[Guest blogger Jeff Weiss battles the sun at the main stage:]

Slotting hip-hop legend Pharoahe Monch at 1:30 Saturday, smack dab in the searing heat was tantamount to a stunning rebuke for the seminal Queens rapper . But with the soulful cadence of a eccentric but brilliant preacher, Pharoahe delivered a scorching 45-minute set that bordered at times on transcendent.

It’s becoming a Coachella tradition for rappers to hit the stage backed by a full band and Pharoahe was no exception, bringing along a drummer, two back-up singers, a keyboardist and two guitarists who tossed off psychedelic riffs into the baking mid-afternoon. But Pharoahe was the star, masterfully hyping the crowd with tried-and-true old school chants, running through a diverse setl ist that included cuts from his 1999 classic, “Internal Affairs” and new cuts from his long-anticipated, “Desire” LP slated to drop in June, not to mention classic singles like “Oh No’” and the anti-war diatribe, “Agent Orange.” Closing with the riot-inducing thump of his biggest hit-to-date “Simon Says,” Monch turned a sluggish early Saturday set into one of the most memorable hip-hop sets in recent Coachella memory.

Coachella Renegade Radio is broadcasting music by the artists playing the festival at 103.3 FM.

[Guest blogger Margaret Wappler doesn’t have a swan dress like Bjork’s but she does have a few of Matthew Barney’s “Cremaster Cycle” movies in her Netflix cue so give her a break, will ya?]

After a day of one guitar-driven boy band after another (yeah, I’m talking to you, Arctic Monkeys), Bjork’s closing set of otherworldly orchestra-industrial pop was a welcome shot of theater. It was that certain alien-meets-Norse-goddess element that signals you’ve entered Bjork country. Or more like she’s invaded yours. On the main stage bedecked in mysterious flags, Bjork and crew launched a coup d’ etat with the Timbaland-assisted track from her hotly anticipated upcoming album, jumping around in a colorful headdress and wailing over a willfully paralyzed beat.

And so the enchanted ragtag performance continued. The Icelandic princess sent chills

up the spine with pitch-perfect eerie versions of several songs off of “Homogenic” and other landmark albums, supported by an all-female brass band dressed in gauzy tapestries of turquoise, chartreuse and coral. The ladies, representatives from the femininity-as-cult concept, looked as if they’d washed up on some impossibly somber shore. Their guide to Coachella backcountry danced around in bare feet, her cherubic smirk genuine and delectible.

The video screens flanking the stage spent a lot of time on her ultra-techie sound equipment. We might be too heat-stroked to describe, but it involved lots of tactile hand-movements that apparently manipulated the dramatic washes of sound. But what held our attention more? Bjork’s pulsating, robot-in-sluggish-heat version of “Army of Me,” replete with lasers pulsating from the stage. It felt like a precursor to what might portend for Rage’s set: ’90s personalized rebellion, with the war in Iraq casting it as sharper and flintier as ever.

Bjork comes close but fails to lick her nose during closing set. Photo by Spencer Weinter / LAT.

[Staff writer Randy Lewis checks in from another Coachella warmup show.]

“Thanks for hanging in between tours!” Neil Finn told a crowded house of Crowded House fans Friday at the Glass House in Pomona. The stalwarts who’d waited more than a decade for the New Zealand pop-rock band to come together once more sang and hummed along to several of the band’s vintage songs:”"Don’t Dream It’s Over,” “World Where You Live,” “Four Seasons In One Day” among them. But they quickly found the hits were outnumbered by material from a new Crowded House album that Finn promised “will be released …sometime!” (For the record, the album’s title is “Time On Earth” and has been set for July 2 release.)

The raison d’etre for this reunion, which gets its full-fledged introduction on Sunday on the main stage at Coachella, leading up to the Rage Against the Machine reunion — is more sobering than most: Finn sought out bassist Nick Seymour for emotional support after drummer Paul Hester committed suicide two years ago. Ripples of the pain of that loss seemed to surface in “Nobody Wants You” and “People Are Like Suns” among the characteristically hummable, artfully affecting new tunes.

But there’d be no point in bringing back this outfit, now rounded out by drummer Matt Sherrod (a Beck favorite) and longtime touring keyboardist and guitarist Mark Hart minus its defining sense of humor. And that was evident throughout the nearly two-hour show in some impromptu band-audience collaborations on the Beatles’ “Do You Want To Know a Secret” and the Seymour-led left-field snippet of Lesley Gore’s “You Don’t Own Me.”

The patience of Crowded House fans might not rival that of Police die-hards who’ve been waiting twice that long for that trio’s incipient reunion, or those hardy souls who still cling to hope that Roger Waters and David Gilmour might take Pink Floyd out on the road again (slated for right after Barbra Streisand’s concert fundraiser for President Bush).

But they showed unassailable commitment to go wherever they had to when the moment arrived: Finn at one point saluted Pomona, asking how many in the house actually live in that city. Three hands went up; Finn spotted only one, and suggested “That person was probably born somewhere else anyway.” The smart money’s on Banning.

[Guest blogger Chris Barton weighs in on Sonic Youth — two words you could not utter around Coachella after their set without somebody showering them with effusive praise:]

“To me that’s what’s been lacking all day,” a tow-headed guy behind me said to his girlfriend during a prolonged wait for Sonic Youth’s set. “The rock. Bwarrang!”Not entirely sure where the guy’s been hanging out all day, but once New York City’s avant-rock institution found their way to the stage a little before 10:30 the rock was brought, set down in the grass and slapped about the head and shoulders. After Kim Gordon’s initial apology for the delay (”They wouldn’t let me onstage because I’m a girl”) the band tore through songs from “Daydream Nation,” “Dirty” and the comparatively poppy recent release “Rather Ripped.” At the forefront was Gordon, flailing about in a violet babydoll dress during “Reena” and “What a Waste” with such abandon she was like a female version of Iggy Pop — or maybe Iggy’s the male version of Kim Gordon?

Once the band chugged though the early ’90s staple “100%,” the heads were bobbing and the ‘bwarrang’ was being carried on what felt like the night’s first breeze. “Excuse me, do you know the name of that song?” the kid behind me asked. “That was incredible.”

For those about to ‘Bwarrang!’ Kim Gordon (center) salutes you. Photo by Chris Barton / LAT.

As somebody who heaped plaudits on Interpol from the very beginning, I very tentatively submit to you that the band’s set on the main stage was as scintillating as a long walk to a remote parking lot. True, the band took some chances — sprinkling songs from its hotly anticipated forthcoming album into its set and adding a little more ache and mystery to a catalogue that’s already dark with it. The mix did them no favors, either. But little about the set from Paul Banks and the gang conveyed the urgency that made their first two albums so compelling.

The reception Interpol received was tepid compared to the Jesus and Mary Chain, who preceded them. Or maybe it was just that a lot of Bjork fans were already in place for her set.

Quick heads-up for Sunday: When Texas hard rockers Fair to Midland play the Mojave Tent, they will have a special guest — System of a Down’s Serj Tankian will perform with the young band. Fair to Midland is signed to Tankian’s new label, Serjical Strike.

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Cameron Diaz, Kate Hudson, Jessica Alba, Drew Barrymore, Vincent Gallo …they’ll give tickets to anybody around here.

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Not only are some of midfield attractions a bit, er, out there, some can be plain scary. In one tent, the walkway spirals and spirals and shrank and shrank until otherwise reserved hipsters were forced to crawl on their undernourished bellies to the central chamber, which doubled as a make-out pavilion. Knees, elbows and unfortunate tattoos abounded, as well as various olfactory stimulation.

Capped by a titanic version of “Black Magic,” Jarvis Cocker presided over the Outdoor Theatre like he had all the time in the world, not to mention the attention of every single person who walked through the gates. Preening, prancing, joking, dancing — Cocker brought a little bit of everything to stage, overcoming problems with the keyboards to deliver a powerful, glam rock-infused set. He was laconically apologetic for the problems. “I suppose we should be getting on with this,” he said at one point, then proceeded to meander through a three-minute anecdote that demonstrated wit is among the weapons in the ex-Pulp frontman’s formidable arsenal.

The exclamation point was the finishing number, the title of which we alter for this family blog: “[Bad People] Are Still Running the World.” They don’t rule Coachella.

[Margaret Wappler gets all electroclash with Peaches as the sweet, merciful night finally descends.]

As the sun set, the Outdoor Stage audience had only one thing on the brain and it wasn’t the chiming guitars of Jesus and Mary Chain from the Main Stage. Nope, it was the teaches of Peaches, who worked her raunchy schtick with as much cocksure gusto as ever — even if it’s been awhile since her naughty chants have sounded anything close to shocking or relevant. Playing some gnarled chords on her flying V guitar, the Canadian priestess of high camp first delivered a rock show, then quickly switched to pumping out slick beats from some sort of blinking knobs-and-whistles machine. The audience was pretty game, especially when she climbed the rafters like some wild bobcat. They danced in their sweat-stiff clothes and rooted her on with pumping fists.

But Peaches, accompanied by three other femme rockers including JD Samson of Le Tigre, wasn’t going to be outdone by ’90s reunion rock. “Let’s play the second stage game,” Peaches said. “Let’s be louder than them.” The crowd obediently roared. Later, an enthusiastic few took it to a “Girls Gone Wild” level, dropping their tops when Peaches admonished the crowd to shake what their mothers gave them.

Bet that didn’t happen at JAMC.

If we were like some information providers, we would add exclamation points: Setlist revealed! Here is what Interpol will play moments from now at Coachella!

Photo by Kevin Bronson / LAT.