April 18, 2014 - Day one of Coachella

Woke up around 6:30 AM in order to get a shower in without having to wait in a ridiculous line. I was expecting much worse than what the setup was. It wasn't prison style showers where you had to see a lot of naked dudes. You had your own little shower stall with a curtain--the only problem was you couldn't move the nozzle and aim it. This meant cupping your hands and throwing water at your legs.

One of our campmates, the one who was tripping balls on mushrooms the night before, didn't bring any soap or a towel, so Ash had to share with him. This would be a common theme with this guy for the whole weekend. He didn't bring a towel. Or shampoo. Or a pillow. Or a blanket. Or contribute anything really to the group. But he sure drank our beer. Lots of it.

Our camping group (and random Asian) before we'd
all look haggard as fuck a few days later.

We took this group picture right before we all headed into the gates around 12:30 in the afternoon or so. We all had a couple of beers in us and I had brought those little shooter plastic bottles of Fireball and Crown Royal, so we each shot down one of those before we headed in.

After catching a bit of Flatbush Zombies, the first band on the menu was Australia's The Preatures. I had fallen in love with their song "Is This How You Feel?" while doing my Coachella research in the previous month and saw them as Jet, if they had a female singer. They kicked ass.

The group splintered at this point. Ash, Drew, and I stuck together. I had a media pass, so I was able to grab a bunch of complimentary waters for our group throughout the weekend so as not to pass out. It was hot, but actually not as hot as I thought it would be.

I went on my own for a bit and caught folk duo Wye Oak in the Gobi tent. After that, we all met up once again to catch ZZ Ward, who I had seen in San Francisco the weekend before at The Independent. Her set was incredible, and everyone in our group thought she kicked ass. She puts on a hell of a show.

Dum Dum Girls. I'm in love with the Asian drummer. @MarkEOrtega

After catching Dum Dum Girls (who I also saw at The Independent the previous week), took a little break. We got back in the swing of things with GROUPLOVE (who I had seen in Las Vegas the previous Thursday night with Warpaint at The Cosmo) and they really ramped up the energy. Their cover of Beyonce's "Crazy In Love" was damn quality.

From there, it was HAIM time. I fell in love with those three sisters the previous October at the inaugural Life if Beautiful Festival in Las Vegas. Their live act is a bit more rock n roll than how they sound on album and they crack me up with their between song banter. Even in the six months since I last saw them, their lives had changed dramatically. They were on SNL and just blew up. Their crowd at Coachella was probably double what it was at Life is Beautiful and they killed it.

Kate Nash in her awesomely ridiculous get-up. @MarkEOrtega

Was able to catch the end of AFI's set before heading over to see Kate Nash for the second time that week (see a trend?). Her set was high energy just like at The Roxy and though her voice isn't top notch live, her charisma and showmanship more than makes up for it.

After catching The Afghan Whigs, who had a disappointingly small crowd but did awesome anyways, I could feel myself slowing down. I grabbed a grilled cheese sandwich from this grilled cheese booth. It took 25 fucking minutes despite the fact that a grilled cheese sandwich takes 2.5 minutes tops to put together. All the while, the 20 of us who were waiting for our food almost started a riot.

Was able to catch the end of The Replacements before catching fellow rocking old-timer Bryan Ferry. After that, I headed to The Knife's set and my body forced me to lay down on the grass. Even though I wasn't on drugs, The Knife's music made me feel like I was tripping on some psychedelic shit anyways. Can't imagine what it was like for those who WERE on psychedelics.

A few of us were able to meet up and watch OutKast together. The previous weekend they had sort of bombed, but this time they brought it. It was a fantastic way to end the live music portion of day one and we all headed back to camp.

Once again, I grabbed shut eye around 5 AM, waking up at 6:15 to go get my writing in before my 10 AM deadline. It was then I realized it was going to be a loooong weekend, but certainly one I would never forget.