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OMG! DFA 1979 Reunite for Coachella 2011!
Coachella, one of North America’s largest music festivals, has announced its lineup. Normally a headlining Kings of Leon festival set wouldn’t register on our radar. But this year, Coachella (a.k.a. the “Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival”) is reuniting once-popular Toronto dance-punk outfit Death From Above 1979. The band called it quits on August 3, 2006 when co-founder Jesse F. Keeler announced via an online forum that he and bandmate Sebastien Grainger had “decided to stop doing the band” in order to pursue other projects, like MSTRKRFT and Sebastien Grainger & The Mountains. Plenty of folks, including us, were crushed.
DFA 1979, the original version.
The band’s reunion is bound to drum up some excitement for fans of the group’s unique blend of dance and punk. And Coachella has a history of throwing a bunch of money at bands in hopes of getting them to reunite. In 2002, the fest brought Iggy and the Stooges back together. In 2004, the Pixies buried the hatchet to perform. In 2007: Rage Against the Machine, as well as the Jesus and Mary Chain. 2008: The Verve, Love and Rockets, and Swervedriver. In 2010, Pavement, Orbital, and Public Image Limited got back together. Now DFA 1979. Whoop-de-doo.
History suggests that the Coachella gig won’t be a one-off. In the past, the bands brought together by the fest—having suckled at the teat of reunion tour grosses—end up kicking around the continent, often for a never-ending rerun of hits passed uninterrupted by the recording of new material (see: the Pixies). History (plus cynicism) also suggests that this reunion is just another facile attempt for Coachella to bankroll enough money and cachet to get The Smiths back together.
In 2005, Morrissey revealed that the band had been offered a whopping five million dollars to reunite for Coachella for one set, which he smugly refused, nose-upturned, in the classic Morrissey fashion we’ve come to love to hate. In 2009, rumours continued to circulate that the jangly Brit-pop icons would play Coachella, which guitarist Johnny Marr later dismissed as “rubbish.” As Coachella’s silly reunion agenda becomes more and more obvious, and as their lineup edges closer to mainstream Top 40 blandness (last year the fest had Leonard Cohen and Throbbing Gristle, this year has Kanye and Kings of Leon), the festival’s irrelevance becomes more and more obvious.
But in any event, DFA 1979 is back. And we’re sure some of you are very excited about it. But don’t go booking a flight to California just yet. Chances are they’ll be back in Toronto in no time.