The next day I was leaving for Palm Springs, To go to the most hyped, most well-known and most music festival-y, music festival that there is, Coachella. I was all packed and ready to go the night before as my flight was leaving Oklahoma City at 6:25am. I planned it all out, I should wake up around 3:30am and leave my house by 4:30am.
*wakes up to no alarm*
*panic scramble for my phone*
"4:30" - phone
Shower. Grab my stuff. Speed to the airport.
Pulling into the airport parking garage I am going through a checklist in my head trying to think if I forgot anything. Check. Check. Got it.
*Coachella Wristband?*
F***!!!
Extreme panic mode. Already barely making it to the airport on time, I have to make a quick decision. I am meeting a friend in Denver for my connecting flight and if I don't get on this 6:25am flight it will throw off the first few days and it will affect my friend's trip too. I catch the flight.
That flight to Denver was mostly spent questioning how I could forget the one thing I really needed for the trip. I am pretty good at telling myself that everything is going to be okay no matter the circumstances but my mind wasn't letting me do this very easily this time.
OK OK ENOUGH NEGATIVE VIBES
Summary of Denver, CO to Ontario, CA: Sleep and a Jack and Coke provided by my Southwest Airlines drink voucher.
LOS ANGELES
Besides an In-N-Out pit stop, we head straight for Los Angeles. On our hour or so drive from Ontario we decide we need to Style Hunt a little bit. After getting a taste of the LA traffic driving through downtown we make it to Fairfax Avenue where there are stores like Supreme, Flight Club, Diamond Supply Co., AAPE by Bathing Ape, APT. 4B, and many more. We make it into most of these stores and do not come out empty handed. See vlog for what I picked up.
Next stop, Venice Beach. It was extremely windy so there wasn't much going on but I did touch the water. If I'm that close I'm going to go out and get in the ocean a little bit. A little disappointed in myself that I didn't touch the water of the Atlantic Ocean in New York the week before. On our way back to the rental car a vintage store catches my eye. My friend and I go in and I find something I was told was going to be essential for Coachella. A scarf, to cover my face in case it is windy and dusty. It never turned out to be dusty but the scarf in the pictures below turned out to be helpful to my Coachella vibes.
FINALLY, COACHELLA
Top 3 Performances of the weekend: 1. Odesza 2. Cardi B 3. Ekali
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After a solid brunch at The Henry in West Hollywood and a 4 hour drive in traffic, we finally made it to our hotel in Palm Desert.
Imagine Christmas Eve for a second. That was the feeling.
DAY 1: First Glimpse of Paradise - Deorro, Kygo, RL Grime, Alison Wonderland, Ekali
Everyday we had the same routine. Breakfast at the hotel, confirm Coachella outfit 348756 times with the girls we stayed with, Uber to a friend's Palm Desert summer house that was on a golf course, a freaking beautiful home that will certainly get you in the mood to have a good time, then go to another friend's AirBnB that was a 5 minute Lyft to Coachella.
As soon as you get through the security check points, it is all right there. The Ferris Wheel in all its glory, the humungous Sahara Tent with an artist and his crowd going crazy, and everyone, EVERYONE, posing in their Coachella outfits.
The first set we saw was Deorro at the Sahara tent, he is well-known in EDM circles but if you aren't too familiar with him do not worry! After him we went to the Coachella Stage to see the legend, Kygo. I have been a huge fan of Kygo for about 5 years now, back when he was solely releasing amazing remixes. This was my second time seeing him but I liked this performance way more, he had everything, great light shows, pyrotechnics and even brought out Rita Ora and Ryan Tedder. Then onto Do Lab, the deep house stage. They had two surprise guests everyday of the festival and for Friday the first surprise guest was RL Grime, a real heavy hitter, but we couldn't stay for the whole set because we needed a good spot for Alison Wonderland back at the Sahara Tent.
Side Note: If this process of running around from stage to stage sounds exhausting, you're not wrong, but you are there for the music and to see those artists that you listen to on weekly/ daily basis. It was all worth it.
Alison Wonderland was phenomenal. I had one of her songs on my most recent likes on Soundcloud so it was just awesome to see it live. Her set ended around 11:25pm. There was one more surprise guest at Do Lab. Ekali. Now, I actually knew Ekali prior to the weekend as I follow him on Soundcloud but I had only known him to make a few remixes here and there, and definitely none of the people I was with knew of him. He went nuts. Again, very electronic but holy moly... Top 3 performance of the weekend.
Spent way too much time finding a Lyft, get to the hotel and fall asleep around 2am.
DAY 2: Who Did We See Again? - Louis The Child, alt-j, Beyonce, ZHU, X Japan, the silent disco
Go through the routine. Eat, Outfit, Lyft, Socialize, Lyft, Socialize, Lyft, Coachella. Good ole' Day 2. Did not see a single opening to a set, nor an end to a set... This is one of the music festival tips I share in my vlog. Plan, plan, plan. Decide before you get to the venue who you are going to see. We did not plan and ended up not enjoying a full set. I honestly can't recount who we saw on Saturday without looking at the separate tab I have open right now with the lineup and set times. No, it was not the $11 Heinekens causing my memory to lack.
*checks other tab*
Ahh yes. Good ole' Day 2. Louis The Child, Alt-J, Beyonce, ZHU, X Japan and the silent disco. This day we didn't get to Coachella until probably 5:30pm so there wasn't much time for us to see people in general. We saw a tiny bit of Louis The Child at Sahara but we weren't really feeling the mood of his set, a little too slow. Alt-J at Outdoor Stage (they were all outdoor, weird name), the crowd was just too big by the time we got there. I repeat, plan, plan, plan. We left alt-j, walked around a little, then went to the Main Stage for Beyonce. Do not resent me for what I am about to say and I'm sure this is terrible for this blog to have returning visitors, but I am not a huge Beyonce fan... Also, she was the size of an ant from where we were standing at the back of the crowd. We stayed for when Jay-Z came out and performed then left for home base, Do Lab. ZHU just happened to be the surprise guest for the late slot. Prime. We got there probably half way through his set and made our way to the front. You might be able to tell how stoked we were to see him by how we made an effort to get into the crowd versus giving up at alt-j and Bey. Solid set, if we were there for more of it I think it would've definitely made Top 3 performance. After ZHU is when the other two guys in our group and I really get a Coachella feel.
We leave Do Lab around 10:45pm and just walk around for a bit. We see that the Mojave Stage has quite a few a people. We walk in and no lie, it looks like a cult meeting. Every person in the crowd has there arms in the air with an X sign and the artist is playing eerie music. This is where we got to know Japanese rock band, X Japan. Everyone in the crowd is doing a boring/classic rock side to side dance move. Enter us three. One of us is pinwheeling an air guitar, no idea what my other friend is doing, and I start head banging. No one around us joins in, only two girls pick up the joke that we are slightly making fun of the rest of them and they hysterically laugh with us/at us, same difference.
Japanese rock really takes it out of you so we leave and it's late, probably 12:30am - 1am. Only thing left going on is silent disco. Out by itself is a opened dome like stage where everyone has on bulky headphones. It was exactly as the name describes. At 2:00am, the speakers are shut off and the only way to hear the music is through the headphones. It was fun for a tiny bit, the 2am DJs can only be so good. We leave at 3:30am, get to bed at 4am.
DAY 3: Cardi B and Odesza Is All You Need To Know - Kasbo, Cardi B, Illenium, Odesza
I'm not saying I questioned if I could handle another day of running around a huge field, bobbing and weaving through people to listen to music, but lets just say I wasn't going to miss Cardi B or Odesza. And boy am I sure as hell happy I didn't. This day we planned. At the Coachella Stage my girl Cardi B had a lot of hype, of which I will try to concisely explain - Cardi B signs Coachella deal, blows up in pop culture, tries to renegotiate deal, Coachella denies it, she decides to triple what her deal was and put that amount towards her performance. She brought out YG, G-Eazy, Kehlani, Chance the Rapper and 21 Savage. It was epic. Top 3 Performance. See vlog for a short clip.
Illenium at Sahara Tent deserves some blog space as well. We saw him open and it was truly amazing. He has so many jams. Another set that could've possibly made Top 3 if we had seen the whole thing.
We had to leave for Odesza though. If you do not know Odesza I suggest looking them up. They are comparable to Kygo in my opinion. Their live performances are well known because of their drum line that they have. It is a sight to be seen for sure. Again, see vlog for their opening and their epic drone light show. This was one of the peaks of the weekend, they had synchronized drones fly into the air to form a 3D version of their logo, THEN it rotated. Never seen anything like it. If you haven't clicked on the vlog links yet, click and go to 8:03. You're welcome.
After that we dilly dallied around and then our whole group wanted to go to the Silent Disco, we didn't want it to end. We lasted a weak 30 minutes or so and wanted to leave. We made it to the very end of the weekend and contently decide to go home, we did it right.
In Closing
Go to a music festival. If you have read this far, you especially need to go to one. It doesn't have to be Coachella. There are music festivals for all types of music. Just a few weeks after this weekend was Stagecoach, a country music festival, at those exact same fields in Indio, CA. Just go. If anything, go for the story and to make an unforgettable memory.