Extreme heat. Massive crowds. Millions of dollars passing from hand to hand. Constant loud music and flashing cameras. People running around, tripping balls, mostly naked. Overall, Coachella, Weekend Two was a resounding success.
After spending the week leading up to the bacchanal in sunny, sedate Palm Desert, I was ready to get into it. What I wasn’t prepared for, was the mechanics involved in getting weird for the sustained high Fahrenheit, low shade experience, nor the economic expense of actually doing so.
The week of hiking, golfing, and sucking back beers had drained my energy levels and reset my brain patterns into the calm rhythm of the retired. I had achieved one of my goals, in locating Gram Parsons’ final partying place on the outskirts of Joshua Tree. And we had discovered at least one dive bar in the valley that catered to shifty-eyed dirtbags like us. But beyond that, it had been an enjoyable, though uneventful, week in southern California.
After spending a weekend with 80,000 some odd freaks, geeks, bros, bimbos and weidros, I feel I gained a greater understanding of SoCal culture. And of course I learned a few lessons along the way.
#5 - Always Keep an Eye on Where You’re Walking
This is good advice in life, really. I cracked my patella in the autumn of 2012 by walking with my hands in my pockets, not watching where I was going. But the repercussions of not watching where you’re walking at a festival as large and debauched as Coachella are something of a sicker nature.
I was lucky (?) enough to bear witness to three up-close-and-personal bouts of vomiting on the part of rank strangers during Coachella. The first came while trying to enjoy some over-priced slop passing itself off as “dahl.” Some over-served bro came crawling up behind my picnic table. “Jesus Christ,” exclaimed my companion, pointing over my shoulder. “Is that guy puking?” I turned to see what the hell was going on, and sure enough, buddy was barfing his brains out onto the grass.
This happened, in more or less the same manner, on two other occasions that we saw. I can only imagine how many thousands of times over the course of both weekends. Now, I myself have been known to take too much on occasion, and blown my biscuits as a result. It’s never pretty. But stepping — or worse, sitting — in someone else’s former stomach contents is just fucking revolting.
#4 - Read the Fucking Instructions, Bro
Our visit to Coachella happened to fall on the international cannabis free-for-all that is 4/20. I didn’t have any grass myself, but just about every other patron of the festival seemed to. Despite very thorough security throughout the Polo Grounds, all of these folks seemed to have no problem getting the electric lettuce in and imbibing liberally. Especially on 4/20.
But some sad sacks were just too clueless, stoned, or entitled to bother sticking a baggie beneath their balls or into their sweaty bikini bottoms, or socks, or just about any other reasonable hiding place. One kid in front of us in line was losing his shit because he was being denied entry on the grounds of blatantly trying to waltz into the festival grounds with a bag of weed and a Medical Marijuana card. This despite the fact that the official website clearly states “Sorry, bro, Medical Marijuana Cards are not valid at Coachella Festival.”
“But I have a fucking condition,” whined the petulant child. “It’s the fucking law, you dick!”
Eventually, they allowed Mommy’s Little Monster in, after threatening to call the 5-0 and cut his wristband. He surrendered his meagre stash (barely even a G) to the security lady, and sulked off to find his friends, who had abandoned him in shame.
It’s always a good idea to read the instructions before attempting anything that just might not work, lest you waste your own and everyone else’s fucking time, and look like a goddamn fool doing so.
#3 - Sharing is Great. Just Great.
This is something everyone should learn as children. Few do, though, and often we forget about the beauty that can transpire when you “share and share alike” in our adult lives.
I had arrived at Coachella with no drugs. I wasn’t overly concerned about this, as I had found in Austin last month that Americans were much friendlier than commie Canadian broadcasting had misled me to believe over their years of nationalist brainwashing. Besides, if I needed to get high, I could just pull a James Brown and get “high on God.”
But I came across some real fine Americans from LA, who freely shared with me of what they had. Such gracious hosts!
Looking around the EDM tent later, as Dog Blood went wild, seemingly sending signals up into outer space to commune with our alien buddies and/or overlords up there, it was plain to see that the other few thousand people in the tent were certainly well versed in the art of sharing. Not only drugs, but bodily fluids and good vibes, too.
Now, if only any of my American bros and sisters had felt it their Rasta duty to do so on 4/20, things would have been just peachy…
#2 - Everything has a Price.
This is one of the take-home lessons of the festival, or any festival, really. From your ticket to your food, your hydration or your booze, be prepared to pay in one form or other.
You want a beer on festival grounds, bud? It’s gonna cost you $9. So what if that’s the cost of a 12 on the Outside? You want that luxury, you gotta pay extra for “camping.” Want water? That’ll be $2. Want free water? Stand over there in line with 1000 other cheap, smelly freaks. You want some eats? Cough up the bucks! You want some more? Fuck off.
The artists themselves, at times, seemed to have wrestled with their souls before agreeing to perform. Sure, for some up and coming acts, like IO Echo, the Smith Westerns, or Wild Belle, being on the bill will be a great career booster, not to mention a thrill and a half.
But for other older, and somewhat retired, acts, I suspect it’s something else altogether. And that something else is Cash Money, bitch. Or, as Sunday second stage headliners Wu Tang Clan triumphantly proclaimed to at least 50,000 stoned motherfuckers, “Cash Rules Everything Around Me!”
From Damon Albarn’s classically detached stage presence, to the “déjà vu” comments from the Descendents’ lead singer, and university professor by day, Milo Aukerman, the vibe hung over the festival like LA smog. Sure, every band seemed to be enjoying themselves, but at times, something seemed off. Aged English rockers New Order even used Ennio Morricone’s classic theme music from Fistful of Dollars to walk on to.
No matter how much one would like to think such festivals are “all about the music” or some similarly misguided platitude, it really comes down to the “dollar dollar bills, y’all.”
# 1 - Hedonism is Alive & Well, and Likely Coming for Your Children
$350 minimum to get in, $800 some odd if you’re Big Time (or your Mommy and/or Daddy are). More to camp, not including the costs to keep fed, hydrated and boozed/drugged up. This festival, along with any festival of this size in North America, is a hedonistic affair at best, and a downright disgusting debauch at its most base.
Not that this is bad, right? All civilizations, once past their respective zeniths, have their own forms of Bread & Circuses. These events are what seem — to some extent, at least — to define our generation, at least those of us who are into getting weird, obsessing over popular music, and generally laughing it up at the drop of a hat, as Woodstock and Altamont did for the hippies of the ’60s. Those hippies are now cloistered inside gated communities, or in much rarer cases still stumbling around festival grounds in tie-dyed Grateful Dead tees and Birkenstocks.
Hedonism is alive and well, friends. Judging by the attendance levels at Coachella (or SXSW, or Sasquatch, Bonaroo, Winnipeg Folk Fest, etc., ad nauseum) and the profits reaped by organizers, corporate sponsors, and headlining superstars, it is only growing stronger with each passing year. Lock up your daughters, castrate your sons. This ship is going down, fast, and everyone is too fucked up to care.
For more in this series by Sheldon Birnie, see the tag “America the beautiful.”
Senia L/Flickr