The Pixies' Frank Black performs at 2004 Coachella festival
Photo: John Shearer

INDIO, California — After two days of 100-degree temperatures and enormous crowds, it was hard to blame concertgoers who left before the Cure's Coachella-closing performance Sunday, especially since it seemed the band had already taken the stage a good dozen times during the weekend.

Call it Curechella, as several of the 100 acts who gathered at the picturesque palm-tree-lined Empire Polo Fields for the fifth Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival clearly wore their Cure influences on their black dress shirt sleeves. Not that there were pure imitators, but the festival certainly showcased heavier versions (Thursday), dancier versions (the Rapture) and garagier versions (Elefant) of the second night's headliners.

(Click for photos.)

Paying homage seemed to be the theme of Coachella. Saturday featured two significantly influential bands in the Pixies and Kraftwerk, while Radiohead certainly had other bands on the bill out of their trailers and into the sun-drenched fields.

Beck even asked to join the bill because he wanted to come check out the lineup, and Anthony Kiedis and Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers were among the first fans through the gates Sunday to catch (and join onstage) the weekend's other reunion, Los Angeles indie-rock legends Thelonious Monster.

	Photos: Beck, Radiohead and more perform at the 2004 Coachella Valley Music Festival

Coachella's promoters also credited the influential headliners with the festival's first sold-out weekend. Attendance estimates ranged from 50,000 to 60,000, far more than last year's previous high of 33,000.

While the crowds made navigating the five stages more difficult than in previous years, and the heat was taxing, MTV News' reporters managed to catch most of the performances. Here are some highlights:

• If the Cure were the sound of Coachella, then the Pixies were the talk of the festival. Before their early-evening performance on Saturday, it was all about debating where the best place to take in the show would be, and after, it was echoes of the same compliment: "They sounded so good!" The only people not talking about the Pixies were the Pixies themselves, who kept the chitchat to a minimum and instead tore through an hour-long set of fan favorites.

• In what was billed as Radiohead's only North American gig of 2004, the band treated fans to a rare performance of "Creep" during the encore. Forced to cancel a show in Australia a week earlier because of a throat problem, Thom Yorke strained on the opening notes of "There There," but the band found its footing fast and played a typically sturdy set.

• Coachella ran like clockwork until the final main-stage act, the Cure, who took the stage about 25 minutes late. Few seemed to mind, however, as Robert Smith (in his signature all-black clothes and white makeup) led his band through a mix of favorites, like "Love Song" and "Fascination Street," and tracks from the Cure's upcoming self-titled release, including first single "End of the World."

• Both the Pixies' Kim Deal and Death Cab for Cutie told their respective crowds, "We'll see you later at the Kraftwerk set," at the end of their shows. The visually striking electronic-music pioneers, dressed in matching black suits and crimson red shirts, created a robotic utopia with laptops and vintage synthesizers inside one of the festival's three massive tents.

• Beck, who headlined the first Coachella, caused a mob scene at the smallest stage of the festival with his 11th-hour addition, with thousands of fans relegated to the outskirts of the tent trying to snag a glimpse of the singer. After opening with the Mutations tune "Cold Brains," Beck said he had no plans for the performance and began to take requests. The singer's improvisational set included a new song — which he forgot the lyrics to — and a bluesy Kinks cover.

• As Beck strummed slow jams in a neighboring tent, Junior Senior wooed stragglers with a set that could not have been more different. While throwing the biggest party of Coachella, the Danish band busted through one new-wave-inspired dance tune after another with the help of guest vocalist Fred Schneider of the B-52's. A shirtless Har Mar Superstar also joined the band for their cover of Salt-N-Pepa's version of "Twist and Shout," showing off the same dance moves he used against Ben Stiller in "Starsky & Hutch."

• In perhaps the festival's oddest and most jubilant moment, the Flaming Lips commenced their set with graying singer Wayne Coyne entering a gigantic bubble and attempting to walk overtop the crowd. Afterward, Coyne said, "I had a dream a few weeks ago that I would descend on Coachella from a bubble in outer space." For their encore, the Lips coerced the crowd into singing "Happy Birthday" to Beck and the child he is expecting.

• "It's good to be home again," Queens of the Stone Age's Josh Homme said during the first live appearance by his Desert Sessions, a collective that meets near Coachella for sporadic improvisational recording sessions. Homme sang several of the psychedelic jams, while the Screaming Trees' Mark Lanegan and the Distillers' Brody Dalle also joined in.

• Perry Farrell, the only artist to perform at every Coachella, kept his streak alive with DJ sets both afternoons, mixing a range of electronic styles with his own singing.

• With swarms of fans (including Adam Brody of "The O.C.") reverently singing along with every word, Death Cab for Cutie's copiously attended set felt more like a Dashboard Confessional show.

• Toronto collective Broken Social Scene's set culminated in one of the festival's most moving moments when guitarist John Crossingham proposed to his stunned girlfriend in front of an elated audience.

For more sights and stories from concerts around the country, check out MTV News Tour Reports.

• The Cure
• The Pixies
• Radiohead
• Kraftwerk
• The Flaming Lips

Radiohead's Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood (file)
Photo: Wire Image

Organizers have confirmed one of the worst-kept secrets in music — that Radiohead, German electronic quartet Kraftwerk and the newly reunited Pixies will headline the first night of the two-day Coachella music festival on May 1 in Indio, California.

Last year's festival was headlined by the Beastie Boys and Red Hot Chili Peppers and included performances by the White Stripes, the Stooges, Ben Harper, Queens of the Stone Age, Underworld, N.E.R.D. and approximately 70 other bands (see "Iggy, Beasties, White Stripes Lead Three-Pronged Invasion At Coachella").

Modeled after eclectic European festivals like Glastonbury and Reading, the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival features a diverse lineup of rock, hip-hop and dance artists. Taking heed of the Woodstock concerts staged in 1994 and 1999, Coachella organizers have made a point of providing concertgoers with plenty of space and easy access to amenities like restrooms and water.

Barring the announcement of other concerts preceding Coachella, the festival will mark the first show for the Pixies since the highly influential post-punk quartet imploded 11 years ago (see "Pixies To Reunite For Tour, Album").

Kraftwerk, meanwhile, are regarded as even more influential. Their melodic, electronic compositions inspired the creation of entire genres of music, including house, techno and — as Afrika Bambaataa demonstrated with his classic "Planet Rock" — hip-hop. Kraftwerk resurfaced in 1999 to release a new single, "Expo 2000," and last year reworked their song "Tour De France" into an entire album.

Coachella organizers are still finalizing contracts with dozens of other bands, including headliners for the festival's second day.

• Radiohead
• The Pixies
• Kraftwerk

Neu! circa 1972
Photo: Peter Lindbergh/Neu

What's old is Neu! again, as the 1970s German electronic-rock duo are releasing their massively influential first three albums for the first time in the United States May 1, on Astralwerks.

Founded in the Krautrock hotbed of 1971 Düsseldorf, Germany, by Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger, Neu! were among the leaders of the German experimental-music movement that included artists such as Kraftwerk, Can and Amon Düül. These bands challenged the boundaries of the rock form by adding electronic instrumentation, employing unconventional song structures and emphasizing a new style of groove based on extended repetition and an oddly syncopated rhythm that became known as "motorik." Formed after Rother and Dinger left an early incarnation of Kraftwerk, Neu! recorded their self-titled debut in just four days, ironically with Kraftwerk producer/engineer Conny Plank. The album's processed effects and freeform jams established a prototype for electronic funk of every stripe to come in its wake. Neu! 2, despite just 20 minutes of newly recorded material (due to limited expenses), formed another cornerstone of the techno realm. These tracks were altered in the studio — sped up and slowed down, among other effects — to form new variations, thereby creating enough songs for a full album and, arguably, inventing the remix.

Although the duo disbanded after the second album, with Rother forming the proto-ambient outfit Harmonia with Dieter Moebius and Joachim Roedelius (of Cluster), they reunited to record Neu! 75, which meshed electronic minimalist templates with somersaulting walls of chugging guitar textures. The roots of contemporary artists from a myriad of scenes can be traced back to the early German experimental era, and although Kraftwerk and Can are regularly given lip-service as inspiration, Neu! are the secret weapon in the Krautrock artillery. From Mouse on Mars' Teutonic eclecticism to Sonic Youth's discordant shards of melodic guitar beauty to David Bowie's '70s drone — he has said Neu! influenced "Station to Station" — to, perhaps most notably, Stereolab's expansive song structures and motorik rhythms, Neu!'s reach is both deep and wide. A section of "Jenny Ondioline," from Stereolab's 1993 opus Transient Random-Noise Bursts With Announcements, is a clear-cut ode to "Hallogallo," from Neu!'s first album, while "Metronomic Underground," the opener on 1996's Mars Audiac Quintet, undeniably mines Neu! territory. Similarly, the fragile frayed edges of "After Eight," from Neu! 75, wouldn't be out of place on a Sonic Youth's late-'80s masterpiece such as Evol or Sister. Neu! reunited to record Neu! 4 in the mid-'80s, but the album wasn't released for some 10 years, and was largely dismissed at that time.

• Neu!
• Kraftwerk
• Can
• Stereolab

After playing Japan's Akasaka Blitz, the German godfathers of robotic electronic dance music known as Kraftwerk will come to the States for a brief string of dates that culminates with an appearance during the second day of this year's Tibetan Freedom Concert.

The band's mechanical electronic wanderings in the early 70s were eventually appropriated by early rap acts like Afrika Bambaata, and continue to influence techno movers and shakers today.

The group's six-date U.S. tour kicks off on June 6 in San Francisco, and then rolls into Hollywood, Chicago, Detroit, and New York before playing the third annual Tibetan Freedom Concert, which is slated for Washington, D.C. this year.

Here's where you can catch the techno pioneers:

• 6/7 - San Francisco, CA @ Warfield
• 6/8 - Hollywood, CA @ Palladium
• 6/10 - Chicago, IL @ Riviera Theatre
• 6/11 - Detroit, MI @ State Theatre
• 6/13 - New York, NY @ Hammerstein Ballroom
• 6/14 - Washington, DC @ RFK Stadium

• Kraftwerk

Pearl Jam's camp confirms that the group will join Blues Traveler, Wyclef Jean, German techno pioneers Kraftwerk and others at this year's Tibetan Freedom Concert.

The bands will join previously announced performers Beck, the Beastie Boys, Radiohead and R.E.M. on the line-up for this year's show, slated for Washington, D.C.'s RFK Stadium on June 13 and 14.

Beastie Boy and Tibet show driving force Adam Yauch and Sean Lennon (who will also play the concert this year) took to MTV Live on Wednesday to announce details of the third annual event.

Following the two-day concert, activists are planning a National Day of Action for Tibet on June 15, when supporters of Tibet's struggle will rally on the Capitol lawn. In addition to speakers from the Tibetan community and former political prisoners, organizers also expect performances from surprise musical guests.

Here's a list of the artists who will appear at this year's Tibetan Freedom Concert to support the cause:

• Pearl Jam
• A Tribe Called Quest
• Beastie Boys Blues Traveler
• Chaksam-Pa
• Tracy Chapman
• Wyclef Jean
• Kraftwerk
• Sean Lennon
• Radiohead
• R.E.M.
• Sonic Youth

• Beastie Boys
• Blues Traveler
• The Fugees
• Lauryn Hill
• Wyclef Jean