Did everyone already read John Seabrook's profile of Coachella founder/owner Paul Tollett in this week's New Yorker? In addition to setting off a tempest in a teapot about why the festival failed to score the (mostly hypothetical) coup of booking Kate Bush for a rare North American appearance, the article is filled with tantalizing details about the meticulousness that goes into assembling a festival, from booking the bands to their size and placement on the iconic and oft-parodied poster, all the way to statistically-informed negotiations around their stage assignments and set-times.
Spending the long weekend roaming the Empire Polo Club had the feeling of walking through an annually-evolving manifestation of one person's diorama, and musing on which parts worked and which needed improvement.
This year's most significant change was a 20-acre expansion of the festival's footprint. The most obvious effect of the additional real estate was a corresponding bump in ticket sales: capacity increased from a mere 99,000 to a mind-boggling 125,000 attendees per weekend. [ED NOTE: This sounds like my idea of hell].
The larger grounds meant stages spread further apart to reduce sonic and interpersonal congestion, but it came at the expense of the fest's previous degree of intimacy, not to mention easy migration between competing stages to sample overlapping sets. The reconfigured space also presented opportunities for potential nods to changing demographics, with fully enclosed, climate-controlled tents for those looking to avoid the elements; one new tent with cartoonish punk murals catered to an indie-audience, while another returning tent had hardwood floors and a pulsing, glittering disco shark suitable for things like a three-hour Four Tet / Daphni / Floating Points adult electro marathon.
While last year's festival felt like peak-EDM, this year's lineup seemed like a minor correction toward the eclectic, replete with the unpredictability of live music along the spectrum of rock, pop, and hip-hop. Among the festival's headliners, Radiohead rewarded those who persevered through a series of set-stopping technical challenges with a nostalgia-friendly finish (i.e., they played "Creep" in the final encore); Lady Gaga's last-minute Beyonce substitution had more rock, country, and piano ballad leanings than the costumed spectacles of previous tours; and Kendrick Lamar along with a few special guests held large crowds late into Sunday night with a set that featured material from DAMN., which dropped only days ahead of his performance.
With much of the event live-streamed on YouTube, those interested in Coachella purely for the music could likely satisfy their needs from the comforts of an unlimited data plan and a good pair of headphones. But even though online views are less obstructed by fans, sun, or the threat of dust, it misses the fascinating experience of confronting the pop culture kaleidoscope IRL: from kids building their personal brands with strategic snapshots, to laid-back attendees content to spend the weekend at a distance from the stages, gawking at the parade of fashion choices, and eating their way through the extensive food lineup alongside musicheads seeing the bands of their dreams for the first or 10th time, all bumping into one another on the same pop art-adorned playground.
It's one thing to have an abstract sense that someone's "popular on Instagram," it's another to physically experience it in the form of thousands of people rushing to get within earshot of DJ Khaled to find out if he'll live up to his own substantial hype. Or, conversely, the pleasant bemusement of finding it impossible to get anywhere near 59-year-old composer Hans Zimmer and his 70-piece orchestra because tens of thousands of people also decided that converging for a live performance of film scores was Sunday evening's least missable after-dinner event. Or, to walk by and hear kids genuinely losing their minds with excitement when Lauryn Hill showed up to drastically elevate a DJ Snake set. Other personal highlights: seeing the Avalanches bringing their sample collages to life with a full band; The xx coming out of their once-introverted shells (particularly with a heavy dose of Jamie xx at the end); and the 20-year-old Lorde musing on how it feels to be getting old while confidently commanding a huge mainstage crowd. Even though I should know better, little moments like these, coupled with the very welcome relief from a long dreary Northwest winter, is a major part of what keeps me coming back to Coachella year after year.
