I feared Mona would collapse.

No, really. I’m not exaggerating.

We’d just driven for hours from Laguna Beach to Indio to help our friends at 118 Degrees as they served goodies to the VIP at Coachella. Our task — take photographs, hopefully of famous people sipping on coconut drinks.

And the driving was just fine. We knew that was part of the bargain. We brought along some CDs for the ride of some of the bands we wanted to see — Sunny Day Real Estate, Deerhunter, Spoon and Yo La Tengo.

We were instructed to go to the Best Western in Indio and then go to Coachella. When we arrived, we scooted up to a van and asked if they were the shuttle to the festival. We just reasoned we were told an easy way to get to the event. Last year, we had a hell of a time finding parking so we just thought we were advised to take a shuttle into the VIP area.

We couldn’t have been more wrong. We later found out it was Goldenvoice’s goofy idea this year to have people checking into the VIP area get their wristband passes off-site at the hotel and then shuttle to Coachella. Or whichever way they wanted to get there.

When we got to Coachella, though, we were marched all around the festival from gate to gate, being told by increasingly more clueless security guards where to get into the show. Finally, we found what seemed to be the front entrance where tickets are sold.

That’s when I heard Mona mumble, “I don’t think I’m going to make it.” I looked back and saw sweat streaking down her brow, her face flush with the heat of exhaustion and dehydration. I pulled her close, told her to lean on me and draw strength from my hand. We could make it. We made a promise to do a job and when I get into that mode it’s like “Lawrence of Arabia,” and I just keep trudging through the sand.

Which is fine for me. But I had someone else to think about now. It was yet another one of those reminders that it’s not just me anymore. So, I thought, should we keep going? I concluded, let’s try to go just a little further and maybe we’ll finally figure out how to get into the damned festival.

Finally, someone at one of the ticket booths told us — after he had to ask someone else, of course — that we had to go back to the hotel.

OK, new problem. How do we get back to the hotel now? Fortunately, we struck up a nice conversation with our shuttle driver on the way over and he gave Mona his business card. So she called him and luckily he was nearby and could shuttle us back. He did so for no charge (though we tipped him), we got our wristbands and then he shuttled us back to Coachella.

We got our second wind, checked in with Jenny and Billy at their booth, took a picture of Michelle Rodriguez from “Lost,” (who happened to stop by!), and then caught some great music.

It was a stroll through the ’90s for me. And it hit me — was it really that long ago that I saw Pavement in their prime? Do they really sound as amazing now as they did then? Yes and yes. As I heard Yo La Tengo’s Ira Kaplan wring feedback from his guitar I thought how incredible it was that so many decades later the Velvet Underground’s “White Light, White Heat,” still resonates.

And Spoon. I could go into one of those pretentious music-critic adjective-riddled-tortured-metaphor testimonials, but here’s the highest compliment I can pay them: They sound so original. In an era when so many bands sound great, but seem so blandly the same, Spoon sounds like, well, Spoon. You know a Spoon song as soon as you hear it. That’s also true of Yo La Tengo or Pavement.

Sadly, though, we left shortly after seeing Radiohead’s Thom Yorke embarrass himself with his latest solo project.

“Is it wrong to say I don’t like this?” Mona asked me.

I laughed and said, “I was just about to say, ‘What the hell is this? Frankie Goes to Radiohead?’ ”

I detest euro disco and this was an awful indulgent exercise in a great artist trying to act half his age.

But you know what? Good for him. He’s earned it. And I think great artists have to fail now and again to get to that next plateau. I have a theory that if it weren’t for Yorke’s first solo album, Radiohead’s crowning masterpiece, “In Rainbows,” never would have been conceived. It bridged the best of the more accessible Radiohead in “The Bends,” and the more experimental “Kid A,” and topped it off with some of Yorke’s most soulful vocals.

I can’t wait for the next Radiohead record.

Not sure if I can say the same for the next Coachella. Maybe if they get more organized next time I’ll be more inclined to go… and I won’t miss the good stuff like Sunny Day Real Estate…

Ira Kaplan. I told Mona it’s a shame there’s no rock pub machine anymore to tell the world he’s one of the world’s greatest living guitarists. People should think of him on the same level as Jimi or Jimmy — but rock ‘n’ roll is dead and no one cares about elevating musicians into godhood anymore.

Britt Daniel — another vastly underrated guitarist, but I’m more impressed with his songwriting than I am his chops.

Britt put the guitar down for this one. I love his vocal style.

Near the end, when the sun was about down for the count, Britt took off his sunglasses and went for the Marlboro Man look.

I know the quality on these photos aren’t the greatest, but I was standing a football field away with a telephoto lens. I was so excited when I heard the first strains of their opening number — it was like slipping into the hot tub time machine with J Mascis and Thurston to go watch our favorite band.

Yes, the alt-girls still shriek at Malkmus, the dork. I hate him, the bastard.

Frankie says: Relax, Thom, don’t do it.

Taken right before we briskly started the death march through the Gorillaz crowd back to our car. Tell me again why Gorillaz were headlining? Am I missing something or were they a one-hit wonder?

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