Lathed from solid envy, thick with menace, low with conspiracy, wide with mayhem, the DBS Volante sends other motorists into a lane-crossing frenzy as they dive for their cellphones to take pictures.

It’s tremendous fun to run up behind an SUV with adolescent boys in the back and watch as, their noses pressed against the rear window, their little minds become permanently warped with car fever. Their mouths go slack, their eyes spin. The Aston is the end of automotive innocence for them. Xbox will never be the same.

And then, shift down a couple of gears and stomp the throttle: The 6.0-liter V-12 starts murdering air and gas, the tailpipes tear the veil off reason and common sense, and the car . . . just . . . disappears.

Mommy, I want an Aston Martin!

Yep, he writes about cars, and really well, too. I cackle aloud at least once every time I read one of his reviews, and I start hatching get-righ-quick schemes about as often. When Maybach lends him a super-luxury sedan, the Los Angeles Times’ readership is briefly escorted into the plush serenity of a chauffeured ride up Rodeo. We can taste the grit on our tongues when he goes off-road in a four-by-four.

But he doesn’t just write about whipping the latest exotic supercars around mountain roads and German highways for our vicarious thrills. Neil also writes about the economic, environmental, political, and social challenges facing the global car industry and motorists, and as far as I can tell (other than what I read in the Times, I know little about these things), he does it with sophistication, precision, fairness, frankness, and clarity. An impressive acheivement for any critic, and he should be proud of the way he informs his readers about something that matters very much to them in many practical and emotional ways.

Read the whole article quoted above here.

Paul McCartney, Coachella Music and Arts Festival, Friday, April 17, 2009.

My back was about to collapse on itself and my heels felt like the bones were slowly mashing together into jelly, and I was slightly dizzy from dehydration, heat, and hunger, but I was not about to give up my spot 100 feet from the stage. The Black Keys had shredded their speaker cones with sweet feedback, Franz Ferdinand had lay down energetic, melodic dance grooves, and Morrissey had sung beautifully through a grimace induced by the aroma of barbecued meat from across the festival lawn. It had been five hours, and Ben, Mia and I were damned if we were going to budge.

After that long, you have to occasionally crouch down or even sit, if you have enough space, to relieve pressure on your back and joints. I’d say that at 29 I’m finally, or already, starting to give in to the frailties of approaching middle age, but I recall it being the same way when I was 19, and anyway I’m in much better shape these days than I was back then.

But then it lifted as Sir James Paul McCartney MBE, the surviving half of the rock songwriting team before which all others should rightly bow and scrape, strode onstage, fulfilling the best chance I will likely ever have to see pop genius in person, in all its glory. I mean . . . he was a Beatle. (Just a warning: Very soon, I lose any sense of objectivity and you’re about to read the biggest load of soppy gushing I’m likely to ever publish here. If that last sentence doesn’t mean to you what it does to me, or if you want something with more emotional variety, skip to a couple posts ago, when I gripe about sports.)

That’s not to say I expected the best concert I will have ever witnessed. After all, I figured, the man is 66 years old, and he’s surely lost some of the power and range in his voice, hired some technically virtuosic yet clinical touring musicians to back him up, and moves with, let’s say, a bit more leisure than he used to. He might not even play a whole lot of Beatles music.

But then he did.

He started off with some solo music, almost none of which I know very well, or at all. But just a couple of songs in, he played “Drive My Car,” followed soon by “Got To Get You Into My Life,” and shortly thereafter by “The Long And Winding Road” and “Blackbird.” (“Blackbird” was a huge deal to me; that song is one of the friendliest, home-iest things in my life, as my dad’s been playing it since I was a little kid and probably before than, too. Sometime in my twenties, I figured out that he played it a little differently from the record, and now I’m the one showing him how to play music.)

For the first half of his set, he played mostly solo stuff; then came “Eleanor Rigby,” one more solo song, “Band On The Run,” and then a jet engine fired up over the speakers and it was “Back to the U.S.S.R.” From then on, it was all Beatles.

Toward the end of the set, he played “A Day In The Life,” probably my favorite pop song ever written. Unfortunately, he scrapped the final John Lennon-sung movement in favor of a round of “Give Peace A Chance,” totally ruining the song’s balance and structure. But then he played “Let It Be,” which is right now the most affecting and fulfilling song in my life, and I got a little sniffley, and it wasn’t even my allergies or the dust. Even if his lead guitarist got too flashy with the solo.

The encores! It’s like he put his arm around my shoulders and said “You know, I know it’d mean a lot to you if I played this song and this one and that one over there, and I feel like being nice, Rick, so I’m gonna play just what you want to hear.” I mean, I already know every note to these songs. What could I possibly learn from hearing them one more time?

Well, by watching Paul sing them in person, I could realize once again the simple and breathtaking fact that all these songs were composed by a couple of guys younger then than I am now (daaaaang), in a few years in the mid-to-late 1960s. After all, there he was, the mastermind, singing them. And they’re still so good. And so is he: he has lost some range, but the voice is still strong, he can still howl “Helter Skelter,” he moves like a guy 25 years younger. He’s likeable, and mellow, and still cool even though we know he once did “The Girl Is Mine.”

I was even surprised how much I liked most of his solo songs. I have never been a huge fan of the McCartney radio hits, but I think I’m going to have to investigate, now.

I’m not sure how many people remembered that it was the anniversary of Linda McCartney’s death. But then he mentioned it, and I remembered where I was when she died, and all these things flooded back from that spring when I was about to graduate high school, leave home for the first time, go to school in the town she died in (coincidentally), start living something new. And I felt for him, as I think most everyone there did, and I was impressed that rather than spend a quiet evening in and request Saturday instead (I’m sure they would’ve accommodated him), he shared it with an audience. The crowd was warm, and appreciated it.

He played for almost three hours, I think. For a full set list, see this.

In the end, we stood in the same spot for eight hours or so and Ben didn’t get home until around 4 a.m. I camped, and I slept like the dead until the sun and heat woke me the next day at around 7:30. I spent Saturday in an exhausted, sore fugue, except for the Amanda Palmer show (see previous post). But it was completely worth it; after all, I recovered, and I will forever remember having seen a Beatle play the Beatles.

Amanda Palmer at Coachella 2009.

I have liked The Dresden Dolls from the moment I heard them. I think it was in my friend Simone’s car in the Bay Area. Driving through deserted downtown Oakland at night, I remember, she played me a song that built upon a simple melody on a toy piano and turned into a novel, melodically rich, clever take on loneliness (“Coin Operated Boy,” I discovered). Then she played for me “Girl Anachronism,” a much more frantic, anxious song, and I was sold — here was a group that made basic elements (mostly piano and drums) into a unique spectacle by sheer force of great songwriting and forceful performance. But I never got properly into them, save for the occasional listen in other people’s cars; I never bought any of their music, though my sister did.

Then, through Neil Gaiman’s blog, I found Dresden Dolls singer and pianist Amanda Palmer and noticed that she had new solo material out. I saw a video for a song called “Leeds United,” and I loved it. And then I heard she was playing Coachella, and I made a date with myself to see if her performance matched her record.

In a tent where the air must have been close to 100 degrees, after a bit of waiting, “Thus Spake Zarathrustra” boomed from the speakers. About 20 people came onstage, wearing next to nothing, their bodies painted in wild gray and white splashes; then they turned around to reveal Amanda Palmer’s name painted on their backs as Amanda jumped up on her piano bench, silver cape-like thing aflutter, in a majestic pose. She flung it off, sat down, and began playing.

What a show. First of all, she knows how to craft a beautiful, memorable song: I knew next to none of the music, but most of it immediately lodged in my head. Onstage, she is an electromagnet — you cannot give her anything but your undivided attention because the art you’re witnessing is powerful and personal and delivered intensely. Her songs are little melodic poems and stories, moving monologues. I was not at all surprised to learn that she did theater when she was younger; she delivers her songs with the complete immersion of an actor committed to the role, and she has the charisma of a born performer. She commanded that sweltering tent for an hour, with just an electric keyboard and her friend Zoe Keating on cello. She sings often of pain and despair and dysfunction, but the quality of the music and the cathartic satisfaction of her performance gave hope the final say.

She had a great personal rapport with her fans. She chatted between songs about her experiences with British media censorship, her observations on young musicians and young soldiers both playing Guitar Hero half a world apart, and other stories behind her songs. She told one fan, “yes, you can has setlist.” Obviously thrilled with how the show was turning out, she got her laptop and took a picture of herself with the audience in the background, Twittered for posterity.

At the end of the set, she had the audience carry her, in Superman pose, to the back of the crowd on their upraised hands:

Amanda Palmer surfing the crowd, Coachella 2009.

There, she sat on the shoulders of the members of a performance troupe, produced a ukelele, and led a singalong of Radiohead’s “Creep.” She had several hundred people singing about how they’re weirdos and they wish they were special but they don’t belong here, with smiles on their faces, together. It was a touching moment: a choir of misfits momentarily united in vulnerability, sounding joyful to be in a group of kindred spirits. Or maybe everyone was just singing along to a well-known pop song, ironically presented, and the contrast amused them. For me, both were true.

Then she led a parade to an outdoor performance-art stage in the middle of the grounds. She sat on the stage, amid a mob, and received fans with hugs and kisses. She took photos with fans, and was generally very gracious with total strangers. Later, I went to a tent where she was giving autographs and asked her to personalize some presents for people. I listened to one of those presents on the drive home, and I’m even more deeply struck by how thoughtful and inventive and personal and moving a lyricist she is, and by how well she turns interesting musical ideas into songs. Plus, Neil Gaiman and she worked on a book together that comes out soon, and as a huge fan of Mr. Gaiman, I am very much looking forward to this.

Because she was so good and so personable, and because I have been recovering from terrible Coachella dust-ravaged sinuses, I’ve been perusing her Web sites, www.amandapalmer.net and www.whokilledamandapalmer.com. There’s a lot of fun stuff there, lots of insights into the life of a fascinating artist, and a lot of thoughtful commentary on music, art, humor, and lots of other topics. Rather than rehash it all, I’ll just recommend clicking those links (with the obligatory warning that the material you stumble upon will certainly contain salty language and contoversy, and the sites may possible somewhere have images that your boss might not like too much, so look at home).

I got my photo taken with Miss Palmer, and I think I look like a total fanboy geek, but I’m actually just really happy at having just listened to her set. Other people love this photo, I guess. So here it is:

Me and Amanda Palmer, Coachella 2009

Sorry for rotten image quality. I didn’t have my own camera with me, and hadn’t figured out how to wring good photos in weird lighting from the one I did have.

I’ll write more later about the rest of Coachella, but I’m currently enjoying the new-discovery-obsession joy (yes, she counts, even though I knew of her beforehand), and I wanted to share.