Death From Above 1979: Why the ‘AC/DC of hardcore’ stopped trying to change the world
Coachella, California – 17 April, 2011. Jesse F. Keeler is standing sheepishly in a small group at the side of the festival’s main stage. Perhaps the bassist is nervous because his band Death From Above 1979 are hours away from their first major show in six years, save for a set at Austin’s SXSW festival a month earlier, which ended up inciting a riot in which a man reportedly punched a police horse. Or maybe it’s because the older gent in the mustard shirt next to Jesse is Clint Eastwood. Jesse has little recollection of what the two men said to one another as they watched rapper Nas collaborate with reggae star Damian – son of Bob – Marley that afternoon. One assumes Jesse chose his words more carefully than his bandmate Sebastien Grainger did meeting P...
