Knowing full well that I would get asked many times for the same stories, I wanted to write it all down.
Coachella 2007: A Novella
April 2004: After breaking up with my girlfriend, witnessing the beating of a close friend, and ultimately my band Hotel's collapse, I was at an all-time low and in desperate need of a change from everything happening in my life. I went to Coachella with my deadbeat former housemate Colin, and a mensch named Mike McCann. It was hotter than hot, with temperatures pushing 120 degrees, but the festival featured every band I'd want to hear, with The Cure, The Pixies, Radiohead and The Flaming Lips headlining. Pitchfork describes Coachella well, saying that it's neither heaven nor hell, but both. If you're like me, it's the ultimate payoff for unapologetic, masochistic.. nay, religious devotion to live music. That trip was such a milestone in my life that I felt emotionally unprepared to return for three years, lest I taint the experience in the eye of my rose-coloured memory.
In the three years since, most things that were apparently static in my life are no more. Coachella for me represents not just the winds of change, but a choking primal need to purge my life so that I can move on to the next chapter.
February 2007: A girl I met on the net mentions that she wants to go to Coachella, but has nobody to go with. Plans quickly led to purchasing camping tickets, with the understanding that they sell out quickly while the actual event has never sold out until the weekend of. Well, the joke's on me; Rage Against The Machine's reunion announcement led to a speedy ticket sellout. Within days event tickets were going for ridiculous markups on eBay.
I am fundamentally opposed to supporting ticket scalping, and so I began to brainstorm other options. One of the crazier notions was to email Craig Laskey, long time resident concert promoter at The Horseshoe, where Hotel frequently performed in our day. When we started, Craig terrified us; we used to argue over who had to call him.. and he was hard on us! We persisted and over time he became one of our most key boosters, helping us score gigs with Interpol amongst others. I go to a lot of Craig's shows, and I am always happy to briefly catch up when I see him. Frankly, he doesn't have to be nice me, so it gave me warm fuzzies when he told me that he would email Elliot Lefko on my behalf. (He also said that it was a long shot, and not to expect anything.)
Elliot was a high profile promoter in Toronto with House of Blues. His claim to fame was that he brought Nirvana to The Opera House in Toronto the night that Nevermind was released, and there was basically a riot. In 2005 Elliot moved to California to work for Goldenvoice, the company that does Coachella. I was shocked when Craig forwarded Elliot's cryptic message explaining that I could apply for special tickets by emailing a secret address with my name, affiliations, and who had vouched for me. Craig told me that I could informally become a representative of Against The Grain, his company; the instructions told me that I should "expect no response, and should I be deemed eligible to purchase tickets, I would be notified no sooner than March 15th."
The universe takes good care of me. What kind of amazing thank-you gift should I get for someone like Craig?
March 15: The silence is deafening.
March 20: After I'd come to terms with my failure to procure tickets, an email arrived containing a URL, account number and PIN to access a special Goldenvoice/Ticketmaster site set up for family and business relations. I logged in and my two tickets were one credit card number away!
Once I was committed, I get an email telling me that in fact they would not be mailing me my tickets, but that I could send my courier to retrieve them from their office in LA during the week before the event. Huh! I guess my travel buddy has a new task.
March 25: Unspace arrives in San Diego for the Emerging Tech conference. It didn't go well; all of the magic was gone. In hindsight, I think renting a swanky condo and putting seven alpha-geeks in it for five days was a judgment error. I lapsed into serious depression.
March 26: Jenelle, my travel companion for Coachella drove up from Los Angeles for dinner. I wanted to demonstrate that I was a trustworthy character that wasn't going to rape, kill, and eat her. She seemed pretty cool and offered to pick me up from the airport and drive out from LA together, a change from 2004 when I flew into Palm Springs and had to take a bus.
April 5: I found a reasonably priced direct flight to LAX from YYZ, and booked it. I would arrive later than I'd like, but we could set up the tent at midnight and participate in pre-festival camping hijinx and bask in the anticipatory glow.
Also, I really, really need a vacation. From (my) life.
April 26
4pm: I'm on my way! I get to Kipling Station and am waiting for my bus to the airport, when Jenelle calls sounding stressed out. She's procrastinated a whole bunch of papers and is scrambling. I told her to relax and focus on getting everything done, but that we'd make it all work out. I was worried when I got on the plane; when I worry, I can't digest food. I spent a lot of time in the bathroom before my delayed departure.
9:30pm: I arrive without much fanfare in LA, and Jenelle treats me to my first drive around the two-story metropolis. She's in a bad mood, because she's been pulling all-nighters and her roommates are problematic in their anti-socialism. I vacuum and read in an attempt to stay out of the way while she finishes up her work so we can hit the road. COACHELLA!
11pm: Still reading, still staying out of the way. She puts on her PJ's and headphones.
12:30am: I must have passed out. Holy crap, it's late! We're going soon, right? COACHELLA!
10:30am: Why is it sunlig--- HOLY CRAP! We should NOT be here. Why don't you look concerned? Have you really been typing all night? I'm not going to (visibly) panic, lest she gets more upset. Mike calls, slightly bewildered. I tell him to expect us in a few hours. It's alright, because Of Montreal isn't on until 4:45.
12pm: Jenelle finishes her papers! Just a quick shower. Also... packing.
1pm: Jenelle's hair is complete; we can go.... to USC and drop off her papers.
1:15pm: Man, USC looks like a fun campus!
1:30pm: We'll need to eat, let's stop for a burrito!
2pm: On the road! Jenelle says it's about two hours, and it's okay that we don't have a map because there's really only two turns on the entire trip. Someone stole her car stereo, and the air conditioning hasn't worked in a long time. Coachella!
3pm: Oh shit! Did you say "south-east"? We're going north! I knew Burbank sounded fishy.
3:30pm: A new route plotted, we're on our way in the right direction, thanks to a stressful sounding call to Jenelle's parents in Buffalo. She's really cranky at this point, not having slept in days. Every conversation seemed really negative, and it was so stuffy that once rush-hour traffic kicked in and we were moving in short strides, we ultimately opted for silence. That didn't last long, because the car started shaking and making horrific wheezing noises when she braked. There was a lot of braking.
4pm: We really haven't moved, and miles don't flip over as quickly as kilometers do. I don't think I'm going to make it to see Of Montreal. This is a shame, because according to bloggers, it was totally sweet. Coachella!
6pm: I'm really starting to lose it, albeit quietly. I don't think many people would think of me as stoic, but I actually can be very patient and understanding when the situation gets hairy. Managing Hotel gave me a pretty thick skin, and I appreciate that the trip is often all about the journey and not the destination.
I'm not happy about missing Silversun Pickups, though.
7pm: We are really starting to worry that the car might explode. We pull off the highway in search of a garage, but found ourselves in a Twilight Zone armpit of shacks that could have been in rural Ohio. We spot a place that appears to be a garage, but is in fact an emissions testing facility operated by terrifying Jesus freaks. I live with a beautiful, wonderful Christian girl who would force skeptics to reconsider their unfair generalizations about religious people, and she would have been really uncomfortable with this scene. Straight out of Grindhouse... we're talking massive wall-stereo blaring evangelical choir music 24/7, one-legged rednecks, and shotguns on the wall. Good news: the car LOOKS fine. Thanks guys! Coachella!
8pm: I'm in familiar territory, passing through the mountains between Palm Springs and Indio. There are thousands of power generating windmills, and it looks the The Future. I have fond memories of our trip up the Palm Springs Aerial Tram in 2004. There's a laughably gaudy casino with a massive video wall sticking up completely randomly in the desert; a phallic temple of hedonism you could likely see from outer space.
The Jesus and Mary Chain is playing - right now - and I'm not there to see it. The sun has set, and apparently Scarlett Johansen came out to sing "Just Like Honey". Much like a piata, I'd totally hit that. Coachella!
9pm: We arrive at Empire Polo Fields, and it's utter chaos. The staff really has no clue what's happening, and we can't get reliable instructions. We drive past the traffic cops several times because Jenelle doesn't want to be rude and slow down the traffic just to ask for directions. We're just about to pull in when the car sputters and dies just up the road.
I think we're out of gas! The stressful parents are called. AAA is called; her membership is suspended. More stressful parent calls. AAA is re-instated, and the tow-truck can't figure out where we are. Jenelle remembers that she had her gas tank replaced, and they never re-calibrated the fuel tank indicator. Really!
Now, if you're reading this and you know me, you're probably thinking I should have grabbed my stuff and booked. I could have stashed the tent and my pack in a tree and made it in for Sonic Youth. Don't think that I didn't consider it. In fact, I fantasized about it! But ultimately I concluded that if I left this exhausted young girl with a dead car and a dying cell phone on the size of a dark road, it would make me a bad person. If anything happened, I don't want that on my shoulders. We were in this together (damnit) and so once the scary man came and gave us two gallons of petrol, we drove back out to the highway and gassed up. The tow-truck driver informed us that the left brake-pad had disappeared, and to break was to grind metal on metal.
10pm: Sonic Youth is playing Coachella. They are my favourite band, and I own over one hundred of their albums. Seriously.
Also, I'm outside the front gate. I can hear them, in bits.
We can't park, because cars are streaming out and they say that we can't get in until 2am. We tried various schemes to gain access, and ultimately parked on some grass. Jenelle went to pee; I sat against a fence and listened to bits of Sonic Youth. I was pretty sad. Jenelle told me that she was sick of my tone. Only my firm belief that she wasn't doing any of this intentionally saved her life.
11pm: I hear Bjork! There's a lot more echo out here, on the street.
12am: Jenelle returns, and I finally reached that point where I just needed to walk or I was going to snap. I grabbed the tent and my sleeping bag, and told her that I was going to try and find Mike and get everything figured out. Really, I just needed to cry.
1am: I'm still trying to walk to the campground. I'm attempting to walk upstream with a huge backpack, tent sac, and sleeping bag against tens of thousands of stoned, sun-stroked revelers blindly stumbling at me with little concern for social decorum. It's a four foot wide, and 1.5km long gauntlet. It was hard to breathe due to all of the dust in the air that people were kicking up.
1:30am: I walk to marker B17, where Mike said they were holding space. The campsite is HUGE now! It's intimidating. I can't find anyone I know, so eventually I sat on my sleeping bag and stared at the moon for a while. No answers were forthcoming.
Some really nice Swedish dudes helped me set up the tent.
2:30am: I decide to go back to the car and bring Jenelle back to our site. We waited until 3:15 for them to let cars in again.
3:30am: Sleep.
5:00am: It hits -4 Celsius.
6:00am: It hits 30 Celsius.
7:00am: It hits 40 Celsius and we wake up because you can't sleep through it.
8:00am: I hear voices right outside the tent. It's Mike, Melissa, Adrienne and Mary! I've never been so happy to see anyone. Last night when I was sitting on my sleeping bag, I was sitting in front of their tent. We go for breakfast, and I get a lot off my chest.
11:00am: Close to the beginning of the line, we are frisked and let into the festival. We grab a bite to eat, I have an iced coffee, and start to feel a lot more normal. Never under-estimate the value of good company! I still can't believe I missed Sonic Youth! Seriously, how did yesterday even happen? Everything that happened was preventable three times over.
12:30pm: As Mike suggested, Pop Levi is a creepy little man. His band is all dressed to look like the Beastie Boys in their Sabotage video, sorta. His voice isn't superb. Next door, Fields is a lot better.
1:45pm: I like The Cribs. A little same-y, but catchy. I missed the McCain Frozen Lemonade, strawberry variety. $5 seems so.. affordable when it's that hot and you could really go for sherbet.
3pm: I like The Fratellis. Or at least they sounded good from the shaded tent nearby. I started remembering why I love this festival so much, and check out a lot of the wicked installation art. I'm bitter that they wouldn't let me bring my camera. I also remember why I hate this festival... it's really damn hot. Five minutes of direct contact and I'll have a burn. When I go to Coachella, I wear long sleeves and jeans.. people call me insane, but I'd like to state that it worked.
4pm: I order a bar-b-q'd artichoke from Just Chokes. I like artichoke, but man - that was a lot of artichoke.
5pm: MSTRKRFT was okay, but the tent was hot. I'm glad Jesse seems happier than he did the last time I spoke to him. I wanted them to play The Look, but they didn't.
In other news, I've now had 7 bottles of Gatorade today.
Peter, Bjorn & John was good but not great. It was fun to hear them live, but with no keyboards a lot of the songs sounded a little bare to my ears. I feel bad for them, because they know damn well that everyone is there to hear Young Folks, which is certifiably the summer hit of 2007. And they will play it every night until they die.
Emilie de Ravin aka Claire from LOST stood nearby us, apparently. Like the Polkaroo, when I came back, she was gone.
!!! was likely my favouritest performance of the entire event. It takes a lot to get people to dance when it's that hot, but Nik Offer just seems like the coolest person on the planet, and you want to dance with him. And you do. And so it is.
Go see !!!.
7:30pm: The evil sun finally sets, and we parked ourselves on the grass for my first Arcade Fire show. I see why people love them so much, even if I can't buy the whole farm. They are just so damn earnest. I heard someone call them "cope rock" and I thought that was pretty apt.
My god, everyone here is so hot. Even the ugly people are kind of hot!
Overheard by Mike: "Next year, I'll be 15, and you'll be 17, and NOBODY will be able to tell us what to do!"
9pm: We grab a tasty meal plate with Blonde Redhead serenading us in the background. Life could be worse.
9:30pm: Girl Talk has about 150 girls on stage with him. As you would.
10:00pm: LCD Soundsystem gets the party rolling. James Murphy, looking dashing in a white three-piece suit, informs us that we are "an excellent cultural barometer for the best music."
I really need to lay down. I hear Red Hot Chilli Peppers in the distance. A girl behind me engages in a loud yelling match with her girlfriend, who I can't hear: "MY MOTHER IS DEAD!" .... "I DON'T CARE!" .... "I WAS RAPED!" .... "I DON'T CARE!" .... "MY MOTHER DIED!" .... "I WAS RAPED! REPEATEDLY! FOR A YEAR!" .... "I DON'T CARE!" .... "I AM NOT HIGH!"
11:00pm: The Rapture comes on and I realize that I am so tired I can't get into it. I stay for 4-5 songs, and really appreciate the cool video projections that they are doing in the tent. You know how videos in the early 80s all had that high contrast, super-imposed on neon look? Yeah, it really worked for them.
I walk back to the campsite and go to sleep.
3:00am: I wake up to people screaming. At first I just lay there, because when you're camping with 10,000 some people are too drunk to shut up. But this was different, and growing in intensity. It sounded like a mob of people.. and sure enough Mike and I were standing in our underwear staring at a few thousand brats. In front of them were several rows of riot police in full regalia, batons in hand and spoiling to break some teenage skull.
Now, I understand that people do crazy things in large groups. I don't think that it made sense for the police to take a bunch of drunken kids shouting Rage Against The Machine slogans seriously. What were they expecting? A few assholes in a crowd can ruin it for everyone, and this was no different. Hundreds of people were showing up, not wanting to miss the "action", even if nobody knew why any of it was happening.
By the time the police helicopter showed up ("THIS IS AN ILLEGAL ASSEMBLY. RETURN TO YOUR TENTS. IF YOU DO NOT DISPURSE IMMEDIATELY, YOU WILL ALL BE ARRESTED. THIS IS YOUR ONLY WARNING.") I was seriously embarrassed for my generation. I mean, I've actually been to a significant number of demonstrations in my time; this was nothing more than privileged white kids acting out. We walked out of our way to go to the bathroom, and this kid from Vancouver said in all seriousness that what was happening was exciting. "This is totally Our Moment!" We were kind of dumbstruck by this, and more than a little sad. The locals in Indio REALLY hate us, and this is likely all of the fuel that they need to shut down the camping next year, if not block the festival.
Eventually we went back to sleep, and presumably the police eventually made the smart decision to just leave.
7:00am: Awakened by the sun, I went to have a shower. We don't really have portable shower trucks here, but man, if I lived in California I'd keep one in my back yard.
8:00am: Informed that I was looking a little rosy from the sun, Mike's wonderful fiancee Melissa bought me a truly delicious pomegranate slushy.
11:00am: The police were definitely not happy with us. There was much more of a presence, complete with state trooper car parked on an angle just inside the gate. They were being total dicks about what you could bring in, too. No fruit or Advil, apparently. I saw them refuse one guy his allergy meds, because he didn't bring a copy of his prescription! Regarding my cloth for wiping my glasses: "What's that?" "A cloth." "For drugs?" "For my glasses." "Your glasses aren't dirty." [blinks]
11:30am: I could drink iced white mocha all day long. It's candy. I also enjoy the best cheese steak sandwich I've had outside of Philly.
Sunday is turning out to be really nice. It's seriously hot, but there's a breeze, and air movement is key to the difference between "shade" and "I could sit here forever". It apparently rains 11-13mm per year in Indio.
1pm: We sipped Anju vodka and listened to Mika, who is apparently taking over the world. It was a little AOR for my tastes, but he seemed good at what he did. That last statement is what politically correct musicians say when they don't like each other's music, by the way.
2pm: I've now heard Lupe Fiasco. Moving on!
2:30pm: I've seen Tapes N Tapes N Tapes a few times now, but they were totally on! They played some new songs, and they were great. I think they are here to stay.
3:30pm: Grizzly Bear was so darn good, even if it was bloody hot and their brains were frying. They played two new songs, one good, and the other great. That stage has an open back with palm trees in a row.
I think that's to remind you that you're in the desert!
4pm: Sadly I missed The Kooks and Explosions In The Sky. That's Coachella for you.. scheduling has never been so sad. For example, had I been there on Friday night, there was a moment where Sonic Youth, Interpol, and Brazilian Girls were all playing at the SAME TIME.
I really tried to get into Junior Boys, but I just don't enjoy either their albums or their live show. It wasn't my thing. I'll tell you who was attracting a crowd, though: Rodrigo Y Gabriella. Maybe you or some of the roughly 10,000 people trying to cram into a 3,000 person tent in the punishing sun could tell me who they are, exactly?
I opted to go back to Heineken land and list to The Roots for a bit. I've seen ?uestlove play his drums, now. I was hoping to hear Rahzel, but I guess he doesn't do his crazy Police Academy beatbox thing for every song.
Also: Willie Nelson, I don't like your music, but damn you're an awesome guy.
7pm: Mike and Melissa had flee'd the festival at this point to enjoy the pool at their hotel. Luckily I still had the hot redhead twins to hang out with. We had a blast eating "Americana Food" while being serenaded by Crowded House. It was like 1994 all over again!
Don't kill me, but I sat out Lily Allen and The Klaxons. I've seen them both in the last month, and every set at this point demands a monumental amount of conviction to keep standing.
8:30pm: We show up at the Outdoor Theatre for Air. Except, Air doesn't show up. People scream "go back to France!" Eventually they come on 40 minutes late - a seriously no-no at this festival - and don't apologize. All of the weird synth touches, the strange filtering that make me love their albums.. they didn't try to reproduce them live, just playing the melodies straight. Boo to Air.
9:30pm: We show up at the rave tent for The Happy Mondays. Tony Wilson came out with his cane to introduce the band, which sadly was the highlight of the set. Bez forgot to apply for a visa, and nobody looks more like hell than Shawn Ryder. Seriously, the guy was so far gone; he couldn't remember the words to his own songs. It was unclear exactly what was wrong, considering the crowd showed an amazing amount of support. He stood, mostly in-animate and leaning on his mic stand, looking as if he wanted someone to take care of him. I found it kind of depressing, and focused on giving Looking Real Good postcards to cute girls.
10:30pm: There is always so much CAS going on at Coachella. That would be Cool Art Shit; giant Tesla coils, robot sunflowers, wandering sentient robots, flaming sculptures, giant flowers, a giant three legged spider with an evil looking red light/eye that would slowly swivel around and freak people out. Everywhere you look... movement. Bordering the event are about ten powerful beam spotlights shooting into space, all focused on a central point in the sky.
It's pretty intense.
11pm: Rage Against The Machine hit the stage for the final set of the weekend. What can I say? It was really awesome! I never got to see them before, and watching them do their thing.. it was like they never broke up. There's a lot of cynical things that should and could be said about them, but I'm glad they have resolved their differences, because at the root of it they are a great band.. and, if someone's got to scream WAKE UP then it should probably be Zach.
Not one to miss an opportunity, the lyrics to Killing in the Name Of became "some of those who hold office, are the same who burn crosses" [Mary pointed out that you could actually feel the ground shaking] and during the finale when he's doing his rebellious crouch on the pedestal before his flock, delivering the sermon of the day, it was hard not to feel a perverse excitement when he explained that if the Bush administration was tried under the same laws that the Nazis were, they would be found guilty of war crimes and shot. It continued to be exciting when Zach finished up by restating slightly that we need to try the Bush administration, that they will be found guilty, and They. Will. Be. Shot.
Oh, English! You have so many expressive nuances that can sound so sinister.
12am: Leaving Coachella is surreal. You look behind you and tens of thousands of people are climbing up the hill, and it gives you a rush because all of these people came to a freaking polo field in the desert to see the same bands that they could see when they come to their towns, but don't need to be explained why you would ever do this.
The police were being real dicks at this point, and I'm not sure I really blame them. RATM had just told 50,000 drunks to go serve final justice to GWB and I think a few of them thought he meant... right now. We had to slowly walk around the perimeter of our campsite to get back in, and that kind of sucked. It's a big place.
We went to sleep for a few hours, with the nebulous plan to get up around 4am and drive to LAX.
3am: Another night, another riot! This time I awoke to 1000 kids chanting KILL BUSH while they appeared to be burning down tents and throwing burning rolls of toilet paper in random directions perhaps a hundred paces from us. "We're going. Now." I said, and quickly collapsed our tent and rolled our sleeping bags. See, what I'd realized is that unlike the official response to the previous night's ridiculous "riot", this was far more scary: they'd shut off the lights, there were no cops, no event security. They appeared to have just shrugged and left us to each other, and now they've discovered fire. We hiked out the long way [why does everything happen really close to us?] and Jenelle retrieved her filthy, filthy car while I waited at the gate with our stuff. Zombie-like people were stumbling around in a sun-stroked dread-Hippie daze. Jenelle pulled up, I threw our shit in the trunk and we peeled out of the deserted parking lot with dust clouds choking the air out of our lungs. My last memory of that place is looking back at the tent area where we'd been minutes earlier, seeing what appeared to be burning tents, and hearing the creepiest jocks on the planet chanting
BEST
DAY
EVER
BEST
DAY
EVER
BEST DAY EVER
6am: Sun comes up. There's very little traffic, and we're speeding down the highway. I wasn't very conscious, but I know we drove a lot more than two hours. Ehn, what can you do, right?
8:30am: Jenelle drops me off at LAX, on time for my 9:55am flight. I thanked her for driving, said that I was sorry things had turned out so badly on Friday, and that I hoped she had a good time after all. I appreciate her doing her best, and getting me home safely.
Coachella 2007: A Novella
April 2004: After breaking up with my girlfriend, witnessing the beating of a close friend, and ultimately my band Hotel's collapse, I was at an all-time low and in desperate need of a change from everything happening in my life. I went to Coachella with my deadbeat former housemate Colin, and a mensch named Mike McCann. It was hotter than hot, with temperatures pushing 120 degrees, but the festival featured every band I'd want to hear, with The Cure, The Pixies, Radiohead and The Flaming Lips headlining. Pitchfork describes Coachella well, saying that it's neither heaven nor hell, but both. If you're like me, it's the ultimate payoff for unapologetic, masochistic.. nay, religious devotion to live music. That trip was such a milestone in my life that I felt emotionally unprepared to return for three years, lest I taint the experience in the eye of my rose-coloured memory.
In the three years since, most things that were apparently static in my life are no more. Coachella for me represents not just the winds of change, but a choking primal need to purge my life so that I can move on to the next chapter.
February 2007: A girl I met on the net mentions that she wants to go to Coachella, but has nobody to go with. Plans quickly led to purchasing camping tickets, with the understanding that they sell out quickly while the actual event has never sold out until the weekend of. Well, the joke's on me; Rage Against The Machine's reunion announcement led to a speedy ticket sellout. Within days event tickets were going for ridiculous markups on eBay.
I am fundamentally opposed to supporting ticket scalping, and so I began to brainstorm other options. One of the crazier notions was to email Craig Laskey, long time resident concert promoter at The Horseshoe, where Hotel frequently performed in our day. When we started, Craig terrified us; we used to argue over who had to call him.. and he was hard on us! We persisted and over time he became one of our most key boosters, helping us score gigs with Interpol amongst others. I go to a lot of Craig's shows, and I am always happy to briefly catch up when I see him. Frankly, he doesn't have to be nice me, so it gave me warm fuzzies when he told me that he would email Elliot Lefko on my behalf. (He also said that it was a long shot, and not to expect anything.)
Elliot was a high profile promoter in Toronto with House of Blues. His claim to fame was that he brought Nirvana to The Opera House in Toronto the night that Nevermind was released, and there was basically a riot. In 2005 Elliot moved to California to work for Goldenvoice, the company that does Coachella. I was shocked when Craig forwarded Elliot's cryptic message explaining that I could apply for special tickets by emailing a secret address with my name, affiliations, and who had vouched for me. Craig told me that I could informally become a representative of Against The Grain, his company; the instructions told me that I should "expect no response, and should I be deemed eligible to purchase tickets, I would be notified no sooner than March 15th."
The universe takes good care of me. What kind of amazing thank-you gift should I get for someone like Craig?
March 15: The silence is deafening.
March 20: After I'd come to terms with my failure to procure tickets, an email arrived containing a URL, account number and PIN to access a special Goldenvoice/Ticketmaster site set up for family and business relations. I logged in and my two tickets were one credit card number away!
Once I was committed, I get an email telling me that in fact they would not be mailing me my tickets, but that I could send my courier to retrieve them from their office in LA during the week before the event. Huh! I guess my travel buddy has a new task.
March 25: Unspace arrives in San Diego for the Emerging Tech conference. It didn't go well; all of the magic was gone. In hindsight, I think renting a swanky condo and putting seven alpha-geeks in it for five days was a judgment error. I lapsed into serious depression.
March 26: Jenelle, my travel companion for Coachella drove up from Los Angeles for dinner. I wanted to demonstrate that I was a trustworthy character that wasn't going to rape, kill, and eat her. She seemed pretty cool and offered to pick me up from the airport and drive out from LA together, a change from 2004 when I flew into Palm Springs and had to take a bus.
April 5: I found a reasonably priced direct flight to LAX from YYZ, and booked it. I would arrive later than I'd like, but we could set up the tent at midnight and participate in pre-festival camping hijinx and bask in the anticipatory glow.
Also, I really, really need a vacation. From (my) life.
April 26
4pm: I'm on my way! I get to Kipling Station and am waiting for my bus to the airport, when Jenelle calls sounding stressed out. She's procrastinated a whole bunch of papers and is scrambling. I told her to relax and focus on getting everything done, but that we'd make it all work out. I was worried when I got on the plane; when I worry, I can't digest food. I spent a lot of time in the bathroom before my delayed departure.
9:30pm: I arrive without much fanfare in LA, and Jenelle treats me to my first drive around the two-story metropolis. She's in a bad mood, because she's been pulling all-nighters and her roommates are problematic in their anti-socialism. I vacuum and read in an attempt to stay out of the way while she finishes up her work so we can hit the road. COACHELLA!
11pm: Still reading, still staying out of the way. She puts on her PJ's and headphones.
12:30am: I must have passed out. Holy crap, it's late! We're going soon, right? COACHELLA!
10:30am: Why is it sunlig--- HOLY CRAP! We should NOT be here. Why don't you look concerned? Have you really been typing all night? I'm not going to (visibly) panic, lest she gets more upset. Mike calls, slightly bewildered. I tell him to expect us in a few hours. It's alright, because Of Montreal isn't on until 4:45.
12pm: Jenelle finishes her papers! Just a quick shower. Also... packing.
1pm: Jenelle's hair is complete; we can go.... to USC and drop off her papers.
1:15pm: Man, USC looks like a fun campus!
1:30pm: We'll need to eat, let's stop for a burrito!
2pm: On the road! Jenelle says it's about two hours, and it's okay that we don't have a map because there's really only two turns on the entire trip. Someone stole her car stereo, and the air conditioning hasn't worked in a long time. Coachella!
3pm: Oh shit! Did you say "south-east"? We're going north! I knew Burbank sounded fishy.
3:30pm: A new route plotted, we're on our way in the right direction, thanks to a stressful sounding call to Jenelle's parents in Buffalo. She's really cranky at this point, not having slept in days. Every conversation seemed really negative, and it was so stuffy that once rush-hour traffic kicked in and we were moving in short strides, we ultimately opted for silence. That didn't last long, because the car started shaking and making horrific wheezing noises when she braked. There was a lot of braking.
4pm: We really haven't moved, and miles don't flip over as quickly as kilometers do. I don't think I'm going to make it to see Of Montreal. This is a shame, because according to bloggers, it was totally sweet. Coachella!
6pm: I'm really starting to lose it, albeit quietly. I don't think many people would think of me as stoic, but I actually can be very patient and understanding when the situation gets hairy. Managing Hotel gave me a pretty thick skin, and I appreciate that the trip is often all about the journey and not the destination.
I'm not happy about missing Silversun Pickups, though.
7pm: We are really starting to worry that the car might explode. We pull off the highway in search of a garage, but found ourselves in a Twilight Zone armpit of shacks that could have been in rural Ohio. We spot a place that appears to be a garage, but is in fact an emissions testing facility operated by terrifying Jesus freaks. I live with a beautiful, wonderful Christian girl who would force skeptics to reconsider their unfair generalizations about religious people, and she would have been really uncomfortable with this scene. Straight out of Grindhouse... we're talking massive wall-stereo blaring evangelical choir music 24/7, one-legged rednecks, and shotguns on the wall. Good news: the car LOOKS fine. Thanks guys! Coachella!
8pm: I'm in familiar territory, passing through the mountains between Palm Springs and Indio. There are thousands of power generating windmills, and it looks the The Future. I have fond memories of our trip up the Palm Springs Aerial Tram in 2004. There's a laughably gaudy casino with a massive video wall sticking up completely randomly in the desert; a phallic temple of hedonism you could likely see from outer space.
The Jesus and Mary Chain is playing - right now - and I'm not there to see it. The sun has set, and apparently Scarlett Johansen came out to sing "Just Like Honey". Much like a piata, I'd totally hit that. Coachella!
9pm: We arrive at Empire Polo Fields, and it's utter chaos. The staff really has no clue what's happening, and we can't get reliable instructions. We drive past the traffic cops several times because Jenelle doesn't want to be rude and slow down the traffic just to ask for directions. We're just about to pull in when the car sputters and dies just up the road.
I think we're out of gas! The stressful parents are called. AAA is called; her membership is suspended. More stressful parent calls. AAA is re-instated, and the tow-truck can't figure out where we are. Jenelle remembers that she had her gas tank replaced, and they never re-calibrated the fuel tank indicator. Really!
Now, if you're reading this and you know me, you're probably thinking I should have grabbed my stuff and booked. I could have stashed the tent and my pack in a tree and made it in for Sonic Youth. Don't think that I didn't consider it. In fact, I fantasized about it! But ultimately I concluded that if I left this exhausted young girl with a dead car and a dying cell phone on the size of a dark road, it would make me a bad person. If anything happened, I don't want that on my shoulders. We were in this together (damnit) and so once the scary man came and gave us two gallons of petrol, we drove back out to the highway and gassed up. The tow-truck driver informed us that the left brake-pad had disappeared, and to break was to grind metal on metal.
10pm: Sonic Youth is playing Coachella. They are my favourite band, and I own over one hundred of their albums. Seriously.
Also, I'm outside the front gate. I can hear them, in bits.
We can't park, because cars are streaming out and they say that we can't get in until 2am. We tried various schemes to gain access, and ultimately parked on some grass. Jenelle went to pee; I sat against a fence and listened to bits of Sonic Youth. I was pretty sad. Jenelle told me that she was sick of my tone. Only my firm belief that she wasn't doing any of this intentionally saved her life.
11pm: I hear Bjork! There's a lot more echo out here, on the street.
12am: Jenelle returns, and I finally reached that point where I just needed to walk or I was going to snap. I grabbed the tent and my sleeping bag, and told her that I was going to try and find Mike and get everything figured out. Really, I just needed to cry.
1am: I'm still trying to walk to the campground. I'm attempting to walk upstream with a huge backpack, tent sac, and sleeping bag against tens of thousands of stoned, sun-stroked revelers blindly stumbling at me with little concern for social decorum. It's a four foot wide, and 1.5km long gauntlet. It was hard to breathe due to all of the dust in the air that people were kicking up.
1:30am: I walk to marker B17, where Mike said they were holding space. The campsite is HUGE now! It's intimidating. I can't find anyone I know, so eventually I sat on my sleeping bag and stared at the moon for a while. No answers were forthcoming.
Some really nice Swedish dudes helped me set up the tent.
2:30am: I decide to go back to the car and bring Jenelle back to our site. We waited until 3:15 for them to let cars in again.
3:30am: Sleep.
5:00am: It hits -4 Celsius.
6:00am: It hits 30 Celsius.
7:00am: It hits 40 Celsius and we wake up because you can't sleep through it.
8:00am: I hear voices right outside the tent. It's Mike, Melissa, Adrienne and Mary! I've never been so happy to see anyone. Last night when I was sitting on my sleeping bag, I was sitting in front of their tent. We go for breakfast, and I get a lot off my chest.
11:00am: Close to the beginning of the line, we are frisked and let into the festival. We grab a bite to eat, I have an iced coffee, and start to feel a lot more normal. Never under-estimate the value of good company! I still can't believe I missed Sonic Youth! Seriously, how did yesterday even happen? Everything that happened was preventable three times over.
12:30pm: As Mike suggested, Pop Levi is a creepy little man. His band is all dressed to look like the Beastie Boys in their Sabotage video, sorta. His voice isn't superb. Next door, Fields is a lot better.
1:45pm: I like The Cribs. A little same-y, but catchy. I missed the McCain Frozen Lemonade, strawberry variety. $5 seems so.. affordable when it's that hot and you could really go for sherbet.
3pm: I like The Fratellis. Or at least they sounded good from the shaded tent nearby. I started remembering why I love this festival so much, and check out a lot of the wicked installation art. I'm bitter that they wouldn't let me bring my camera. I also remember why I hate this festival... it's really damn hot. Five minutes of direct contact and I'll have a burn. When I go to Coachella, I wear long sleeves and jeans.. people call me insane, but I'd like to state that it worked.
4pm: I order a bar-b-q'd artichoke from Just Chokes. I like artichoke, but man - that was a lot of artichoke.
5pm: MSTRKRFT was okay, but the tent was hot. I'm glad Jesse seems happier than he did the last time I spoke to him. I wanted them to play The Look, but they didn't.
In other news, I've now had 7 bottles of Gatorade today.
Peter, Bjorn & John was good but not great. It was fun to hear them live, but with no keyboards a lot of the songs sounded a little bare to my ears. I feel bad for them, because they know damn well that everyone is there to hear Young Folks, which is certifiably the summer hit of 2007. And they will play it every night until they die.
Emilie de Ravin aka Claire from LOST stood nearby us, apparently. Like the Polkaroo, when I came back, she was gone.
!!! was likely my favouritest performance of the entire event. It takes a lot to get people to dance when it's that hot, but Nik Offer just seems like the coolest person on the planet, and you want to dance with him. And you do. And so it is.
Go see !!!.
7:30pm: The evil sun finally sets, and we parked ourselves on the grass for my first Arcade Fire show. I see why people love them so much, even if I can't buy the whole farm. They are just so damn earnest. I heard someone call them "cope rock" and I thought that was pretty apt.
My god, everyone here is so hot. Even the ugly people are kind of hot!
Overheard by Mike: "Next year, I'll be 15, and you'll be 17, and NOBODY will be able to tell us what to do!"
9pm: We grab a tasty meal plate with Blonde Redhead serenading us in the background. Life could be worse.
9:30pm: Girl Talk has about 150 girls on stage with him. As you would.
10:00pm: LCD Soundsystem gets the party rolling. James Murphy, looking dashing in a white three-piece suit, informs us that we are "an excellent cultural barometer for the best music."
I really need to lay down. I hear Red Hot Chilli Peppers in the distance. A girl behind me engages in a loud yelling match with her girlfriend, who I can't hear: "MY MOTHER IS DEAD!" .... "I DON'T CARE!" .... "I WAS RAPED!" .... "I DON'T CARE!" .... "MY MOTHER DIED!" .... "I WAS RAPED! REPEATEDLY! FOR A YEAR!" .... "I DON'T CARE!" .... "I AM NOT HIGH!"
11:00pm: The Rapture comes on and I realize that I am so tired I can't get into it. I stay for 4-5 songs, and really appreciate the cool video projections that they are doing in the tent. You know how videos in the early 80s all had that high contrast, super-imposed on neon look? Yeah, it really worked for them.
I walk back to the campsite and go to sleep.
3:00am: I wake up to people screaming. At first I just lay there, because when you're camping with 10,000 some people are too drunk to shut up. But this was different, and growing in intensity. It sounded like a mob of people.. and sure enough Mike and I were standing in our underwear staring at a few thousand brats. In front of them were several rows of riot police in full regalia, batons in hand and spoiling to break some teenage skull.
Now, I understand that people do crazy things in large groups. I don't think that it made sense for the police to take a bunch of drunken kids shouting Rage Against The Machine slogans seriously. What were they expecting? A few assholes in a crowd can ruin it for everyone, and this was no different. Hundreds of people were showing up, not wanting to miss the "action", even if nobody knew why any of it was happening.
By the time the police helicopter showed up ("THIS IS AN ILLEGAL ASSEMBLY. RETURN TO YOUR TENTS. IF YOU DO NOT DISPURSE IMMEDIATELY, YOU WILL ALL BE ARRESTED. THIS IS YOUR ONLY WARNING.") I was seriously embarrassed for my generation. I mean, I've actually been to a significant number of demonstrations in my time; this was nothing more than privileged white kids acting out. We walked out of our way to go to the bathroom, and this kid from Vancouver said in all seriousness that what was happening was exciting. "This is totally Our Moment!" We were kind of dumbstruck by this, and more than a little sad. The locals in Indio REALLY hate us, and this is likely all of the fuel that they need to shut down the camping next year, if not block the festival.
Eventually we went back to sleep, and presumably the police eventually made the smart decision to just leave.
7:00am: Awakened by the sun, I went to have a shower. We don't really have portable shower trucks here, but man, if I lived in California I'd keep one in my back yard.
8:00am: Informed that I was looking a little rosy from the sun, Mike's wonderful fiancee Melissa bought me a truly delicious pomegranate slushy.
11:00am: The police were definitely not happy with us. There was much more of a presence, complete with state trooper car parked on an angle just inside the gate. They were being total dicks about what you could bring in, too. No fruit or Advil, apparently. I saw them refuse one guy his allergy meds, because he didn't bring a copy of his prescription! Regarding my cloth for wiping my glasses: "What's that?" "A cloth." "For drugs?" "For my glasses." "Your glasses aren't dirty." [blinks]
11:30am: I could drink iced white mocha all day long. It's candy. I also enjoy the best cheese steak sandwich I've had outside of Philly.
Sunday is turning out to be really nice. It's seriously hot, but there's a breeze, and air movement is key to the difference between "shade" and "I could sit here forever". It apparently rains 11-13mm per year in Indio.
1pm: We sipped Anju vodka and listened to Mika, who is apparently taking over the world. It was a little AOR for my tastes, but he seemed good at what he did. That last statement is what politically correct musicians say when they don't like each other's music, by the way.
2pm: I've now heard Lupe Fiasco. Moving on!
2:30pm: I've seen Tapes N Tapes N Tapes a few times now, but they were totally on! They played some new songs, and they were great. I think they are here to stay.
3:30pm: Grizzly Bear was so darn good, even if it was bloody hot and their brains were frying. They played two new songs, one good, and the other great. That stage has an open back with palm trees in a row.
I think that's to remind you that you're in the desert!
4pm: Sadly I missed The Kooks and Explosions In The Sky. That's Coachella for you.. scheduling has never been so sad. For example, had I been there on Friday night, there was a moment where Sonic Youth, Interpol, and Brazilian Girls were all playing at the SAME TIME.
I really tried to get into Junior Boys, but I just don't enjoy either their albums or their live show. It wasn't my thing. I'll tell you who was attracting a crowd, though: Rodrigo Y Gabriella. Maybe you or some of the roughly 10,000 people trying to cram into a 3,000 person tent in the punishing sun could tell me who they are, exactly?
I opted to go back to Heineken land and list to The Roots for a bit. I've seen ?uestlove play his drums, now. I was hoping to hear Rahzel, but I guess he doesn't do his crazy Police Academy beatbox thing for every song.
Also: Willie Nelson, I don't like your music, but damn you're an awesome guy.
7pm: Mike and Melissa had flee'd the festival at this point to enjoy the pool at their hotel. Luckily I still had the hot redhead twins to hang out with. We had a blast eating "Americana Food" while being serenaded by Crowded House. It was like 1994 all over again!
Don't kill me, but I sat out Lily Allen and The Klaxons. I've seen them both in the last month, and every set at this point demands a monumental amount of conviction to keep standing.
8:30pm: We show up at the Outdoor Theatre for Air. Except, Air doesn't show up. People scream "go back to France!" Eventually they come on 40 minutes late - a seriously no-no at this festival - and don't apologize. All of the weird synth touches, the strange filtering that make me love their albums.. they didn't try to reproduce them live, just playing the melodies straight. Boo to Air.
9:30pm: We show up at the rave tent for The Happy Mondays. Tony Wilson came out with his cane to introduce the band, which sadly was the highlight of the set. Bez forgot to apply for a visa, and nobody looks more like hell than Shawn Ryder. Seriously, the guy was so far gone; he couldn't remember the words to his own songs. It was unclear exactly what was wrong, considering the crowd showed an amazing amount of support. He stood, mostly in-animate and leaning on his mic stand, looking as if he wanted someone to take care of him. I found it kind of depressing, and focused on giving Looking Real Good postcards to cute girls.
10:30pm: There is always so much CAS going on at Coachella. That would be Cool Art Shit; giant Tesla coils, robot sunflowers, wandering sentient robots, flaming sculptures, giant flowers, a giant three legged spider with an evil looking red light/eye that would slowly swivel around and freak people out. Everywhere you look... movement. Bordering the event are about ten powerful beam spotlights shooting into space, all focused on a central point in the sky.
It's pretty intense.
11pm: Rage Against The Machine hit the stage for the final set of the weekend. What can I say? It was really awesome! I never got to see them before, and watching them do their thing.. it was like they never broke up. There's a lot of cynical things that should and could be said about them, but I'm glad they have resolved their differences, because at the root of it they are a great band.. and, if someone's got to scream WAKE UP then it should probably be Zach.
Not one to miss an opportunity, the lyrics to Killing in the Name Of became "some of those who hold office, are the same who burn crosses" [Mary pointed out that you could actually feel the ground shaking] and during the finale when he's doing his rebellious crouch on the pedestal before his flock, delivering the sermon of the day, it was hard not to feel a perverse excitement when he explained that if the Bush administration was tried under the same laws that the Nazis were, they would be found guilty of war crimes and shot. It continued to be exciting when Zach finished up by restating slightly that we need to try the Bush administration, that they will be found guilty, and They. Will. Be. Shot.
Oh, English! You have so many expressive nuances that can sound so sinister.
12am: Leaving Coachella is surreal. You look behind you and tens of thousands of people are climbing up the hill, and it gives you a rush because all of these people came to a freaking polo field in the desert to see the same bands that they could see when they come to their towns, but don't need to be explained why you would ever do this.
The police were being real dicks at this point, and I'm not sure I really blame them. RATM had just told 50,000 drunks to go serve final justice to GWB and I think a few of them thought he meant... right now. We had to slowly walk around the perimeter of our campsite to get back in, and that kind of sucked. It's a big place.
We went to sleep for a few hours, with the nebulous plan to get up around 4am and drive to LAX.
3am: Another night, another riot! This time I awoke to 1000 kids chanting KILL BUSH while they appeared to be burning down tents and throwing burning rolls of toilet paper in random directions perhaps a hundred paces from us. "We're going. Now." I said, and quickly collapsed our tent and rolled our sleeping bags. See, what I'd realized is that unlike the official response to the previous night's ridiculous "riot", this was far more scary: they'd shut off the lights, there were no cops, no event security. They appeared to have just shrugged and left us to each other, and now they've discovered fire. We hiked out the long way [why does everything happen really close to us?] and Jenelle retrieved her filthy, filthy car while I waited at the gate with our stuff. Zombie-like people were stumbling around in a sun-stroked dread-Hippie daze. Jenelle pulled up, I threw our shit in the trunk and we peeled out of the deserted parking lot with dust clouds choking the air out of our lungs. My last memory of that place is looking back at the tent area where we'd been minutes earlier, seeing what appeared to be burning tents, and hearing the creepiest jocks on the planet chanting
BEST
DAY
EVER
BEST
DAY
EVER
BEST DAY EVER
6am: Sun comes up. There's very little traffic, and we're speeding down the highway. I wasn't very conscious, but I know we drove a lot more than two hours. Ehn, what can you do, right?
8:30am: Jenelle drops me off at LAX, on time for my 9:55am flight. I thanked her for driving, said that I was sorry things had turned out so badly on Friday, and that I hoped she had a good time after all. I appreciate her doing her best, and getting me home safely.
VIEW 5 of 5 COMMENTS
emma:
update update update!
dylan:
Thank you for commenting on my set!