The Killers to headline Coachella 2009?

The official Coachella board is going nuts with 2009 lineup speculation at the moment.

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EDIT 1/18: Okay more information from the official Coachella board- it's looking more likely that they will be there, but on Saturday since that is the only open day in their tour schedule:

04.16.2009	Phoenix, AZ	Dodge Theatre
04.17.2009 4.18.2009	Las Vegas Coachella???	The Joint
04.19.2009	San Jose, CA	Event Center at San Jose
04.22.2009	Seattle, WA	WaMu Theater at Qwest Field Events Center

Indio is apparently only 4 hours from Las Vegas so this is very likely. However, this puts the question of whether the Killers will headline under even more scrutiny- will the Killers really headline a Saturday? The day Prince and Radiohead have headlined before? But then to that I would say Coldplay also headlined the same day, at a time when they had the same amount of albums as the Killers right now, so this is not impossible in the least. Some on the board are predicting that the Killers will be listed as intial headliners and then later on a bigger surprise headliner will be announced and added above them. This happened last year when Portishead were originally named Saturday headliners and later Prince was announced and placed above them.

One more thing- I'm sick of people on that board saying that the Killers will not attract an audience or sell tickets. I'm not going to create a username and argue, but all I have to say is-

1. Their Madison Square Garden show sold out almost immediately. Both two years ago and a couple months ago. Even in their $$-costing fanclub presale! Literally one minute and gone for the latter.
2. and most important- the Killers have had no dates in Southern California throughout any of the three legs of the US tour that have been announced so far- there were a few in San Francisco, one now in San Jose, but NOTHING in any part of Southern California! And they have a huge following in L.A. (I should know. Quickly sold out Staples Center), not to mention the rest of the region. These people haven't seen them in two years and are dying to, so you can damn straight bet that they will haul ass to Indio just to see them headline. Alright? Alright.

/END EDIT
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One of the most buzzed about bands for potential headliner is, oh, what would you know- The Killers! Some boardies are saying they have had unofficial confirmations... and the writer of Consequence of Sound is claiming he got a confirmation from a source that requested to stay anonymous. All together it sounds pretty legit. I mean just look at the album art for Day & Age above- as my meticulous editing shows, it is practically a foreshadowing of a Coachella set.

Granted, just about everyone on that board (except the awesome person who started this thread) is bitching about the possibility of the Killers headlining. I bet none of them has ever seen them live. But after reading all of their nasty comments, I almost don't want the Killers to headline... I don't want them to be the laughing stock of music blogs and hipsters all over the US in the coming months. Really, no. There has been enough of that already. They don't deserve to experience the exhilaration of a Killers concert.

... Obviously I do personally think the Killers should headline and can pull it off in a huge way. But the haters at Coachella can be so vicious and I don't want them to have to deal with that shit. And what if the hipster crowd just stands and stares blankly during the whole concert? Yeah, I can just envision them doing that right now. It would ruin everything. That kind of crowd isn't meant for Killers concerts. It's just not right when people aren't singing every word and jumping along.

My teensy little hope is that, if the Killers do headline one night, they end up blowing everyone away and squash all the nay-sayers. However, I have enough experience with this band to know that is not likely to happen... indie snobs won't even give them the chance to impress them- most will just write them off before they even arrive at Indio. Just because they're played on KROQ. Or something stupid like that. Oh indie snobs, why must you be so pathetic.

Anyway. How do these videos on their own not make this band worthy of a headlining spot in Coachella? Someone Explain to me, please. From T in the Park 2007 (in Scotland, where crowds know how to go properly insane for a band, damnit)

All These Things That I've Done:



Enterlude & When You Were Young:



I rest my case.

So, if the Killers want to stay safe, they should avoid the headlining spot. Maybe be sub-headliners instead and later possibly-maybe be singled out for stealing the show (again, doubtful, but for some reason more likely as sub's). But if they want to take a risk- which they have done far too many times than is healthy already- they should dive in and headline. Why not. Prove those assholes wrong. And even if they don't change any snobs' opinions and the audience is completely unresponsive and leads to a flat set... even then, at least they didn't cower at the possibility of being ridiculed. As long as they try their best they will be, in my opinion, phenomenal. All the snobs whining that there better be a good band in the Sahara tent during the Killers set will eat their hearts out for missing them.

Now, let's wait and see what Coachella and the Killers have up their sleeves... expect a lineup announcement sometime in the next few weeks!

Finding the Hipster Connections

Join me on this great journey through the fabled and whimsical lands of the hipsters...

You might think hipsters are randomly dispersed and have no correlations to each other (because that wouldn't be cool), but then you would be fiercely mistaken. If you thought that. So. Here I shall unfold connections between the following subjects:

-Phantom Planet
-BlackBlack
-M83
-Sixteen Candles & Pretty in Pink & Breakfast Club
-The Cobrasnake

Get ready to have your mind blown. Alright, it's actually not that big of a deal at all. But this has taken years of Cobrasnake.com-stalking to figure out so I'm quite proud. In an embarrassed sort of way, anyway.

So once upon a time, about four or more years ago, I discovered this lil' website called The Cobrasnake, where Mark "the Cobrasnake" took pictures of hipsters in their prehistoric forms and posted them online. Prehistoric because it was before the threshold point that took place somewhere around 2006/2007 when the hipster style spilled out from Cinespace and such underground hipster-infested night clubs into the hungry mouth of the mainstream. The mainstream, that vicious beast, got tired of the "boho" (eww, remember that?) hippy style and also tired of the later quasi-boho Rachel-Zoe/anorexic-coke-addict/denim-mini-loose-top-vest-huge-sunglasses combo... and devoured the new hipster trend. And, behold, seas of neon wayfarers and bright skinny jeans took over the streets. This is not really important to the aforementioned "connections"... it's just background. To add richness.

So, back to those early prehistoric days... before Cory Kennedy's dirty hair ever graced our eyes... there was this odd girl on the Cobrasnake. She had a young face, kind of pretty in an awkward model sort of way, and she was incredibly lanky and such. Here she is, back in the day, the giantess in the middle:



Notice also a younger Mark the Cobrasnake there in the far left, with a huge jewfro. Nice. Watch that picture carefully because that's the hipster style before hipster was a widely used slur. It still had the annoying sporty vibe...but it was more innocent, don't you think? More prehistoric hipster styles can be found where that picture came from:

Polaroid Scene

... which was Mark's website before he started the Cobrasnake. Luckily he hasn't removed it, so we can indulge in comparing and contrasting old hipster vs. new hipster.

But I digress. AGAIN. Ugh, it's so hard for me to stay on track sometimes. So, this was around the time that I obsessively read Elle Girl (RIP), aka the most amazing magazine to ever exist. Anyway, the magazine had some sort of young talent feature spread and in the section for bands, they featured a lil' band called BlackBlack. It featured Alex Greenwald, the singer in Phantom Planet, whom I recognized back then- probably because they sang the theme to the OC. Or something. Then with him was a girl about my age (back then) with short hair, and an older girl WHO WAS THE AWKWARD GIRL FROM THE COBRASNAKE. Mhmm, connections. Remember, keep track. The mini-article said that Alex, the Phantom Planet singer guy, was dating Diva Dompe (real name I think is probably Diva Haskins. Who knows.) aka lanky Cobrasnake girl. And the young girl was Lola Dompe or Lola Haskins- Diva Dompe's little sister. All three of them created this sorta-band BlackBlack. Sorta because Alex was already in Phantom Planet so how serious can it be, right? Here they are, all three of them together:



And here are only Diva Dompe and Alex Greenwald, in case you're still skeptical:



Oh, look! A hipster picnic in the background. Yay.

Something sweet about the pseudo-band is that they like to dress up in different themes for their performances:



Not so sure what the theme is in that one... Lola is wearing a flower heandband in the background. Oh- by the way- Lola is the drummer, Diva is the guitarist/singer, and then I don't even know what Alex does. Is he also the guitarist/singer? I don't remember and I can't bother to look through the Cobrasnake archives to find out. It was enough to find the photos I'm posting now!

About... maybe three or four years ago, I was watching some indie video show on TV (believe it or not, there are two- which no one knows about because they play at like 3 am (yay Tivo!)- they are Subterranean on MTV2 and The Dive on Fuse. So I was watching one of those and a video by an indie band called M83 started, and who should be featured in it but DIVA DOMPE, lanky cobrasnake girl herself, Alex Greenwald, her boyfriend, and little Lola too! And what do you think, of course you can see the video for yourself, right here. It's called ""Don't Save Us From the Flames" and I actually quite liked it, although it was pretty strange:



See, she just kept popping out at me, it's not my fault! It's like I was meant to find all these connections! Or something.

But that is not where the story ends. Oh no. So these people have kept showing up on the Cobrasnake throughout the years. They are Cobrasnake fixtures. Here are some pictures from just a few weeks ago-

Diva:



Lola:



But it's still not over. So recently- like two weeks ago- I was innocently scrolling through Stereogum, minding my own business, when this post showed up about a new M83 music video for the song "Graveyard Girl". I was intrigued, so I started watching it, and imagine my surprise...



Yes, that is Lola! That is Lola in that video and so not only does he put Diva in his first video, but now he puts the young Lola in his new one, and he makes me feel like a stalker. Damn him. So yeah, that's the connection web right there. Oh, the Pretty in Pink/Sixteen Candles/Breakfast Club thing is because that's the theme in the "Graveyard Girl" video with Lola. By the way, both girls are simply gorgeous in their respective videos. That's totally outside of my general tone in this post, but I've just got to put that out there!

One final touch to this long and pointless story- Lola and Diva are the daughters of Kevin Haskins, the drummer in the classic British rock group Bauhaus. Their mom (his wife) is named Pamela Dompe. I just found that out now from his Wikipedia. Well now we know where the Dompe/Haskins confusion comes from.

And that is the end of the epic journey. I hope you learned something. Because I sure didn't. Ha ha.

Crotchless Illusions

Alexander McQueen has created some *scandalous* tights and leotard-type-things for his Resort 2009 collection. Maybe they are an "F you" to hipsters who wear these things (have you ever noticed the word "tard" is in leotard? There is a reason for that. Unless we're talking about ballet of course. They have no choice). Or maybe he's joining in on the hype, albeit quite late. Anyway, behold:





The rest of the collection can be seen here.

And here are pictures of the new Alexander McQueen store in L.A., via Kanye West's picture-ful blog.

Cory

So, Cory Kennedy.



I just watched a random video of her on Nylon's Youtube channel and decided to look for some old pictures of her again. I think it was 2005 when I first saw her pop up in the Cobrasnake with her friend. They were "interns." Ha, suuure. I used to stalk that website and was fascinated by the hipsters... you know, before they started infesting every corner of L.A. Oh innocent, naive youth!

Anyway, she always fascinated me. She was (is) pretty much the same age as me. But she looked a lot older, and dressed a lot, well, if not necessarily older what with the messy hair and the messy everything, at least a lot more originally and stylishly. I just remember looking at pictures of her hanging out at exclusive 21+ Downtown LA parties, or frolicking with a 22-year-old hipster dude (Mark the Cobrasnake) around the Santa Monica beach. And I just thought, wow. I can never be that cool. I'm still not that cool. And I still, despite Nylon magazine and every other hipster-hungry media/brands' greatest efforts to overexpose her... I still think she's special.

Okay, maybe I liked her a lot more back then. The disheveled, young rebel look was intriguing to me- I had never seen anything like it before. She was only sixteen and she looked better than all the poseurs well into their 20's and 30's on Cobrasnake...



But then, you know. She got a little older. More famous and sought-after. For some reason the clothes just don't work as well as they used to.





She started pissing me off by hanging out with my luva, Andrew Vanwyngarden of MGMT. And, just, generally giving off a bit of a lame-o groupie vibe.




[source]

But I'm sure she's still pretty cool. We'll see what happens with her. She's starting to "sell out," if you even believe in the term, by promoting random products:



Her deep voice is always so unexpected. But anyways, at least she's a little real- not like people who are all like, "ohmigod! This prodcut is sooo great!" She knows she's shilling for this random thing and at least she tried to be genuine. I like the part about how the foam looks like whipped cream. That's something I would like, too. So she's still got it going on, somewhat. But we'll see.

She should stop blogging though. Not that I'm Shakespeare or anything, but, damn. It feels like she's just name-dropping (or photo-dropping?) random celebs left and right. Like, "look how cool my life is." We know, Cory! Now show us some actual opinions, por favor. Thanks.

P.S. This girl, whatever her name is, is trying to be the new Cory Kennedy. Here's another picture of her. And here. It's not gonna work, biatch.