Coachella Heavy: A Message To First-Timers From A Ten-Timer
I have now spent over a month of my life at Coachella, and I thought I'd share some thoughts to those considering their first three days. Also, I have a paid tier now!
Those who follow this newsletter may remember back in February when I posted my Coachella Lite entry. Nothing more than a simple ten-item listicle detailing artists I was mad stoked on. I ended up seeing seven out of ten, and boy howdy were they phenomenal.
This time I’m back with my Coachella Heavy newsletter, where I go a bit deeper into what this festival means to me. But as I was writing it, I had a thought. After ten editions and over a month of time on the Polo Fields, I feel confident I can provide some info on the globally recognized event that is rather revelatory about what it actually is.
There have been a lot of criticisms of Coachella over the years. Some from professional writers like this one from Mixmag. Far more from social media frequenters keen on limiting their thoughts to 280 characters. Even more still from people who haven’t been to the festival in their lives.
I’m somewhere between the first two, a professional writer and a fan, and so this is my criticism of what Coachella is, from a veteran to those who haven’t yet made it out to Indio.
Ironically the piece begins with a depiction of a gig that didn’t happen at Coachella lolz, and I promise you, after this you won’t read about the festival again (until January when I get gifted the lineup every year for my birthday).
Also, I am very excited to announce I am officially launching the paid tier of this newsletter!
Once again, those who have been following this newsletter regularly may remember I mentioned a special surprise that I am now months late on.
Well, that surprise is a brand new DJ mix recorded by yours truly. Every month I will deliver an exclusive mix (so producers send them tracks ya dig?) and it will only be available to paid subscribers.
Leading up to the pandemic I was playing a handful of gigs around LA under the name Larry Heaven and it was such a fun way to be involved in the dance music community, but I haven’t played for a crowd now in over three years.
Now that I’m settled in Denver I’m looking to get back into it and delivering mixes on the regular will help keep my skills sharp.
I would be endlessly grateful to anyone with the cash to spare, and I hope the mix (and the satisfaction of supporting independently created art) is worth it.
“Just keep moving in a circle.”
That’s all I could think. And it’s good I wasn’t thinking anything else.
To be honest, it may have been the first time in my life when I wasn’t thinking.
I was letting my body do the work, specifically, contorting itself in a motion I now know is called “skanking.”
My body wasn’t trying to discern what “skanking” was exactly, it was just kind of doing it.
At the same time, people skanking behind me were pushing me forward, and I was pushing people in front of me.
They were pushing me cause they needed more room to skank. Then I was pushing them because I needed more room to skank.
And we all needed to keep moving in a circle while MC Bat Commander crooned a tale of zombies who came back from the dead to don the latest threads.
The song is called “Fashion Zombies” by a band called The Aquabats! who were playing at the still-standing hallowed hall called The Glass House in Pomona, California, for my first gig ever all the way back in 2008.
While The Aquabats! were playing “Fashion Zombies,” I was in the skank pit. I spent the whole main set watching the pit from afar, but when the encore started I mustered up all the pluck I had in my veins and went into that spiraling mass of bodies.
In there, you could dance, shout, push (respectfully, of course), and shove (again, respectfully, the pit is a sacred space. There’s no room for dickheads), and express yourself to your heart's desire.
That was my first gig ever, and at that gig I found freedom. I remember leaving, ears so blasted it felt like they were made of cotton, on the most elated natural high of my life (at that point) and I realized this is all I wanted to do with my life.
Attend more and more and more gigs. There was nothing better.
I went home that night, went to sleep, and had the most vivid dream.
(It probably wasn’t that night when I had this dream, but I did have this dream at some point and for the sake of the story let’s just go with it).
I was standing on a wide flat patch of green grass under a clear blue sky. The only things on this patch of grass were people and a series of stages around the edge, from which all the best music, of all genres, was emanating, produced live by the best live musicians in the world.
A place where gigs were all there was.
It was heaven.
And just about five years later I would discover heaven was real, and it is called Coachella.
I first attended Coachella in 2013 (for weekend 2, duh), and that journey to Indio remains one of the best weekends of my life.
The experience was surreal. Visceral. Walking just a few steps to see Palma Violets (the now defunct brit pop revival group) and Major Lazer (when they were still just that unpopular to play Mojave Tent) and Dog Blood (Skrillex, now that your back can you link up with Boys Noize again?) and Red Hot Chili Peppers (they closed the set with “Sir Psycho Sexy” into “They’re Red Hot”, please tell me you understand how fucking monumental that is).
For an entire weekend, from when the sun was high in the sky and the pristine mountains of the low desert hung in the background until it was dark and multicolored palm trees decorated the distant landscape. That’s all it was. Walking from stage to stage. Listening to the best music in the world.
This place is what I saw in that dream (well the closest rendition, at least), and I have been back every year the festival was held without a pandemic getting in the way (except for 2019 because my fucking editor forgot to send in my fucking press request, but I went both weekends in 2022 and 2023 to make up for that).
Now I’ve spent 31 total days of my life at Coachella. 31 days in heaven, and it just keeps getting better and better. 2023 was definitely my favorite year. And yes, the perfet lineup contributed to that this time around, but even looking back, like in 2022 when the lineup was not to my preference compared to say, 2016 (The Arcs? Anderson. Paak? Dubfire live hybrid? GTFO), the upward trajectory has never stalled.
What I find so interesting is that while Coachella gets better and better, it really doesn’t change. 10 years in, and this place has never tried to be anything other than what it is: a big patch of grass with a bunch of stages around the edge.
As such, by process of elimination, the reason it gets better and better is due to my own impression of the situation. The attitude into which I carry this place. The attitude based on gratitude that I, for two weekends out of a year, get to visit my own personal version of heaven.
And after spending a month in my own personal version of heaven, there is another conclusion I have drawn:
Coachella is honestly, at this point, comparable to cultural cornerstones like Star Wars or McDonald’s.
Just as Star Wars is the lens through which every other film franchise is judged and McDonald’s is the lens through which every fast food chain is judged, Coachella is the lens through which every music festival is judged in 2023, and this is my main message to first-timers:
Do not believe the judgments. Judge for yourself.
I’ve made my opinion abundantly clear as to how I feel about Coachella in the words above, but I’m not here to convince you of the same. I just know, that if music festivals are your thing, don’t believe judgments. Even mine.
Go in with an open mind and see what happens.
Cause at the end of the day there are indisputable, factual differences about Coachella that I can fully understand may turn some people off. Things like size, price, location, etc. I have been to festivals all over the world, and they are all different and they offer something completely unique.
For example, if someone prefers festivals that are smaller, where you run into the same people all weekend (like at Desert Hearts or Dirtybird Campout) then Coachella may not be your favorite.
Or if someone is not a big fan of the heat, the idea of 90-degree temperatures for three days may not be the right fit (regardless of how much the resplendent desert wind cools things down).
And of course, I am completely biased and privileged to be able to secure a ticket for a grand total of $0. This year, tickets were nearing $600 which is not easy for everyone to afford (even though after the math is applied the price of seeing each artist is like $30).
These are facts about the festival that do not change regardless of anyone’s impression of the event.
The one aspect wherein I implore anyone attending for the first time to disregard any critiques (once again, including my own) is the crowd of people who attend.
Readers may have noticed I did not mention the people who attend Coachella once up until this point. That’s because the people who attend are the part of the festival over which the festival has absolutely no control.
There is no way for Coachella to dictate who comes and who doesn’t. The people who come are not at all an inherent reflection of the festival, and to be frank, so many people attend that there is no way to judge an audience of 125,000 people per day based on the select few that happen to cross my path on one particular year.
In ten Coachellas I have never come to a consistent conclusion about the nature of the crowd, and that is not the same of every festival.
For example, Dirtybird events, whether a one-off at a park in Los Angeles, a three-day Campout in the hills of Orange County (anyone else attend the first-ever Dirtybird Campout?) or a weekend at a resort in Orlando, Florida, every crowd is filled with friendly people who are so down for the dancefloor.
Claude VonStroke has curated a very niche and idiosyncratic musical pallet, and the people who are into it are so fucking into it. It’s awesome.
So while Coachella does include numerous idiosyncratic offerings on its lineups (the first year I went The Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra played for fuck’s sake), no one’s pretending that a huge percentage of people are there to see Bad Bunny and Beyoncé.
With that kind of mainstream appeal, Coachella is often the first large festival someone attends. After all, it’s the McDonald’s of festivals. Everyone knows McDonald’s and everyone knows Coachella.
Festival culture is its own thing. The idea that everyone around you is your friend. That you’re all united by your desire to be in this place—that you’re all united by the music can take some getting used to.
For example, last year during Billie Eilish’s headlining set, in between songs she encouraged everyone in the crowd to hold hands with each other. So I turned to the person next to me with my hand out, and they gave me a weird look and turned me down.
It wasn’t a big deal at all, but someone who’s all about festivals would have reciprocated. In over a decade of festivals, I know that to be true. The gesture of holding hands at the behest of an artist means nothing other than coming together in that moment for the sake of the music.
But this idea that Coachella is filled with first-timers is not my overarching impression of the crowd whatsoever. It really does change from year to year.
I know this on a direct level based on my group of friends at the festival.
Some years, my friends and I are the ones opening up dance parties on the field (Chromeo, Coachella Stage, 2014) or taking over a platform and hyping up the entire crowd (Skrillex, Do LaB, 2017).
One year two people in my group were the people providing the worst energy. It was a couple who got into a fight and they were screaming at each other in the middle of the festival.
This year (2023) felt like the most experienced and friendly crowd in my ten years (another reason this was my favorite Coachella). During tba everyone was partying together. I got a big hug from a stranger at the end of Labrinth’s set on weekend 1 after losing my mind with a group of new friends to his unbelievable set (Labrinth was the best set at Coachella 2023 no doubt).
Cause at the end of the day, Coachella doesn’t have control of the crowd, and neither does anyone else. Might as well just show up and have as much fun as possible while being respectful of those around you. That way you dictate your own experience.
Unfortunately, there are entire populations of people who are content with letting the crowd dictate their experience.
That’s where narratives like “people don’t go for the music,” or “people only go to take Instagrams,” or “people go just to say they’re there,” come from.
How is it possible to know why anyone attended a music festival? Is there a whole collective of mind readers out there who focus their abilities on Coachella? I mean I get it, Coachella is awesome and popular, but I feel like there’s a better use for that kind of superpower.
And regardless of whether it’s possible to discern another person’s reason for attending a festival (it’s not), the only way someone could actually do that is to spend the time on site focusing on other people and what they’re doing instead of focusing on enjoying yourself.
To that end, I pose another question:
Who’s worse for the energy at a festival? The people enjoying themselves in their own way? Or the people looking at those people and judging them?
My answer is undoubtedly the latter. Everyone attracts their own experience. If someone goes to the stages and presents themself authentically, they will find people who are doing the same.
If someone goes to the festival with a shit attitude expecting people to be doing what they don’t want them to be doing, that’s what they’re going to see.
It’s like the Bible says: “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” Matthew 7:7
I’ve always said festivals are microcosms of humanity. People want them to be separate from humanity. They want them to be magical fairylands where there are no issues. But they aren’t.
Festivals are comprised of people doing stuff. That’s all. It’s not any different than any other day at its core. The stuff is different that’s all.
Why is a festival a place to be more concerned with what someone else is doing? Does anyone pass judgment on why another person is going to the grocery store? Or a gas station? Why do other people’s intentions suddenly become so important at a festival?
On the flip side, I’ve come to understand after 30 years of life, that when you show up authentically and with good energy in real life, great people come to you in real life as well.
That’s really the only piece of “advice” that matters for a first time at Coachella.
You carry what you bring with you.
Chances are, something will go wrong. An artist will cancel. Someone will spill your drink. Members of your group may get in a huge fight in the middle of the crowd.
What will allow the experience to resolve itself is to take any complications in stride while being grateful for everything else that’s happening, being kind to those around you, and most importantly, not being afraid to feel the music.
Dance. Shout. Sing along. Close your eyes and just sway. Lay on the grass and look up at the stars…while the music is playing.
Coachella may not become your personal version of heaven after that, but it will remain what it’s always been. A big patch of grass with stages around the edge.
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