Coachella Preview: The mecca of music lovers, hipsters, and fun

April 16, 2010, 12:17 a.m.

An hour outside of the Empire Polo Grounds in Indio, Calif., an hour east of LA in the baked-dry SoCal desert, something is not quite business as usual.

Thousands of cars pack the two-lane razor-straight avenues that, for the other 362 days of the year, only see trucks and horse trailers. Suburban stucco-coated houses and the occasional cluster of palm trees punctuate the pancake-flat landscape, but today, stragglers crowd the sidewalks, looking to buy last-minute tickets or just a bottle of cold water. Sun’s pounding down. Traffic’s inching along. In the distance, a handful of tents and stages mark a musical oasis on the horizon, and the mass of cars, travelers and hipsters continues its slow, tired march toward the prize.

Welcome to Coachella.

Not everyone “gets” the hype about this festival, and that’s understandable. It’s overpriced, it’s hot and dusty, it’s in the middle of nowhere and you have to miss bio lecture and your Friday econ section. If you’re thinking, “I might as well sit by the pool and listen to my iPod,” then you probably should.

Coachella Preview: The mecca of music lovers, hipsters, and funBut for everyone else, being there is the whole point. Fifty thousand people turn one vast, water-sucking lawn into a communal experience. During the heat of the day, festivalgoers subject themselves to exorbitant price markups for a soft frozen lemonade and seek shelter in one of the three tents or in the shadow of a huge art installation. The air pulses with muted reverb as sound waves from five stages hit interference in the center of the fields. People nap anytime, anywhere. Hipster teens frolic in neon colors and body paint among the throngs of guys who all seem to be wearing the same uniform: cargo shorts, no shirt, RayBans and straw fedoras.

By the time night falls, a few people begin trickling out of the polo grounds, sacrificing the end of the final sets of the day in an attempt to avoid outgoing traffic. Most people, though, regale themselves with the night’s headliners, taking it easy farther back from the stage and watching the big screens, or going all out at the front of the mosh pit or in the chaos of the Sahara dance tent.

The festival hits curfew around midnight (and if bands go past the cutoff time as they have in the past, it’s an expensive penalty), and the grounds empty slowly, only to see the same die-hards return twelve hours later, refreshed and ready to rumble.

This year, headliners include Jay-Z, Pavement, Muse, Thom Yorke, Gorillaz, LCD Soundsystem and Tiesto. Festival passes have sold out as usual, meaning scalpers will line the walk from the parking lot to the polo grounds, shouting out ticket offers. Festival organizers usually wait until a few days before the event to announce specific set times, which sets off a frenzy of “scheduling” between all the bands that, unfortunately, will have some overlapping set times.

Friday opens slowly, with smaller bands earlier in the day. Yeasayer and She & Him start sets around 5 p.m., and the action only picks up from there. Passion Pit, whose popularity has shot up in the last couple years, takes the stage a bit later, and Vampire Weekend, a festival staple, gets an evening slot on the second stage. The main stage gets to host LCD Soundsystem before Jay-Z takes over around 11 p.m., finishing the first day. Although Jay-Z’s presence on the lineup made some festival veterans scoff, it’s not so much of an aberration as it might seem, and his set will certainly be an interesting twist on a lineup of regulars.

Saturday will see fans running between the main Coachella stage and the second outdoor stage, as Tokyo Police Club and the XX have slightly overlapping set times. David Guetta packs the Sahara Tent around 9 p.m., while across the field, Muse takes over the main stage. Other late-night acts include MGMT, the Dead Weather and Tiesto.

Finally, Sunday’s lineup is set to be a heartbreaker. Spoon and Phoenix share the dinnertime slots, and festival closers Gorillaz and Thom Yorke have simultaneous ending sets that will certainly spur some deep, tough choices for festivalgoers (or a lot of people running back and forth between the two stages). Yorke, with his live band Atoms for Peace, will always be a sight to see–Radiohead shows are legendary in part because of his live prowess–and Gorillaz will always be a surprise, since their live shows in the past have incorporated huge animated sequences of the virtual band to back the live performers on stage.

So, look around your Monday classes for those classmates with bags under their eyes and smiles plastered on their exhausted faces. It’ll be those of us who aren’t afraid of a little dirt in exchange for the best weekend that spring quarter has to offer.

Ellen Huet is currently a senior staff writer at The Daily; she joined the staff in fall 2008 and served one volume as managing news editor in fall and early winter of 2010-2011. Reach her at ehuet at stanford dot edu. Fan mail and sternly worded complaints are equally welcome.

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