A Trip to the Desert - Coachella 2008

For the past nine years or so, there has been a music festival in the desert near Palms Springs called Coachella. (I have no idea where that name comes from). This year, I went for the first time. My friends and I  rented a house about 10 minutes from the festival area - pool and jacuzzi included :).  

The drive from L.A. to the desert took about 3 hours - 2 hours for those with a faster car. The drive is not a scenic by any stretch of the imagination. Bare hills, shopping malls, a giant casino structure, windmills... but oh was it worth it! Most of us shared a room with 2-3 other people. My roommate whacked our other roommate with a pillow when he wouldn't stop snoring... We drank Jack in the jacuzzi and BBQed us some burgers (shrimp for the non-meat eaters like me). It was a blast! 

Over three days, more than 30 bands and DJs perform on 5-6 stages set up on a polo field. Some of the stages where in tents, some outdoors. The tents were all named after deserts - Gobi, Sahara, Mojave. It was an amazing experience. Not including the porter potties... that was no fun. But alcohol and a constant fog of pot in the air helped us overcome the ick-factor. 

Small 'shop' tents were set up across the field selling t-shirts, CDs, etc. There was also a recycling tent - return 10 empty bottles of water, get one full one. Even rock is going green. Peculiar art installations were scattered between tents. 110 degree weather beating down on us.  I fell in love with a marinated artichoke wrap that I had to have everyday...

Every morning the group would go over the daily schedule to figure out which bands to see, which bands overlapped, which bands have priority... We often split up over the course of the day to get our individual music fixes. We would generally find each other again during the final act at the main stage. 

The first night we saw Aphex Twin, The Verve (awesome), Jack Johnson (eh) and many more in between. Saturdays highlights included Death Cab for Cutie (good but they spent a lot of time making fun of Prince), Kraftwerk (I had to giggle because I can understand German - fahren, fahren, fahren auf der Autobahn), Portishead (amazing but sooo depressing - and I swear I saw two people have sex during their show), Mark Ronson (my personal favorite!). We caught songs by Kate Nash, Erol Alkan and some DJs I don't remember. And the headliner was Prince - hence the teasing by Death Cab. I've never a huge fan but I gotta admit - he puts on a hell of a show! This little fella got lots of energy and a big voice. We were dancing like crazy and eventually ended up laying down in the grass looking at the stars and the occasional zeppelin. 

Sunday was a lazy one. One of our friends made a pot roast - I guess you party differently when you reach a certain age. But don't get me wrong, there was also the 2-day old pizza in the fridge and plenty of after-party booze.  Some of us went to the festival around for but a friend and I stayed behind to watch the end of Dexter. We were hooked. We made it to the festival around 5 - well, I did. He had to turn around because he forgot his ticket. Hehe... Some more DJs and then Sean Penn appeared to give a speech. He tried to promote a charity project to help rebuild New Orleans. He wanted us to get on a bus the next day to take a 6-day trip to NOLA. We all looked at each other.... we had jobs and classes to go to....eh... He seemed to notice that there was nothing gonna happen. His speech got less and less enthusiastic. He also seemed drunk... not sure. Afterwards I caught the first two songs by My Morning Jacket before heading home. I didn't stay for the Roger Waters show so I can't tell you anything about that floating pig that got loose incident. 

I was in luck - there was no traffic on the way home. I was still reminiscing about the weekend. Cranked the radio up and sang along. I hardly got any sleep all weekend but it was so worth it. Music brings people together. Everyone was friendly - I'm sure the pot played it's part in that - and everyone had lots of fun.

Can't wait for next year....