This is the moment you all have been waiting for….the official Coachella 2009 Award banquet. The process was tedious with over 500 potential winning but here is the official selections:

Best Dressed: Devendra Banhart

Best Glasses: Art’s Orange Shades

Woman who Stole my Heart: Raver girl at Throbbing Gristle

Best Raver Crew: Homeboys/girls from Malibu

Best Pose: Arthur before Friendly Fires

Best Nair Polish: Blondie Woman (this is for you, JP)

Best Passed Out Couple in Love: 11:30 pm couple

Best Headband: AK – Fam (nuff said)

Best Hat: Buffalo Season

Best Penis on a Windshield: Poor Guy who owns this car

Best Prop to Trip Out at: Malibu Blue Grow Tube

Best Crowd Prop: A flying Dolphin

Best Shirt: Self Explanatory

Best Congo Player: Tinariwen

Best Surprise Band of the Weekend: Throbbing Gristle

Most Wasted: Guy did not open his eyes or ash his cigarette the whole time

Runner Up Best Wasted Couple in Love: 10:30 Saturday Night Couple

Most Guitarist on Stage for one Band: Brian Jamestown Massacre at 5 Guitarist

Hottest Woman Ever: Belinda of MBV

Best Man Made Flower:

Happiest Band Member: Tinariwen

Happiest Guy in the Sahara Tent: MRoyed

Best Guitar Duo: Superchunk

Happiest to See me: Ebee

Best Crowd Shot: Amanda Palmer singing “Creep” after crowd surfing to the back

Coolest Art Exhibit: Artificial Lightning

Best Art Exhibit: The Flaming Dragon

You know, it can really hurt but in that good way you know will be so worth it.

At night one of three at the Steve Allen Theater, there were times I thought I’d have to flee. This was the third(ish) time I saw Akron perform. I say (ish) because the first time I hardly remember due to reasons involving awful sound and intense heat. The second time I remember vividly, but it was a tribute show and they played only a few songs, none of which were their own.

Night one grew particularly intense when Miles taped a microphone to a metal folding chair and took drumsticks to it while Seth played some sort of flute and Dana… I don’t even know what he was doing. The combination pierced through my eardrums and picked at my skull until it reached my defenseless brain with its claws out. They did something similar on night two and it ripped my mind, tongue, eyes, everything… out and my body stood there with its innards watching beside it transfixed by sound.

I was nothing but nerves. All my insides exposed. I would have cried if forced to speak. And then they slowed, and softened. They sang about the sun or sadness, something soothing.

With my demons exorcised, they lulled me in with them to that space where I don’t have to think and I was overwhelmed by the feeling that somehow everything was going to be okay.  They broke me down and built me right back up, over and again… no pain, no gain?

But what makes Akron so different from any other live musical experience, because they were/are/will always be, is the following which I will try my best to describe though I know it will only give a suggestion of what I really felt as words are only painfully inadequate symbols of ideas:

I had a moment watching Miles sing when it occurred to me that while nothing about our existence makes sense, the very truth of that allows us to make of this what we want. People, places, time, events are all orbiting around us waiting to be dove into. To be swam around in. Mixed together. Jumped back out of. There are layers we cannot see beneath this one and we can peel it off if we choose to.

And that is what it is about live music for me.

Akron Family – “Woody Guthrie’s America” from Capt. AKAK on Vimeo.

**** I was under the influence of nothing aside from Akron/Family… seriously ****