs finished their set, pretty much all 60,000 or so Coachella attendees (including

Nicole Richie and

Andy Dick) began their mass migration to the dance tent on the far end of the field. It was the Million Madonna March, so to speak. Concertgoers were fleeing the nearby sets by the unfortunate Editors and Mogwai (who are probably firing their booking agents right about now) with such urgency, one might have assumed there had been a bomb threat. Soon the idea of the biggest female pop star of the past 25 years playing the dance tent--rather than the more suitable main stage, which oddly remained dark and vacant during Madonna's set--seemed foolish rather than cool. Despite the fact that the tent had been built out to be roughly one-third larger than usual and was now flanked by helpful giant video screens for the vision-impaired (i.e., everyone who wasn't in the front row, in this case), the tent still couldn't accommodate an audience as massive and enthusiastic as this. Desperate fans began climbing on top of the porta-potties in hope of catching a clearer glimpse of their idol, refusing to budge when the beefed-up security staff tried to yank them down or even when the AndyGumps' flimsy plastic roofs started to buckle under their weight. (Talk about a crappy concert experience!) And when the woman of the hour--as noted previously--was still nowhere to be seen 20 minutes after her advertised set time, and the crowd began to get restless, ominous visions of the Who in Cincinnati and other infamous concert disasters raced through this worried writer's mind.

But such dark thoughts were quickly brushed aside as soon as Madonna finally got the party started. Ditching her disappointingly mumsy, English-socialite-at-teatime persona and instead looking like a post-makeover Sandy from Grease in her blonde Farrah flip, Goldfinger complexion, wraparound shades, and skintight black leather biker outfit, she gloriously basked in the refractive glow of both an enormous Studio 54 mirrorball and the audience's adoration. The Queen of Coachella kicked off her set with "Hung Up" and from that moment on truly put on the show of shows. She crawled, slow-mo and pantherlike, along the stage's edge. She engaged in a good old-fashioned dance-off with a backup dancer during "Get Together." (She won, by the way.) She strummed a single open chord on a black Les Paul during "Ray Of Light" (sure, she's no Jimmy Page, but she sure looked cool with a guitar slung around her neck) while an army of silver-jumpsuited dancers vogued behind her. "Should I take my pants off?" she queried rhetorically before stripping off to one of her trademark leotards, declaring, "It's too hot to wear clothes!" and then asking the audience if her ass looked OK in such form-fitting Lycra. (It did, by the way. It looked very OK.) And she closed her all-too-short set with her classic early-'80s Danceteria anthem "Everybody," as confetti and glitter rained down from the desert night sky.

True, Madonna threw a bit of a kink into this year's Coachella: The record crowd she drew led not only to caved-in porta-potties but to an agonizing three-hour wait to exit a parking lot that resembled a monster truck rally pile-up. But to those who can say they were there, it was worth it. The Coachella organizers are really going to have a tough time topping themselves in 2007.