The day after Frank Ocean’s ill-fated Coachella performance, news came out that Ocean’s headlining set was originally supposed to feature an ice rink filled with dozens of skaters — plans that were scrapped at the last minute when Ocean reportedly broke his ankle at the festival site. Now, former hockey players who were scheduled to participate in the performance have discussed their experience with Ocean’s Coachella project on a podcast.
Brothers Dan and Chris Powers host the hockey podcast Empty Netters. On the latest episode, they explain that one of their former guests, the hockey player-turned-Hollywood producer Chris Nelson, invited them to participate in Ocean’s performance. “He drags us to Paramount Studios, and we go into this random soundstage, and we do an audition where we are skating on an elevated ice surface and we are going to be backup skaters and singers at a live performance at Coachella with Frank Ocean,” Dan Powers says. He continues, “For about a month we’ve been doing rehearsal. We’ve been hanging with Frank, hanging with the other skaters, hanging with these incredible figure skaters, going through this whole process, just this huge ordeal where we’re under this elevated stage. We went to Indio last week to do a rehearsal at location on the stage.”
Here’s Powers’ account of his experience the day of Ocean’s set:
We’re there. We’re at the festival. We’re buzzin’ around. We’re havin’ a blast. Sunday morning shows up. We get our call sheet. We have to go to this hotel to be picked up by a runner to be brought over to wardrobe and makeup. Right there, that moment is when the wheels started to fall off. We get to this hotel — we’re told to be there by 12. We then get a text that, “Oh, the runner’s not going to come ’til 1.” We then get another text: “Uh, they’re not going to come ’til 3″… We’re then waiting outside at 3. We got our skates. We’re ready to rock. The bus of all the other skaters who weren’t at Coachella already has arrived. They’re all sittin’ in wardrobe; it’s a nightmare. We sit at this hotel and we run into the figure skaters — these Olympic figure skaters, mind you. And they have a disgruntled look on their face, and they casually mention to us that they just got a phone call and they’ve been cut from the show. So we’re sitting there like, “What the fuck is happening right now?” These Olympians just got cut from this Coachella performance with Frank Ocean, and they think that we’re gonna go on? You’re saying goodbye to these skaters, but a bunch of dipshit former hockey players are going to go up on that stage and buzz around?
So we’re already gettin’ bad vibes here. We then get in this runner’s van. We head over to wardrobe. They’re putting this ridiculous chrome diamond makeup on everybody. Needless to say these guys don’t know that they’re not skating… So we’re there, we’re hearing rumblings, this is neither confirmed nor denied. Allegedly Frank has been in an accident that has given him an ankle injury. Something’s going on there. So people are starting to talk like “Frank’s not in a good headspace, we don’t know what’s going on.” We are sitting there, and it is becoming very clear that things are not going well with this show.
We get a call from Nelly, and he goes, “Have you guys been in makeup?” I say no, and he goes, “Do not put on makeup.” And we’re like, “What the fuck are you talking about?” And he’s like, “You’re not skating. They’re deconstructing the ice right now.” But people are out there. The festival has started. People are inside the doors walking around. There are people at 4PM camped out for a 10:30PM Frank Ocean show. Like, they are waiting. And they’re trying to undercover rip out this ice-rink stage because they don’t want anyone to know it was there because they’re not going to do it.
So now we’re being told that, “OK, we’re still going to put on these sequined Prada suits, but we’re just going to walk back and forth on stage for about five minutes, we’re not gonna skate. And Nelly’s like, “Do you guys want to do that?” And Chris and I, straight up, with Frank Ocean right there, Nelly right here, all these people, we just go, “Fuck no.” No thank you. I’m fucking out of here.
Chris Powers adds:
There was a lot of sunk time. And you guys gotta keep in mind that the skating portion was going to be huge. It was going to be like 120 skaters. And the people that walked was only like 30 or whatever. That means that people bussed to Coachella — without a pass. They can’t go into the festival. They are literally sitting in a tent in the baking sun.
And here’s Dan Powers’ summation of Ocean’s performance:
He starts playing these songs and he’s doing the throat-slash thing to his musicians in the middle of songs. They’re stopping. No one has a clue what’s going on. He’s doing all his songs differently, which is kind of cool but confusing so many people. And then the cherry on top is just, after the weirdest show ever, he eventually finishes a song, walks offstage, comes back, leans into a mic, and goes, “I’ve just been told that we hit curfew, so that was the end of the show.”
Dan Powers also described his experience rehearsing with Ocean:
During all the rehearsals, he was so funny. He was so interesting about how he has no idea what hockey is. There was one point in the performance where we’re skating around in a circle and then we all stop at a break in the song and everyone pretends to be fighting with each other. And when he was like, “OK, we need to do this, it’s gonna be like a fight, you guys act like you’re screaming at each other, we need an example.” And Nelly was like, “Chris and Dan Powers, step up.” And we had to skate in front of everyone. And then obviously we do this shit all the time, so we just started laying into each other. And Frank was just standing there, like jaw dropped staring at us, ’cause he had no idea who we were. And to him it looked like Nelly just picked two random people. And he was just looking at us and then goes, “Well, that was insane. That’s the baseline. If you guys can match that, great.”
Dan Powers sums things up: “It felt like this was this thing that he really cared about that he was super psyched about, and to see it all fall apart was really sad, but also nuts.” The discussion of Coachella runs from just after the two-minute mark until just after the 19-minute mark. Watch below.
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