THE FREELAND FIGHTERS - Coachella '08

In 1992 on a remote beach in Thailand, I met Adam Freeland - a young pleasure seeker from England. A few mushroom trips later and he was listening to my early cassette tape recordings of Spiral Tribe and getting noticeably excited -

"This is what I want to be," he said with a cheeky face oozing teenage enthusiasm. "I want to be a DJ..."

Having full faith in the motto, "you become what you meditate on" (Adi Da), I replied, "you can be ANYTHING you want Adam Freeland..."

Back in the UK, my beau at the time - the legend Phil Dawson (an original Freeland Fighter) - picked up a pair of decks for Ad and he was away...no stopping him. Ad worked his ass off - not just to become a DJ, but to become THE BEST in his field. Ad is living proof that if you set yourself a goal and work hard at accomplishing it, you will manifest your personal life vision. The Freeland sound was born and break beat was about to kick-in a new religion.

Fast forward several years - fans, friends, wild adventures and booty calls in every city on the planet - and Adam Freeland has built up a posse of very committed and talented faith-full followers. The "Freeland Fighters" as we're often called - all members of *THE CULT OF FREELAND* - are an eclectic soup of rebel ecstatics. Amongst the crew are music journalist whiz kids Anthony Bozza and Matt Diel; designer/model Shane Rucker; female sci-fi book club founders Kirstin Lee, Lizzy Jordan, Megatron and co; directors Richard and Guy of Happy Worldwide; photographer Adam Lathem; producers Rebecca Lloyd-Evans and Steven Oliver; Crackle TV brainchild Josh Felser; a whole heap of artists from Seattle via Oklahoma; and a one eyed dwarf, that hardly anyone spotted, called "Tiny Cyclop". It was this melting pot of tricksters that head for Coachella's dance tent at 4.30pm on Fri 25th April, clad in gold and silver robes, lifting metallic helium balloons, shaped a mystical "F", into the azure desert sky...

WHAT THE "F" IS "F"? - was on everyone's lips ... FREELAND balloons dressed the sky for the rest of the festie and attracted a wave of new members to the cult. Initiates were embraced and asked "Can you feel it? - As soon as the fresh initiate was able to "feel it" they were given a gown and set to work the Freeland vibes ... obviously it isn't possible to discuss the esoteric depths of what you actually "feel" upon initiation, but if words could do it justice Aldous Huxley, William Blake and Shakespeare would all have written of it... and Einstein would have summarized it thus:

"The doors of perception x an infinite grain of sand + music be the food of love = FREELAND

Ya dig it? And so the Freeland Fighters kicked off Coachella with a BOOM! KCRW veteran Gemma Dempsey writes of it; punters youtubed it; pics were taken; hearts were shaken; and it all ended with DJ Freeland stage diving into a sweat pit of ecstatics chanting WE WANT YOUR SOUL! This was an electronica love fest...

The Freeland Fighters are spreading like an attractive herpes virus... before long, everyone will have "the feeling" rushing through their veins, licking along their arteries, caressing their neurons with a delightful whoosh of "F" ... just be open and it will come... like a receptive conduit, be available to the "F", let your heart get smashed wide open and... well... next year when Coachella comes round, be sure to locate the cult... you will never feel the same again.

For pics of Freeland Fighters Susie, Bozza, Shane and myself...

For an initiation... remember, "you become what you meditate on..."

*THE CULT OF FREELAND* - mission statement mysterious.

p.s. how amazing was Roger Waters!!! Did you feel it?

And now for the shallow star spottin' musings of a Welsh Minx @ Coachella ...

My slightly intoxicated and accidental celebrity star-spottin' kicked off with David Hasslehoff wandering through the VIP area with two young ladies, looking like a tanned Adonis who'd had one too many shots of Knightrider. He was followed swiftly by a very short Steven Tyler and his two babes who looked like they needed to get back to kindergarten. Owch! I was delighted to see the guitarist of my fav band My Morning Jacket wandering around back stage (best band on the planet right now), superseded only by two brief encounters with politco maestro heroico Sean Penn... then, there was the guy from that wicked comedy duo Flight Of The Conchords and I accidentally blagged a light from that bloke out of Good Charlotte, only to have Paris Hilton retrieve the matches when I was done... there were many more famous rock bands that I passed, but they all blended one into the other... Once upon a time you could tell the difference between Dylan and the Dead, nowadays they all look like a uniform trail of designer messy hair cuts and drainpipe jeans... and that's why it was so refreshing to see the FREELAND FIGHTERS breeze through the crowd like an orgasmic sneeze...

HIGHLIGHT OF COACHELLA: Jim James of My Morning Jacket giving his sense of the profundity of Portishead - a dream speech if ever there was one! Jim - u rock!