Coachella 2022

Lol is there an inside joke with Danni from Midsommar being on their merch?

Mushroom-driven murderous cult basics. I love it.

Hard to believe a week ago we were walking into Day 1.

Friday: MEUTE, The Hu, Jayda G, Purple Disco Machine, Daphni, Run The Jewels, Baby Keem, Harry Styles

Just to echo, MEUTE was such a fun way to kick off the fest. The early part of this day was fun all around really, with PDM being the highlight. RTJ I personally thought were good, but a bit flat. Baby Keem blew me away. He sounded better than expected live, the crowd was really into it, K.Dot guest appearance. My favorite set of the weekend. I snuck away from Harry for two tracks of KGaTLW and wish I could have seen all of them but alas.

Pre-cursor - saturday was serious body pain for our entire crew. maybe we're getting old. maybe it's just been years since anyones done a festival. either way we struggled to get going.

Saturday: J.I.D, Emo Nite, Rina Sawayama, Turnstile, Disclosure, Danny Elfman, Caribou, Hot Chip, DJ Koze

Emo Nite was honestly so fun, it was exactly what I expected. Turnstile pit gave my buddy a little scare when he took one to the face during Blackout, but man that was a great time. Agreed with Larry Farnsworth Caribou > Hot Chip > Koze run absolutely delivered. Particularly thought Hot Chip sounded REALLY tight and the new songs sounded great live.

Sunday: Skegss, LP Giobbi, Kim Petras, Orville Peck, Fred Again.., Duck Sauce, Jamie xx, SHM x The Weeknd

Fred Again.. was easily top 3 most anticipated sets and it delivered (although I'm still annoyed at him being 20 min late). Jamie xx was great and I enjoyed The Weeknd just running through the hits + Dawn FM. Overall, a quieter day but still fun.

My only regret is not making it to brunch. Said it in the other thread, but I was pretty sure my gf was going to break up with me Saturday morning because of how much physical pain she was in. her apple watch said we walked almost 20 miles in the day. First Coachella since 2015, felt incredible to be back.

If I had suggested to my wife that we get up early Saturday and wander camping looking for brunch, as opposed to sleeping in and laying by the pool for 3 hours, she would have had me served with divorce papers during Hot Chip. 

Yeah that was weird seeing a bunch of dogs that really didnt belong there. Who brings a Lab or a Huskie to the desert? Neither tagged as service dogs either. The bomb sniffing one that was at the entrance on friday w1 is the only one that shouldve been there. Also, speaking of police presence, I did not see a sniper anywhere. Unless that was reserved just for beyonce and the post Ariana bombing thing.

Brunch in Larry’s Airbnb next year, I’ll bring the wieners.

Only Hans and now Danny. Carpenter has done festivals, but not in the u.s. iirc. Or its just been a long while if he was at an ATP I think. Here is to hoping they can find somebody else to do it. Maybe Ramin Djawadi. People might lose it hearing Game Of Thrones on the fields. And then maybe do some of the cover versions of songs from Westworld.

Had (and still have a bit of) a hard Coachella cough and a stuffy nose, but just a legit regular cold + the dust somehow as I've tested myself several times (thoroughly) all negative. Wore a mask at least 60% of the time I'd say but almost all due to the dust, I would not say I was being careful at all really, ha. As far as covid worry personally, after the first quick overwhelming feeling of being around so many people again I got over that quickly. But it's really just a roll of the dice whether you got it or not

I think we ended up at 5 of 19 in our house getting covid. Based on the timing of it, it seems like it whoever got it first got it Saturday or Sunday; my symptoms were worst Tuesday but my viral load peaked Thursday. Gotta say, combining the typical coachella flu with Covid is sub optimal.

After sitting on this and letting the dust settle i really did love Coachella the more i’m looking back at it. Osheaga is still probably my favorite major but Coachella is a very close second. Very happy I went W1 for Arcade Fire and less dust. After seeing pics of w2 i dunno if my lungs could have handled 3 days of that lmaoo. Shuttles were awesome too, made it very quick and easy. Plus one I was on was giving out free beers and waters. Stage production is definitely unmatched compared to any other fest i’ve been and food was probably the best i’ve had tied with Osh. Was massively impressed with vegan/vegetarian options here, slutty vegan and cena vegan should be at every music fest i swear. Water situation was very much awful and should have been labeled far more clearly, also sucked that when I did find a water station it was usually lukewarm. $2 cold waters were a godsend and i’m definitely bringing a hydroflask next time now that I know security is such a joke. The lineups at this thing are just insane and unmatched each year as well. I remember first getting into festivals and thinking Bonnaroo and Coachella go head to toe in terms of lineups but unfortunately it seems that is no longer the case as well. in terms of lineup strength alone I’d love to make this a yearly thing so long as i can afford it

What better time is there to write a festival recap than a whole week after it ends, after everyone else has written theirs and no one gives a shit anymore? There isn’t any! I would’ve had this in earlier but the festival flu kicked my ass all last week (but at least it wasn’t COVID, I guess?) and I was extraordinarily busy this weekend. At long last, I finally have some free time to gather my thoughts and talk some shit. So let’s begin.

Getting in was a little crazy. To make a long story short, I saw a condo I really liked on Wednesday night at then spent all of Thursday in the process of putting in an offer…which got accepted when the half of us who ended up camping next to each other were walking into the camping center. So I was preoccupied most of Thursday with that, but other stuff happened too: Allison and I went to California Donuts immediately after landing in LAX, a perfect decision right before picking up Jaz, we set up camp just in time for the horseback cops to tell us not to put up our canopy while we were being annoyingly curt with them (and we ended up taking it down anyway, making the “60 mph winds from 9PM to 3AM” joke so many times that our neighbors started saying it too), and then having a bunch of people shortly descend on our campsite.

There ended up being so many people I’d seen and been with before and so many I hadn’t that it ended up being a blur and I can barely remember who showed up when at this point. But there was Tristan, Tranter, Cookin Mama, Theo, Danbob, Durkle…uhhhhh others??? Also shout out to stinkyfingers who saw me pacing furiously throughout LAX earlier in the day and then was kind enough to only bring it up once later and *still* showed up to hang out at the massive campsite later. (Also, one of my personal funniest moments of the weekend was when I texted him if he was in the silent disco dome and he responded “don’t make the same mistakes I did”).

~*Friday*~

Started the day off with MEUTE. As everyone else said they were good, but one of the funny things was listening to them and coming to the realization that most EDM melodies are a lot more basic than I realized (a kind of cool side effect of this though is that a lot of those melodies become pretty cool rhythms when rearranged for other instruments!). Afterwards, I caught Giselle Woo, who was a lot of fun and had a really good turnout for a local band playing at 1 PM in the Sonora. Afterwards caught Arooj Aftab. Her music was of course very beautiful performed by her band but also she was hilarious, talking about how people kept telling her to get a safe and how she was expecting to see a lot of paparazzi after winning a Grammy, talking about her excitement to see Baby Keem later that day, and then introducing her last song by saying “This one is the banger”. Afterwards, I saw MIKA, who basically played a cabaret-style set of all his hits. It was a lot of fun and I was surprised how many songs the crowd was singing along with!

Next I made it into the Yuma. On Friday, there were still issues with people clustering around the entrance to the main line to get in to the Yuma but once I got past that, while there was a wait to get in it wasn’t that bad. There were more organized lines later in the week for the most crowded acts; Allison pointed out that in its new location the Yuma lines appeared to cover less distance too, which may have explained some of the problems. Anyway, this is a lot of rambling to get to the point that Purple Disco Machine should not have been in the fucking Yuma lol. That being said, walking in and hearing the “Don’t You Want Me” remix blaring through the speakers was transcendent. The set was pure, feel good cheese, from that moment through closing with his “Groove Is in the Heart” mashup. Just great, great stuff. And then of course there was Daphni. I told stinkyfingers later that this was the first set I saw that was merely good, not great. In retrospect: I have no idea what I was fucking talking about. I had a lot of high expectations since I’ve been waiting to see Dan Snaith DJ for seven years, and he maybe played a bit too much techno in the beginning for my tastes, but the final 30 minutes were also fucking great. Transitioning from Bollywood remixes into the Four Tet 3LW edit? That’s the good shit.

Afterwards, saw the Marías, who weren’t as good as they were on the livestream (also, I get why they shrank the Gobi, but I hope they re-expand it again. It was not enjoyable to see a band like this from the back of an overflowing tent). Then back in the Sonora for PUP, who were a lot of fun and especially sharp with a short set time, just speeding through track after track. I was really crashing at this point but I went and made it in for Amyl and the Sniffers, who were a rare disappointment for the weekend - as a frontwoman, Amy is incredible, but it felt like her band was playing their songs like 40% slower, which was very weird. Whatever, though, I saw the Avalanches (after years of trying!), and they were amazing. The hybrid DJ set thing works perfectly for them and the set perfectly highlighted the nostalgia of the latest album. Ended the night kind of bouncing around: first with Ela Minus, who was a lot of fun (maybe they should’ve put Purple Disco Machine in the Sonora?), Epik High (who were ok), and as I was getting progressively colder I was mostly just moving around to whatever I could find: first to the Yung Bae b2b Madeon set (a lot of fun!), walking up the tower to catch a glimpse of Harry’s crowd (huge!), and finally onto catching a bit of King Gizzard (they Brought the Energy!) before exhaustion and hypothermia set in and I had to leave for real.

~*Saturday*~

Blah blah blah half of you guys were at brunch and you all know it was a lot of fun. Big shout outs to tristan for bringing rum and orange juice, whereispassionpit for being a hot dog chef extraordinaire, and pmo for bringing the ice and for engaging in a lot of conversation with me about Chicago real estate while we walked into the grounds. Also, shout out to security for letting me just waltz on through with multiple beer cans every day! (I wish I had paid more attention to people’s reports of how lax security was - I would’ve saved a lot of time and money and just brought liquor instead lol). Anyway, Allison, pmo and I caught Yard Act from the Sonora bar and they were very fun; pmo then split and Allison and I half watched Koffee from the beer jail while she desperate searched for her phone charger (RIP). We both made it to the Yuma for Sama’, who played the fun kind of techno, which was great (we also met a lot of very friendly people in the Yuma bar at this set, which was really cool). Arlo Parks provided some much needed mid-afternoon chill. I spent the early part of the evening catching part of 88rising (terrible! I’m still so mad they took a set of rising stars and classic Asian artists and replaced them all with the shittiest collection of Soundcloud rappers I may have ever heard!) and Disclosure (a bit of a mild disappointment for me but I’m glad you guys liked them) but then…

I’ve talked a lot about how the 2019 run of Four Tet/Aphex Twin/Little Simz/Four Tet may have been my single favorite run of shows at any festival ever. It may have been topped here! First: Mannequin Pussy, who started off with the weepers and then closed with a string of great moshers, catching Caroline Polachek, who was all right in the day but really came alive in a darker room (and with a giant volcano), catching a bit of Brockhampton’s final show ever!!!!! (I’m glad they mostly stuck to the same setlist as before), feeling very privileged to watch Danny Elfman’s insane but effortless transitions between orchestral renditions of Oingo Boingo songs to movie themes, Caribou doing what Caribou does best, finally getting to witness the over the top combination of psychedelic visuals and bass-heavy hardcore beats of Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, bookended with DJ Koze playing “Pick Up” and “Operator”. That would all be great on its own! And in the center of it all was Stromae, whose performance here was probably a top-10 all time performance for me! For all the elaborate stage productions everyone else had, there is quite literally nobody else doing what Stromae is doing right now with his elaborate robot arms controlling LED screen setup, and there probably won’t be anyone else who does what he does for a while! I’m glad that he got to use it at least once over the course of the festival because it must’ve cost a fortune to ship it over from Europe. And while the production was amazing (I’ll shut up about this now but I still get chills thinking about the final chorus of “L’enfer” where all the screens opened up to reveal a giant billowing cloud of smoke), he’s got immense charm as a performer and he’s not bogged down by playing any of the (imo) clunkers from his previous shows like "moules frites” or “Peace or Violence”. Great stuff! Love that guy! I could talk about this shit for hours!

~*Sunday*~

But instead I’ll talk about how tired I was by now: I was really fucking tired. Still managed to make it out for Cariño, who brought an insanely peppy vibe early to the Sonora and was a much needed energy boost. Jaz, Allison and I ducked out to the tiki bar, which slapped, and Allison and I chilled inside the Sonora again for Altin Gun, who make music that’s great for both dancing and sitting (and also, the tent was packed for them!). I spent some quality time in the Sahara today, starting with Griselda, who were almost refreshingly unenergetic after a long weekend (but also shout to Armani Caesar, who was great). Made it back to the Sonora one last time for Viagra Boys, who were great, and Orville Peck, who was also great but also it was at that unfortunate time of the day when the sun was beating down real hard (also, this set was another great argument for re-expanding the Gobi again).

Ok so now I have to talk about Fred Again Two Periods. I was apprehensive. I wanted to not like it. But that Anglo motherfucker got me. Fred again’s music is insanely earnest and samples and live is accompanied by insanely earnest images of people smiling while opening their front doors. And it worked! It’s true: we did lose dancing!! It fucking sucked!!! I got emotional holding my friends new and old in a circle while “Billing (Loving Arms)” played!!!! I also guess from a more technical standpoint that whoever pointed out on here that Fred’s set felt like a mini-history of UK dance music was also right. It was fun, I Felt Things.

Anyway, there was more dancing to be found; Allison and I ducked in the beer garden again one last time to catch Duck Sauce, who did not make me feel vulnerable but they played Dizzee Rascal’s “Bonkers” so it hit very similar high points for me. Made it back into the Yuma (thank you JTR!!) for Fatboy Slim, who played a fun kind of big-room set; we ducked out just in time for Jamie xx. I was bone tired by this point but still found enough energy to move around for this set. The trajectory was pretty similar but by and large the song selections were very different, which was a pretty big feat! Also, he played “NY Is Killing Me” which made me lose my mind a little bit. Spent most of the night with Blessed Mustard, who played a great set that felt very reminiscent of a Sunday night at Smartbar in Chicago, which was a welcome comedown. (Also I got very annoying waving my Chicago flag around for a bit. It felt great to be that guy for just a little bit). However, Jaz, Allison and I ended by catching some of The Weeknd. Was it special? Not really. Did I care? At this point, no.

In the Couchella thread, I mentioned the joys of watching the scenery with your friends in the beer garden while enjoying a drink together. And I had so many of those kinds of moments this year - the huge group finding us in our campsite right away on Thursday, chilling in the mornings with our neighbors, brunch, the finale at Fred again, gazing at the rainbow palm trees and the jungle gym one last time with Jaz and Allison one last time before leaving. It feels right to leave on Monday with a runny nose and dead feet and way too much dust on top of all my shit, but a week later, I’m sitting here at my desk after another cold and rainy day wishing I could do it all again.

I already talked a lot about the rest of the Inforoo crew here who made this all so special, but I want to close by giving a special shout out to my two camping mates who I realize I both met for the first time at my first brunch in 2016. First, Jaz . I can’t remember the last time we had seen each other person before January this year, but it had been a minute. I feel so grateful he decided to come out to Coachella with us, I was honestly shocked when he said it was the best festival he had been to, and I really hope he joins us again. Jaz is such a kind, caring guy, always the first to loan you a cigarette and always the one to listen to you for the longest time. There is so much joy in watching him dance to music he likes. He brought a lot of spirit to our camp, although, to be fair, he brings a lot of spirit to everything. I’m grateful to have spent so much time with him this weekend. And then, of course, stlallison . At Coachella, we were reflecting on our first time meeting and how much has changed for both of us since then. She gets shit done when it needs to get done and then afterwards brings the party like no one else can. She’s got a great sense of humor, is always down to go out of her way to see something new, and will stay by your side as long as you ask. I have nothing but deep admiration and respect for her and I always feel so lucky we get to do what we do together. I appreciate both of these people for really making my Coachella what it was. I’m hopeful we’ll all make it out next year…and I’m sorry Allison tat I haven’t responded to your asking to your message in our group chat if we should do W1 next year but I need some time before thinking about making a drastic life change like that. Buying a house was way easier than that.

random FYI - just noticed HARD FEELINGS are opening for Hot Chip in NYC gibsonguy20

Looks like theyre uploading some stuff in 4k. At least the SHM x Weeknd clips. Abel tweeted out that the full set is coning some wonder if they put it all up in one shot like that.

I understand. I'm mad at myself for even suggesting this idea. But I'm still salty about not getting to weep during Arcade Fire with you.

Being like... what three weeks?... late with my review, I doubt anyone really wants to read what I have to say, so I'll keep it short (not really that short) and just point out five six major highlights that are (hopefully) not repeats of what's already been said. Also, Jaz and shuck have basically covered all of the details of how our weekend played out (PS: I love you two).

1. First thing on Friday, I walked up to the ID Check and there were two women in line in front of me who were probably in their mid 50s. They had on such cute outfits and were clearly so fucking jazzed for what was about to happen over the next three days. I told them I loved their style and they were so happy to hear that compliment and we got into a lovely little conversation about age & music festivals and how it's not really a real problem and why do people act like it is? When I hear people ask "Am I too old to go to Coachella, Bonnaroo, Lolla, etc....?" I will forever remember how much fun those two women were having. I hope that is me in 20 years.

2. This was the first Coachella I've been to where I knew more than three other people amongst the 100K. I don't mind seeing shows by myself, but it was really special to be able to have a friend with me at almost every set I was at. Thank you to all the Inforoosters who made the weekend amazing! Of course shuck and Jaz , Jake Jortles and GF, Cookin' Mama , Whereispassionpit , tЯist♡n , trantsgiving , pmo , Jeremy Fragrance , durkle , stinky y'all are real ones.

3. On that topic... Thank you to all of those people on that list for not making fun of me (at least to my face) for how hard I danced (whilst mostly sober!) at Jamie XX. Jesus Christ that set was insane.

4. Whereispassionpit 's salsa... shit was fire. Seriously how have more of you not discussed this?!

5. The mosh pit at IDLES made me feel like a teenager again.

6. Oh and I know Jaz brought this up already but those very nice dudes with the refraction glasses and the light-up suit and the one guy who cleaned off that girl's prescription glasses in the middle of the Hot Chip set were some of the nicest and most fun strangers I've ever been around. Those dudes made that set just that much more special.

Oh one last thought.... After spending $200+/day on alcohol at Shaky the very next weekend, I am actually kind of thankful for Coachella beer jail. Never thought I'd say that...