By Cathy Maestri
InstantRiverside.com

The 2011 edition of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival opened in Indio on Friday with a few more logistical kinks ironed out, a more comfortable festival ground and more spectacular art installations. Which was good, because most festivalgoers (who included Paul McCartney and Leonardo DiCaprio)  seemed to have a great experience despite a lack of spectacle onstage. And the only ones who seemed at all unhappy were a few of the performers.

Case in point– Cee Lo Green, who’d performed at the festival as part of a “Wizard of Oz”-costumed Gnarls Barkley. His set time at the tightly booked festival was 4:50 p.m., but he left the crowd baking in 90 degree-plus heat for half an hour — and then, explaining he’s just landed, started griping about having to play a shorter set.

After realizing after three songs that he really wasn’t going to get any more time (nobody wants to tell the notoriously difficult Ms. Lauryn Hill that her set’s going to get cut) he did Gnarls’ “Crazy”; griped some more before doing his own hit, the original, uncensored version of “Forget You”; and griped again before getting in a few seconds of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’ ” — but at the appointed end of his set, the plug on the audio was pulled and he stomped off while his band kept going.

Next on the main stage, Hill (who started 15 minutes late)  came down hard on her sound crew at the start of her set, but it was everything Cee Lo’s wasn’t — lively, engaging, funky and soulful, with a big brass section and some of that Coachella-at-dusk magic, too. Hill was clearly in charge, directing her band and the audience, waving her arms, jumping up and down — and this despite being apparently well into a pregnancy. Hill doesn’t have the range she used to, but her lower register is appealingly earthy. The crowd hopped along with “Doo Wop (That Thing).”

The main stage then got moody with the dark, lugubrious, danceable cool of Interpol and the punk-blues experimentalism of the Black Keys.

Those needing a break from the main stage could find it at the Mojave Tent, where the cartoonish Aquabats put on a gleeful ska-flavored extravaganza that featured a hydraulic lift for the Bat Commander (Christian Jacobs); visits from giant inflatable friends; a battle with a giant lizard an evil caveman (who also had to wrestle with his pants, the seat of which had ripped out; a Chinese-style dragon (which looked more like a long, fluffy dog).

The Aquabats crowd may not have been the biggest of the festival, but it was clearly the most enthusiastic — there was even a crowd surfer on a surfboard. (No surprise that Jacobs is a co-creator of the popular children’s show “Yo Gabba Gabba.)

It’s a lazy, but effective, way to sum up Swedish electropop star Robyn’s high-energy, dance-heavy set– Lady Gaga meets Toni Basil. Nosaj Thing was the perfect chill-out segue between Robyn and another late-to-the stage set, this time by dance wizards the Chemical Brothers.

The Arcade Fire headlines Saturday’s festivities; Kanye West is big name on Sunday.

Pictured: One of the fesival’s light/art exhibits; Cee Lo Green; the Aquabats’ Bat Commander.

Photos by Cathy Maestri