The time I played Coachella
and how a 0.04mm nudge has haunted me for almost 2 decades
The year is 2007. Myspace is nearing its peak at around 115 million US users. iCarly debuts on Nickelodeon. The Dow Jones Industrial Average hits an all-time high of 14,164 before beginning to decline ahead of the start of the late-2000s recession. The first iPhone is released in the U.S.
…and I played at motherfuckin COACHELLA.
10pm on the Gobi stage. Insane time slot. And I was more than ready; fresh off a year of playing 5 nights a week to packed arenas with Blue Man Group - there were times I would perform sets on no sleep or with a 102° fever. Locked in, as they say.
I had played other big festivals before, but Coachella was a whole other beast. Even back then, there was an undeniable mystic about it. Even if you didn’t know anything about music festivals, you knew what Coachella was. And seeing my name on that lineup is still bonkers to me.
Alright, enough with the humblebrags. I’m writing this to help come to terms with the needle skip that has haunted me for almost 2 decades. It happens 23 seconds into this clip [shout out to Beau Smith for not only filming this, but keeping it up for 17 years!]:
Would you have noticed if I didn’t point it out? Maybe not. Hold on, did I just Streisand effect myself? Shit.
Just to break down what’s going on there - I’m using a DVD turntable to scratch the Office Space clip over a Missy Elliot instrumental that is playing on an actual record. The diamond-tipped needle (the best ever, Shure M44-7) tracks grooves that are anywhere from 0.04-0.08mm in width.
0.04 MILLIMETERS. That’s like tightrope walking on dental floss.
It’s a miracle that you could play records outdoors on a bouncy stage, let alone scratch them.
This is a microscopic view of a record being played:
When “the skip” happened, it was like time stood still. I remember reaching over to turn down the bass, as that often caused the needle to jump since festival sound systems can damn near cause earthquakes and the stages were hollow. I could tell from the vibration under my feet that I was really pushing the limits of what the needle could take, and of course I went too far. For a split second, I thought of starting that routine over, but that would have derailed things even further. That moment felt like an eternity. I remember going into autopilot as I brought myself back down to earth.
The rest of the set went off without a hitch. The sight and sound of that ginormous tent full of people is burned in my memory. But so is that damn record skip! Why do I do this to myself? I’ve had records skip on me more times than I could possibly count. If you’re a turntablist, it’s a part of the game.
And no, I’m not a perfectionist. I like the messiness that happens on stage, it makes things feel human. I’ve met a lot of self proclaimed perfectionists - and none of them have perfected anything.
I sat down to write this because it’s Coachella week and I can’t help but think of my own experience. This whole essay was going to be waxing poetic about how ridiculous it was that since 1973, DJs played music on spinning discs with needles gliding on microscopic grooves the width of a human hair, blasting through gigantic chest-thumping sound systems. Needles must be carefully balanced; you can’t just add more weight to make them not skip. It’s damn near supernatural that any of this worked for as long as it did (now everything is digital, so no skips for the most part).
But a weird thing happened as I watched this clip for the first time since it was posted - I realized that all these years, I was too busy dwelling on the skip that I never stopped to appreciate that EVERYTHING WAS FINE 5 SECONDS LATER.
5 seconds. That’s .18% of the total set.
“Don’t sweat the small stuff” is a concept I clearly have yet to grasp. But maybe it’s because I’ve spent the majority of my life relying on microscopic events happening literally under my fingertips. By now, my brain is hardwired to sweat the small stuff.
All that said, if I could go back and fix the skip, I 10000% would not. It’s a reminder that I went up there without a net.
Live performances should have variations and imperfections. Singers should catch their breath or forget a lyric. Drummers should play faster from sheer adrenaline. And records should skip every once in a while.
Otherwise, what’s the point of a live show?