A$AP Ferg said a prayer for forgiveness (Fergiveness?) early in his set, presumably for arriving on stage 10 minutes late. But it could have just as easily applied to most of his performance, which reaffirmed that (a) witch house beats don't work in the sunlight and (b) Ferg isn't nearly as versatile as his buddy Rocky. Two further incidents drove home that point. First, Ferg performed Rocky's Skrillex collab "Wild For The Night" sans Rocky, and the crowd immediately lit up. Not only was that song designed specifically for an outdoor warm-weather party environment like this -- Ferg has no equivalent song -- it also showcased a level of craft that wasn't present on the trap-by-numbers forehead slaps Ferg and the rest of the Mob has been slinging. "Wild for the night/ Fuck being polite "is so much more clever and memorable than "I got hoes/ I got hella hoes." Second, Rocky himself appeared to perform a new song (watch it here), emanating star power in ways Ferg can't match and spitting wonderful nonsense like "Even in my will/ Keep it trill." He singlehandedly saved an otherwise embarrassing display and made it abundantly clear why he was the first of his crew to break through. (Still loving that "Hood Pope" though.)

The giant red robot statue and the even more giant roving moon man loomed over the festival grounds more than even that iconic Ferris wheel. Along with the natural beauty of the palm trees and mountains, the strings of colorful balloons trailing off infinitely into the sky, and the array of items festival goers chose to hoist up on poles (including but not limited to an inflatable unicorn, a pineapple, and lots of celebrity faces), they all combined to make Empire Polo Grounds feel magical. Relatedly, neon trees are always preferable to Neon Trees.

When I saw Ellie Goulding at last year's Hangout Festival, she was still getting the hang of this pop star thing, but her promise was immense. Not even 12 months later, Goulding's appeal is no longer a matter of promise. She announced from the stage Friday that she felt shyer than she'd ever felt in her life, but she carried herself with confidence. Goulding hangs around with a lot of electronic producers -- she dated Skrillex and considers Burial a personal friend -- and her breakthrough singles have largely been in an EDM milieu, specifically "Lights" and Calvin Harris' "I Need Your Love." But one of the best aspects of her set Friday was that she tried so many different sounds (EDM, but also rock, soul and R&B) and pulled them all off splendidly. She also played guitar, banged the drums, and sang like a cyborg angel. She's becoming the complete package, and I wouldn't mind seeing her put on this sort of show at every festival I attend.

Rock bands such as Afghan Whigs, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, and Title Fight drew paltry crowds to their various tent shows, while the Sahara Tent's ceaseless stream of EDM artists was always busy. That's not surprising; it's pretty much a given that the key to success at music festivals is making people dance. Still, I was shocked to see the Gobi Tent packed out for Australian dance-rockers Jagwar Ma so early in the afternoon. Using a mixture of live instrumentation and sampling, they worked the teeming masses into a frenzy, and while they might have been cribbing directly from Primal Scream, I don't remember the Primal Scream festival set I saw being anywhere near this much fun.

Girl Talk got the coveted main stage set right before Outkast, so anyone concerned with having a good spot for the headliners ended up watching Gregg Gillis too. Gillis' live show has always been crazy, even when it was just him gradually stripping to his underwear while his audience danced around him on stage. It's even crazier these days. The crowd still gets on stage, but now there are a bunch of props and video displays and confetti too, and at Coachella there are guest rappers like Juicy J and Busta Rhymes. Gillis came through with a number of zany mashups too; I particularly appreciated the complementary mixture of Blur and 2 Chainz and the audacity of mixing Radiohead's hyper serious "Idioteque" with Quad City DJs. But the variable that pushed this circus over the top was this: At one point, for like 15 minutes straight while Girl Talk raged on, the video screens that flanked the bacchanal were showing Bryan Ferry's performance at the nearby Mojave Tent for no apparent reason. Here was Ferry, looking not unlike Bill Nighy's character from Love Actually, serving as Girl Talk's absurd window dressing. Not sure whether this was a technical glitch or a prank or somebody at Coachella just decided they'd seen enough footage of non-famous people dancing on stage, but regardless of why it happened, it was perfect.

"There's a lot of good music here today, huh?" Paul Westerberg said. "Let's put a stop to that right now." If by "good" he meant "precise," he might not have been kidding. A huge component of the Replacements' legend is that you never knew whether they'd show up polished and professional or falling down drunk. They are especially known for sabotaging themselves at big events like label auditions and TV appearances and... Coachella. Would this, only the fourth Replacements concert since 1991, in arguably the highest profile venue they've ever played, be another one of those legendary faceplants? Actually, yes! Things started off well enough, with the band bashing through short, sweet tunes mostly from their earlier, more punkish records. But by mid-set Westerberg was slurring, his guitar playing was noticeably impaired, and he was omitting lyrics to well-known songs like "Androgynous." For a while it seemed like this might go down as a classic 'Mats self-destruction, but Westerberg chugged as much water as he could, and by the time the band tore into "Left Of The Dial" and "Alex Chilton" they were on fire again. Humorously, they left the stage early and returned for the only encore of the day, performing "Can't Hardly Wait" and "Bastards Of Young." I wish they would have kept going; they certainly hadn't blown through all their best material yet. ("I Will Dare," come on!)

Este broke out the Bass Face immediately and never put it away. Alana shimmied to every groove and pounded the everloving shit out of whichever drums were in front of her. Danielle leaned wayyyyy into her combustive Jack White-via-Jimmy Page-via-Robert Johnson pentatonic rumble, as if she was conjuring something so powerful she had to get out of its way. (The dudes on the backline weren't too shabby either.) Haim has been playing something close to this set for well over a year now, but to the benefit of people like me who hadn't yet experienced it, their incomparable joy upon unspooling these songs does not seem to have diminished. Whether ripping through a cover of Fleetwood Mac's "Oh Well" (just like the used to do it at home in the Valley, we were told) or turning the Shania-worthy ballad "Honey & I" into an epic more akin to "Baba O'Riley" or imploring their audience to get their ass-cheeks clapping during a tremendously raunchy "My Song 5," their excitement was contagious. And when they closed with "The Wire," their absolute masterpiece, they delivered Coachella's first legitimate tingles moment.

This really happened! And at least for the first few songs, it was really happening. But first, the crew had to set up a giant translucent video cube and unsuccessfully attempt to cover it with a tarp and spend 25 minutes trying to get the humongous video projection aligned properly. When they finally got the technical stuff together, we were presented with Andre 3000 and Big Boi standing together inside said cube, flanked by singers and musicians, ready to rock us. And rock us they did -- they opened with "B.O.B." Dreams do come true. The energy stayed high from there as they careened through a series of hits from all around their catalog -- "Gasoline Dreams," "ATLiens," "Rosa Parks," etc. Then came an awkwardly long middle section in which Big and Andre each performed solo selections and the whole event seemed to meander without the slightest urgency. Janelle Monaé showed up to do "Tightrope." Future arrived to do three songs, which seems excessive, including the Andre collab "Benz Friends," which seems fantastic. Sleepy Brown was around now and then, crooning. By the end of the show, Andre seemed too exasperated by ongoing monitor issues to focus on wowing us. And thanks to a combination of the technical difficulties and too much nonessential material (one Future song would've been fine), the set ended up getting cut short due to curfew, which meant "The Whole World" was stopped almost as soon as it was started, and poor Killer Mike was left hanging. All in all, it wasn't quite the triumphant return we'd all been hoping for, but it was a return nonetheless, so I'll take it. I'm just happy to have Outkast back. And as long as they figure out their stage setup and don't go overkill with the guest stars at their other festival appearances, I'm guessing the rest of their gigs this year are going to be as rhapsodic as the first third of this one was. You can watch the whole set here.