Waking up in the morning to sunny skies and palm trees made me so incredibly happy! The view from the balcony of our room was beautiful– I could get used to seeing this every morning. ;)
Being the huge keeners that we are, my friends and I decided for Day 1 of Coachella that we wanted to show up to the venue as early as possible. The first shows started at 11am and we were ready to board our shuttles just after 11:30am (ok, so maybe some of us are more morning people than others…). Little did we know that the shuttle ride would take just under an hour and we would be stuck lining up through three different levels of security checkpoints for another hour. My friend proposed a name change for the festival to be “Linechella” after spending so much time in lineups! lol
By the time we made it through all the security checks, we were starving. We checked out the food stalls (of course every trip for me is always about the food!) and then headed to our first show. We caught the tail of of R3HAB and then wandered around the rest of the festival grounds to see what was around. The first day wasn’t exactly the most exciting in terms of artist lineup. I only really wanted to see Madeon and we had a few hours to kill before he came on.
His set was SO AWESOME! I couldn’t believe how calm and composed he was. Imagine playing for such a huge crowd when you’re only 17 years old…
Day 1 ended with watching The Black Keys play under the stars on the main stage. By the time we got back to the hotel, we were all so exhausted from being in the sun all day. No pamphlet for the festival tells you that being in a desert for 12 hours straight in 37C heat (105F) will suck the life out of you!
Instead of heading to the venue early the next two days, we decided to take it easy and lounge around by the poolside. We figured we would avoid the rush of eager beavers trying to get to the venue early. However, this meant that I ended up missing Dragonette’s set, which I was a little saddened by. :(
Day 2 was actually the craziest day in terms of trying to coordinate what shows to see. There were so many artists that I wanted to see but had conflicting time slots. Luckily, I went to Martin Solveig’s set, praying that by some miracle Dragonette would come out and perform Hello with him. Low and behold, at the very end of his set, he gave the crowd a very humble speech about his journey to popularity and how grateful he was to have met Dragonette a couple years ago. This was apparently they first time they had ever performed Hello in North America together. SO COOL!
The last day was slightly less emotional than day 2. It started off with reminiscing about high school memories as The Hives played. You can bet I screamed and danced my little heart out when they played Walk Idiot Walk! Sixteen year old me would’ve been proud. ;) haha
Again, there were so many bands playing that I wanted to see but couldn’t because their sets were at the same time on different stages. The last show of the evening that I saw was Beirut. Much like Bon Iver, there are a handful of memories in my life that revolve around this band. As they ended their set with Nantes, the chorus definitely tugged at my heart strings and made me think about all the fond memories where Beirut tracks played in the background: car rides, impromptu duet sessions at wee hours of the morning, cuddling on the couch, and being serenaded on the rooftop. So many happy moments of my life that I never want to forget how I felt during them had this song playing in the background.
I never really realized how strongly the events in my life are tied to music. I seem to associate a lot of memories (both good and bad) with specific songs or albums or bands. Being at Coachella and seeing bands that subconsciously associated with these memories made me really emotional at times. Reminiscing over relationships and crazy study sessions associated with these songs left me feeling nostalgic and a little vulnerable with my feelings.
I am so happy to have shared such an amazing weekend with two of my best friends. Aside from the fun road trip filled with tons of “car-aoke”, too much fast food, and countless trips to the lemonade stand, simply being in the presence of old friends, smiling and laughing, chatting until the weed hours of the morning, and still texting each other like crazy after parting ways at the airport made me extremely happy; even though we’re miles apart, we still pick up exactly where we left off every time we see each other again. I’m so glad to have spent my first Coachella weekend with them and to know that we can all share the same kind of bond over music together.
Hopefully we’ll meet again next year, Coachella. ♥
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