If you are looking for proof that French DJs are hot this year with the twentysomething set, look no further than Kavinsky’s well-attended early offering inside the Sahara dance tent. In what was essentially a warm-up for Sunday’s Coachella closer on the main stage (Parisian duo Justice), Kavinsky satiated dance music fans’ appetite for all things electro, with just a touch of disco Saturday.

The DJ’s mixing skills have noticably improved in the last year, as he deftly employed his cross-fader and spun tracks from his French contemporaries Justice and Daft Punk and Berlin spinner Boys Noize, for good measure, into his own material (”Testarossa Autodrive”). Kavinsky explored everything from house to disco in his set, tweaking tracks on the fly with a cigarette dangling from his lip and sporting a Def Leppard “Pyromania” T-shirt (worn with every trace of irony).

Despite the heat, the American Apparel-clad masses ate up his take on electro, which sounded at times not unlike the Knight Rider theme song, except a hell of a lot more danceable. Kavinsky even dropped a snippet of Daft Punk’s “Harder, Faster, Better, Stronger” (although, curiously, he chose to play Kanye West’s version, which features a sample of the now-iconic track — it was all very meta).

By the time Kavinsky played Justice’s anthem “D.A.N.C.E” to close his set, the entire front section of the Saraha was moving in time with the Frenchman. If the reaction to Kavinsky’s just-better-than-average set was this warm, expect a dance orgy for the ages when Justice takes the main stage tomorrow night. C’est vrai: Pigalle and Montmarte have come to the desert, and the kids are still saying oui to the new sound of Paris.

– Charlie Amter

Philadelphia’s Man Man sound like the gap-toothed love child of Modest Mouse after a sweaty night of inbreeding with Tom Waits. They all dress like Mr. Clean, go by names like “Sergai Sogay” and write songs called “The Ballad of Butter Beans.” They should be the worst band in the world.

But lo and behold, beneath the meth-y yelps and fashion idiosyncrasies, they’ve really found their sea legs as an inimitable indie rock band. Grafting chiming disco-punk onto swamp gospel and demonic circus calliopies on their album “Rabbit Habits” was a pretty unprecedented move, and live it came off like a Barnum & Bailey sideshow field trip to a church revival (and that’s a compliment, as this year is slim on weirdos).

If you could roll with the visual antagonism (expect lots of moustaches), they were an unexpected early-day treat.

– August Brown

Photo by Michael Buckner / Getty Images

It took some attendees more than two hours on Friday night to even budge a few feet — let alone exit — in Parking Lot 3. Both exits were coned off and officials working the exits each thought the other was open. Palm Springs police officers on duty explained that the traffic flow plan was devised by City of Indio officials – who, we wish, could have joined us for a friendly conversation at 1:30 a.m.

– Kevin Bronson

The Coachella festival’s afternoon set from Carbon/Silicon had all the trappings of a backyard barbecue when your eccentric uncles grab guitars, give you an eyebrow-raised grin that only implies they used to be a band and play until the beer runs out.

The quartet, featuring Mick Jones from the Clash and Tony James from Generation X, kept it  loose affair, and maybe, casually, a flip-off to Father Time. That Jones and James still have much to say poiltically and socially is without question; Jones, 52, and James, who just turned 50, merely underscore it with less abandon these days. If the guitar work is fairly ordinary, the content isn’t — songs off 2007’s “The Last Post” echo the inflammatory punk rock of the early days.

The early days weren’t mentioned Saturday. Instead, Jones bantered about things eccentric uncles might tell you — the song “Magic Suitcase” is about a trunk full of steroids but these days he’d settle “for International House of Pancakes French toast.” Dostoevsky is name-checked in “WTF?” — but, Jones relays later, he had a nice time this week at Disneyland. And did you know he has psoriasis?

Much respect was shown, from fans young (some of whom were mouthing the words to “Magic Suitcase” and “The News”) and old. Can we do this again next weekend?

– Post, photo by Kevin Bronson

Sure, great bands, singers and DJs rocked the first day of Coachella yesterday here in Indio, but thanks to agreeable temperatures, concert-goers felt comfortable strutting their summer best (as opposed to hiding out in the shade).

Sheer dresses, headbands, flip flops and ’60s retro adorned the ladies, while the men got away with funny t-shirts and shorts.

After the jump check out some of the more interesting choices.

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It’s both easier and harder than you might think to hate Jack Johnson. Easier because the Hawaii native embodies an entire sub-genre of bro-folk that’s a high-frequency dog whistle audible only to the collegiate masses clutching red plastic cups of Milwaukee’s Best while putting in serious time on an Indo Board and who show up at prom years after they graduated. Most smarty-pants who rip on Johnson can’t actually name any particular song of his they dislike, they just, you know, can’t stand “him,” and by “him” they mean his fans.

So, who is the actual Jack Johnson? Well, he’s a peaceful hippie surfer who writes deeply unmemorable but wholly inoffensive low-key folk-pop, using a studio powered by renewable energy and laced with a vague eco-consciousness. What’s the problem? Should be easy to ignore, right? Well, through no fault of his own, Johnson is insanely popular in certain age and class brackets that happen to annoy people who fancy themselves as tastemakers.

Me, I don’t get why Jack Johnson sticks for his fans: if you want breezy spirituality, go to Cat Stevens; if you want daiquiri-fueled sorority anthems, go to Jimmy Buffett. But much of the hate directed at him from the Coachella fan community probably speaks more to the looming specter of fratdom than to the music itself. Heck, his new single with the line, “If I had eyes in the back of my head, I’d tell you you looked good as I walked away” is admittedly a little funny and I don’t change the station when it comes on the radio. And my heart, the charred lump that it is, even went out to him at his main stage set — the crowd was the thinnest I’ve ever seen for a headliner at Coachella. Musicians always thank their fans, but in this case maybe Johnson should blame them.

-August Brown

Photo by Spencer Weiner / Los Angeles Times

While Jack Johnson played his CEO-friendly surf ditties on the main stage, Atlanta’s Black Lips were riding on an entirely different ocean, the high raucous seas of “flower punk,” as they call their coarse mix of garage, blues and paisley power. With bassist Jared Swilley in a sailor hat, they were like seamen playing their last gig before being shipped out again. “O Katrina” and other songs ticked out, appealingly sloppy, smoky and paranoid, but there wasn’t enough swagger. The crowd was only half-invested; most seemed to be taking shelter in any place that was far enough from the main stage.

Black Lips are known for vomiting, spitting and kissing on stage (among other more sordid stunts) but the first 25 minutes of their set yielded little more than an unceremonious saliva spray from Swilley’s mouth and a vaguely suggestive dance show by Har Mar Superstar. Black Lips were a bit too behaved, maybe cowed by the empress of Coachella. As I abandoned their tent, they were sailing the seas of Roger Waters with echoey psychedelics that hopefully fared better for them.

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The crowd in the packed Sahara Tent got a bit testy waiting for Fatboy Slim–he was close to 30 minutes late to the turntable. All was forgiven though once the beats began.

-Joel Rubin

Photo by Charley Gallay / Getty Images

If it seems that America is preoccupied with the Hil-Rod/Barack smackdown and John McCain screaming at houseplants, animals and small children on his lawn, you wouldn’t know it at Coachella. Last year, Rage’s righteous fury to the effect of “hey, if someone wanted to execute some folks for war crimes, we’d be down” defined the weekend, but even with an election on this year, all’s been pretty quiet on the political front in Indio. Save for Serj Tankian of the L.A. art-metal powerhouse System of a Down, who introduced a tune from his solo album “Elect the Dead” by demanding “We can’t leave the stage until we talk about the abuses of the last eight years under George W. Bush!” He was met with politely thin applause, which is the exact appropriate reaction to lyrics like “I believe that you’re wrong / Insinuating they hold the bomb / Clearing the way for the oil brigade!” Tankian’s solo album is picaresque radio metal, and while his heart’s in the right place, surely there’s a more evocative and inventive way to talk about this kind of thing in rock today.

 -August Brown

Photo by Frazer Harrison / Getty Images

Remember the first Coachella when Tool sent thunder across the valley and a few debris fires were set during the Rage Against the Machine set? Not this year. Jack Johnson’s set is more clambake than clamor and if there was any sign of smoke, well, it was probably some fans making s’mores.

-Geoff Boucher