Oh Me Oh My...Coachella?
Hey, hi, hey, guys. So I promised default_dollie that I would explain the appeal of Coachella to her last week (now three months ago), and then I kind of failed at the job. Mostly because I hadn’t actually been there yet, and had no idea what to do other than yell COACHELLA at the top of my lungs while my phone stared at me blankly. Oddly enough, after an entire weekend at the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival, that’s still my first reaction. Go figure. I recognize this post is super late - I'd written it up for her right after and then forgotten about it completely. Grad school prep and other priorities have been a real bitch. But anyway. Here we go.
My primary motivations for going to Coachella were music and landscape. By music, I mean a bunch of bands I really love all playing in one place. By landscape I mean, I’m from California. I grew up surrounded by mountains and orange groves, and even though it’s been a long time since I was in residence, I go back constantly, and these are still the things that make me think home place, nest place. I feel way safer in the shadows of the hills, the sun, palm trees, and crazy traffic than I ever have surrounded by the woods and rivers that populate Jersey - even the Jersey shore. (Apparently all this, er, dare I call it landscape porn, appeals to everyone else too, because boyfriend and jblostfan16 could not stop commenting on how unique/pretty it all was.) My other primary reason for going (I’ll get to the music) is that I’d been promising jblostfan16 I’d get her to Coachella since last year - oh god, or even since 2011, dare I say? MISSION SUCCESS.
Now, the actuality of Coachella: It was GREAT. I flew on a Wednesday night, super nervous about basically everything. Meeting jblostfan16 a second time, meeting Tammy for the first (Tammy, do you have an LJ, because I can't remember), whether or not my boyfriend would actually make his flight (mostly this last one because my boyfriend is simultaneously a sweetheart and an utter ass), etc. I’d arranged to meet my dad at LAX because stopping by California without visiting my dad, even though we just had Vatican funtimes, would not have been a good idea. It benefited both of us in the long run, as well. He took me to a fancy schmancy prime rib place in Beverly Hills that I love and the next day the man put me to work updating every piece of technology he owns. Mostly this meant updating his virus protection and deleting all the Katy Perry my older sister downloaded on his iPod. In between there was a fun drive from Beverly Hills to Moreno Valley, were we’d both had too many dirty martinis and were having a Willie Nelson sing along (awk, because I knew none of the words). I digress.
The afternoon of Day 2 found me picking up boyfriend (he made the plane, hallelujah, despite one phone call claiming he missed it because he’s an ASS) and picking up my very first rental car (shockingly easy, compared to all my other rental experiences where I played passenger). I drove to Palms Springs, making one stop in Moreno Valley to meet up with dad and eat animal fries. Because that was boyfriend’s main motivation for coming to Coachella: In ‘N Out.
The traffic was balls, but again, pretty used to it. Enter the hotel, which for the life of me I cannot stop calling the Palm Ivy for whatever reason. We met up with Chris - jblostfan16 - and promptly got into the beer. Specifically, we got into the beer on rocking chairs surrounding a fountain by the pool, shaded by palm trees and moonlight. Palm Springs, bitch. Also, fangirl meet ups are great, mostly because boyfriend finds them traumatizing, but more on that later. (Chris isn’t really even a fangirl anymore in my mind anyway, because I text her and Courtney like, twice as often as I talk to my irl friends, sooooo. Leaving that right there.)
Tammy, sadly, missed most of the beer, but she rolled in around late and then I got reacquainted with my bff Sleep. Boyfriend is a sweaty blanket hog. Just saying. We woke up way too bright and early the next morning and decorated ourselves with fake tattoos, boyfriend included (rainbows!) and…This is the part you’ve all been waiting for. COACHELLA.
Yes, saying it in caps is absolutely necessary. Let me really paint the scene for you. Feather headdresses. Tie dyed shorts. Bikini tops and shirtless boys, galore. Mind you, these are California girls and boys, so they’re all running the line between sculpted and anorexic (nothing against my home state, but everyone I know who stays there for longer than half a month develops, uh. Food issues. Including me - I’d come home from summer-long hiatuses in hs twenty pounds underweight and convinced I could subsist on like, kale, so I am not judging here.) Neon wigs. Furry butt skirts (idek). Fake turquoise, real turquoise, a whole hell of a lot of turquoise. Personally, I did not bring any of my turquoise other than a ring, because 1 - all of my turquoise is real, fake turquoise is for pussies. B - all of my silver is legit and expensive and carefully stolen from my dad’s shop or purchased in the backwoods of Montana, so I lived in fear of losing it at some damn hippie music festival, but again, getting off track. Glitter, suntans, stupid t-shirts. Animal costumes. Body paint. Are you beginning to see what I saw, yet? I’m crushing all three days into one review, because my initial review of day one was three pages long, so bear with me. This is how it goes down:
Basically, they march you into the festival grounds through two checkpoints (looking for drugs and making sure you’re wearing your wristband), past tents of all shapes and sizes (teepee tents, tent-tents, cars with tents attached, tents with pirate flags and Australian flags and blow up dolls secured to the top, etc). It’s a fun time, with a lot of random people yelling Coachella at the top of their lungs. Yes, that is a thing. Yes, we all did it. You’re also walking on this big dirt path, which will be relevant later. Then you are greeted by a massive Ferris Wheel, stalls of food, and in the distance, the looming shape of the Sahara tent (where a lot of the EDM music went down).
They had an ongoing racket with food trucks, which, okay, I had this conversation with Chris, and later with Tammy, but food trucks in California are superior to food trucks in all other places. You can buy like, fusion tacos, truffle oil mac and cheese, a vegetarian option, whatever. Sushi! Basically whatever your heart desires, and because it’s California, they operate year long and are often health-conscious. We’re starting to import some nice food trucks in Jersey, but we’re definitely not up to SoCal’s level yet - you should have seen my family’s happy dance when the AP Boardwalk got Korean Fusion Tacos last year. So that, right there, is a really big draw to any music festival in California. You’re not going to see like, zeppoles and sausage anywhere. On that first day, we ended up exploring, and one of the first places we hit up brought us to free fruit bars at the (air conditioned, be-fountained) Fruattare lounge, which was a spectacular life decision all around, because gratis strawberry popsicles are the shit. Other air conditioned places at the venue included: the Heineken dome, which is, as the name might suggest, a tent straight out of Star Wars that has dance music and a lot of beer, and the Red Bull Speakeasy, which was a password protected, prohibition themed lounge that primarily served Red Bull and Vodka, which tastes of college finals and love imho. (We danced, we took a zany picture, we got poems written about us by this crazy-haired dude smoking an electronic cigarette. Chris is a desert muse, Tammy is an American dream-girl, and I have starfish in my hair, I believe we were all quite smitten).
Other fun things - The grounds had a lot of random stands set up where you could check-in on Facebook to make all your friends wildly jealous, take crazy pictures to make all your friends wildly jealous, or you know, just stop and enjoy the air conditioning while you texted your friends (who would of course be wildly jealous). There were a handful of “general stores” where you could pick up necessities like, say, advil. In the interest of shopping, there was a one-stop CD store (which was actually great) and Coachella merch booth (and an artsy Coachella merch booth) along with smaller stands, where you could say, get your face painted. They had a charging stationyou’re your phone, an H&M tent where you could drink lemon water and fix your make up (which big, old style Hollywood mirrors). Beer gardens abounded! There was a farmer’s market that we never hit up, but also, one of the main appeals of the festival was the ART. Artists compete big time to get their work into these festivals - this year the sculpture included a weird pirate ship thing hung with lanterns that you could view the grounds from, a moving, glowing snail that er, left a trail of bubbles in its wake, slatted tents to protect you from the sun, a giant metal t-rex, and multiple smaller statues all around (a string of balloons held by a single person stretching on into the night, lit up once the sun fell).
The music centered in five tents plus the Do Lab, where you could get sprayed with a happy mist while dancing your ass off if so pleased. We kicked off the music tour with Lord Huron, who, by the way, are an awesome band. I had a handful of songs going in, and by the end of the weekend, I bought their whole CD. Which I am currently listening too/loving. We were pretty close to the front for the show, and I thought they had really great energy. (Great Energy: Often misinterpreted as a hipster phrase that means they have no idea how else to describe a band, here meaning that they really made you want to move and bop, even in the Indio heat.) I think if they ever hop by NYC I’m going to drag breila-rose to see them again. I don’t want to bore you guys with every single band we saw during the course of the festival, but they included: Stars (Your Ex-Lover Is Dead LIVE OMFG), Metric (Emily Haines is gorgeous, lemme say right here, and I’d love to see her on her own), Of Monsters and Men (I think we missed like one song, but they were a pretty nice cool down from the more dancey bands), Tanlines, Infected Mushroom, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Wu Tang Clan, Foals, Bat For Lashes, The Postal Service (Can we talk about Jenny Lewis, who was like, the pinnacle of perfection to me in high school? Granted, I had no idea what she looked like, but I could sing a (really terrible) version of Paint’s Peeling at like, the drop of a dime), Tegan & Sara, 2Chainz (with Fall Out Boy), Yeasayer, The XX, and Sigur Ros. We missed The Wombats, which made me sad face, but we made up for it by seeing a ton of other awesome bands. We did catch Modest Mouse playing Float On, which is really the only relevant Modest Mouse song (look, I like Modest Mouse, but seeing them in concert was never a huge priority for me) and Sleepyhead from Passion Pit (same). Band of Horses happened for a while, and hey, I NEVER wanted to know how much dental surgery the lead singer needs, but now I do. We all got the tail end of the Lumineers on the last day. Boyfriend and I also caught the tail end of Ben Howard, who was GREAT, and we also caught some Vampire Weekend and Phoenix before hopping off to have dancey sexy times on our lonesome at the Knife Party show. Spoilers: it was great. I’ve been known to hop all over NYC to catch beloved bands, so this was actually a cheaper way for me to catch up on a lot of favorites. And I definitely have some favorites in this list.
Also Chris and Tammy were boystalking during a lot of OMaM, which meant I got some chill time with boyfriend, who was feeling a bit neglected. I’m going to add right here, when I say boystalking, yes, I do mean Big Time Rush, and no, we did not go to Coachella for that reason. The opportunity was grabbed, sure (here is that story), but I’m pretty sure everyone would have been just as happy if BTR skipped this year. A couple of issues came up over the weekend with people in fandom A- pretending to have gone to Coachella and met the guys (look, no one is trying to bully these people by saying they weren’t there, they just HONESTLY weren’t there, because we did see the guys, and we’ve got video disproving conclusions about what they were wearing or where they were at a given time. This is an issue because one girl kept pushing a picture of a homemade wristband in our faces and we were like, uh, have you even seen what a Coachella wristband looks like? Hint: Not black and white) or B - going to Coachella after the boys were found, for the purpose of seeing the boys. I…have things to say here. Pertaining to the first point, I know a lot of this fandom is young, and pretending to have met the guys is apparently a way to get popular (which by the way, fandom, is stupid, because meeting a person with testes, even a person with famous testes, is not a direct reflection on your personality), but…Idgi. On the second point, straight up, you guys are morons. Who spend two to three hundred dollars on one day of a music festival for the sole purpose of meeting Big Time Rush? It’s creepy as fuck, insulting to the actual artists playing good music on the grounds, and let’s be honest, if you had random girls (or boys) taking not so subtle pictures of you while you were trying to listen to a band you genuinely enjoy, interrupting some of the only solo time you get during your busy work week, how would you feel about them? There’s a border between superfan and I-need-a-restraining-order-against-you, and some of you have crossed it. Leaving that right there.
I’m trying to like, cram all our stories into this post, which is basically impossible. Um. At one point we took a spin on the giant Ferris Wheel, which has great views but also a lot of not-ground under it. I am scared of heights. I made nail marks in boyfriend’s arm. Oops. Chris may or may not have made nail marks in Tammy’s, but I got super cute pictures of them out of it. (Those two: so photogenic!) By the time the night most nights ended, around one in the morning, I couldn’t feel my ankles and the cloud of dust that greeted us on exit did not please me. Bandanas later solved that problem, but on the first night, I totally was like, dying and fell asleep on the car ride home (sorry, Chris) and then fell straight into bed after washing my filthy, dusty feet. Coa…chella….? The second lazy night went better, with Tammy regaling us all with a Coachella Imagine Story she found on Tumblr. My boyfriend will never be the same. And what else, what else. Idk, there’s just something really great about Coachella? Indie music (and California mainstream, which is mostly rock/rap) attracts a lot of douchebags, to be sure, but also a lot of happy, friendly people, and overall the festival was full of good vibes (and the overpowering scent of ganja, but whatevs, that was expected) and rainbows and unicorns. And there’s something to be said for that last day, where we skipped the morning shows to swim in the pool of our hotel and drink beer. All in all, this was probably the most relaxing vacation I’ve had in a few years and a really great experience to have if you love music and California (or to summarize, my life). Totally recommend it.
My primary motivations for going to Coachella were music and landscape. By music, I mean a bunch of bands I really love all playing in one place. By landscape I mean, I’m from California. I grew up surrounded by mountains and orange groves, and even though it’s been a long time since I was in residence, I go back constantly, and these are still the things that make me think home place, nest place. I feel way safer in the shadows of the hills, the sun, palm trees, and crazy traffic than I ever have surrounded by the woods and rivers that populate Jersey - even the Jersey shore. (Apparently all this, er, dare I call it landscape porn, appeals to everyone else too, because boyfriend and jblostfan16 could not stop commenting on how unique/pretty it all was.) My other primary reason for going (I’ll get to the music) is that I’d been promising jblostfan16 I’d get her to Coachella since last year - oh god, or even since 2011, dare I say? MISSION SUCCESS.
Now, the actuality of Coachella: It was GREAT. I flew on a Wednesday night, super nervous about basically everything. Meeting jblostfan16 a second time, meeting Tammy for the first (Tammy, do you have an LJ, because I can't remember), whether or not my boyfriend would actually make his flight (mostly this last one because my boyfriend is simultaneously a sweetheart and an utter ass), etc. I’d arranged to meet my dad at LAX because stopping by California without visiting my dad, even though we just had Vatican funtimes, would not have been a good idea. It benefited both of us in the long run, as well. He took me to a fancy schmancy prime rib place in Beverly Hills that I love and the next day the man put me to work updating every piece of technology he owns. Mostly this meant updating his virus protection and deleting all the Katy Perry my older sister downloaded on his iPod. In between there was a fun drive from Beverly Hills to Moreno Valley, were we’d both had too many dirty martinis and were having a Willie Nelson sing along (awk, because I knew none of the words). I digress.
The afternoon of Day 2 found me picking up boyfriend (he made the plane, hallelujah, despite one phone call claiming he missed it because he’s an ASS) and picking up my very first rental car (shockingly easy, compared to all my other rental experiences where I played passenger). I drove to Palms Springs, making one stop in Moreno Valley to meet up with dad and eat animal fries. Because that was boyfriend’s main motivation for coming to Coachella: In ‘N Out.
The traffic was balls, but again, pretty used to it. Enter the hotel, which for the life of me I cannot stop calling the Palm Ivy for whatever reason. We met up with Chris - jblostfan16 - and promptly got into the beer. Specifically, we got into the beer on rocking chairs surrounding a fountain by the pool, shaded by palm trees and moonlight. Palm Springs, bitch. Also, fangirl meet ups are great, mostly because boyfriend finds them traumatizing, but more on that later. (Chris isn’t really even a fangirl anymore in my mind anyway, because I text her and Courtney like, twice as often as I talk to my irl friends, sooooo. Leaving that right there.)
Tammy, sadly, missed most of the beer, but she rolled in around late and then I got reacquainted with my bff Sleep. Boyfriend is a sweaty blanket hog. Just saying. We woke up way too bright and early the next morning and decorated ourselves with fake tattoos, boyfriend included (rainbows!) and…This is the part you’ve all been waiting for. COACHELLA.
Yes, saying it in caps is absolutely necessary. Let me really paint the scene for you. Feather headdresses. Tie dyed shorts. Bikini tops and shirtless boys, galore. Mind you, these are California girls and boys, so they’re all running the line between sculpted and anorexic (nothing against my home state, but everyone I know who stays there for longer than half a month develops, uh. Food issues. Including me - I’d come home from summer-long hiatuses in hs twenty pounds underweight and convinced I could subsist on like, kale, so I am not judging here.) Neon wigs. Furry butt skirts (idek). Fake turquoise, real turquoise, a whole hell of a lot of turquoise. Personally, I did not bring any of my turquoise other than a ring, because 1 - all of my turquoise is real, fake turquoise is for pussies. B - all of my silver is legit and expensive and carefully stolen from my dad’s shop or purchased in the backwoods of Montana, so I lived in fear of losing it at some damn hippie music festival, but again, getting off track. Glitter, suntans, stupid t-shirts. Animal costumes. Body paint. Are you beginning to see what I saw, yet? I’m crushing all three days into one review, because my initial review of day one was three pages long, so bear with me. This is how it goes down:
Basically, they march you into the festival grounds through two checkpoints (looking for drugs and making sure you’re wearing your wristband), past tents of all shapes and sizes (teepee tents, tent-tents, cars with tents attached, tents with pirate flags and Australian flags and blow up dolls secured to the top, etc). It’s a fun time, with a lot of random people yelling Coachella at the top of their lungs. Yes, that is a thing. Yes, we all did it. You’re also walking on this big dirt path, which will be relevant later. Then you are greeted by a massive Ferris Wheel, stalls of food, and in the distance, the looming shape of the Sahara tent (where a lot of the EDM music went down).
They had an ongoing racket with food trucks, which, okay, I had this conversation with Chris, and later with Tammy, but food trucks in California are superior to food trucks in all other places. You can buy like, fusion tacos, truffle oil mac and cheese, a vegetarian option, whatever. Sushi! Basically whatever your heart desires, and because it’s California, they operate year long and are often health-conscious. We’re starting to import some nice food trucks in Jersey, but we’re definitely not up to SoCal’s level yet - you should have seen my family’s happy dance when the AP Boardwalk got Korean Fusion Tacos last year. So that, right there, is a really big draw to any music festival in California. You’re not going to see like, zeppoles and sausage anywhere. On that first day, we ended up exploring, and one of the first places we hit up brought us to free fruit bars at the (air conditioned, be-fountained) Fruattare lounge, which was a spectacular life decision all around, because gratis strawberry popsicles are the shit. Other air conditioned places at the venue included: the Heineken dome, which is, as the name might suggest, a tent straight out of Star Wars that has dance music and a lot of beer, and the Red Bull Speakeasy, which was a password protected, prohibition themed lounge that primarily served Red Bull and Vodka, which tastes of college finals and love imho. (We danced, we took a zany picture, we got poems written about us by this crazy-haired dude smoking an electronic cigarette. Chris is a desert muse, Tammy is an American dream-girl, and I have starfish in my hair, I believe we were all quite smitten).
Other fun things - The grounds had a lot of random stands set up where you could check-in on Facebook to make all your friends wildly jealous, take crazy pictures to make all your friends wildly jealous, or you know, just stop and enjoy the air conditioning while you texted your friends (who would of course be wildly jealous). There were a handful of “general stores” where you could pick up necessities like, say, advil. In the interest of shopping, there was a one-stop CD store (which was actually great) and Coachella merch booth (and an artsy Coachella merch booth) along with smaller stands, where you could say, get your face painted. They had a charging stationyou’re your phone, an H&M tent where you could drink lemon water and fix your make up (which big, old style Hollywood mirrors). Beer gardens abounded! There was a farmer’s market that we never hit up, but also, one of the main appeals of the festival was the ART. Artists compete big time to get their work into these festivals - this year the sculpture included a weird pirate ship thing hung with lanterns that you could view the grounds from, a moving, glowing snail that er, left a trail of bubbles in its wake, slatted tents to protect you from the sun, a giant metal t-rex, and multiple smaller statues all around (a string of balloons held by a single person stretching on into the night, lit up once the sun fell).
The music centered in five tents plus the Do Lab, where you could get sprayed with a happy mist while dancing your ass off if so pleased. We kicked off the music tour with Lord Huron, who, by the way, are an awesome band. I had a handful of songs going in, and by the end of the weekend, I bought their whole CD. Which I am currently listening too/loving. We were pretty close to the front for the show, and I thought they had really great energy. (Great Energy: Often misinterpreted as a hipster phrase that means they have no idea how else to describe a band, here meaning that they really made you want to move and bop, even in the Indio heat.) I think if they ever hop by NYC I’m going to drag breila-rose to see them again. I don’t want to bore you guys with every single band we saw during the course of the festival, but they included: Stars (Your Ex-Lover Is Dead LIVE OMFG), Metric (Emily Haines is gorgeous, lemme say right here, and I’d love to see her on her own), Of Monsters and Men (I think we missed like one song, but they were a pretty nice cool down from the more dancey bands), Tanlines, Infected Mushroom, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Wu Tang Clan, Foals, Bat For Lashes, The Postal Service (Can we talk about Jenny Lewis, who was like, the pinnacle of perfection to me in high school? Granted, I had no idea what she looked like, but I could sing a (really terrible) version of Paint’s Peeling at like, the drop of a dime), Tegan & Sara, 2Chainz (with Fall Out Boy), Yeasayer, The XX, and Sigur Ros. We missed The Wombats, which made me sad face, but we made up for it by seeing a ton of other awesome bands. We did catch Modest Mouse playing Float On, which is really the only relevant Modest Mouse song (look, I like Modest Mouse, but seeing them in concert was never a huge priority for me) and Sleepyhead from Passion Pit (same). Band of Horses happened for a while, and hey, I NEVER wanted to know how much dental surgery the lead singer needs, but now I do. We all got the tail end of the Lumineers on the last day. Boyfriend and I also caught the tail end of Ben Howard, who was GREAT, and we also caught some Vampire Weekend and Phoenix before hopping off to have dancey sexy times on our lonesome at the Knife Party show. Spoilers: it was great. I’ve been known to hop all over NYC to catch beloved bands, so this was actually a cheaper way for me to catch up on a lot of favorites. And I definitely have some favorites in this list.
Also Chris and Tammy were boystalking during a lot of OMaM, which meant I got some chill time with boyfriend, who was feeling a bit neglected. I’m going to add right here, when I say boystalking, yes, I do mean Big Time Rush, and no, we did not go to Coachella for that reason. The opportunity was grabbed, sure (here is that story), but I’m pretty sure everyone would have been just as happy if BTR skipped this year. A couple of issues came up over the weekend with people in fandom A- pretending to have gone to Coachella and met the guys (look, no one is trying to bully these people by saying they weren’t there, they just HONESTLY weren’t there, because we did see the guys, and we’ve got video disproving conclusions about what they were wearing or where they were at a given time. This is an issue because one girl kept pushing a picture of a homemade wristband in our faces and we were like, uh, have you even seen what a Coachella wristband looks like? Hint: Not black and white) or B - going to Coachella after the boys were found, for the purpose of seeing the boys. I…have things to say here. Pertaining to the first point, I know a lot of this fandom is young, and pretending to have met the guys is apparently a way to get popular (which by the way, fandom, is stupid, because meeting a person with testes, even a person with famous testes, is not a direct reflection on your personality), but…Idgi. On the second point, straight up, you guys are morons. Who spend two to three hundred dollars on one day of a music festival for the sole purpose of meeting Big Time Rush? It’s creepy as fuck, insulting to the actual artists playing good music on the grounds, and let’s be honest, if you had random girls (or boys) taking not so subtle pictures of you while you were trying to listen to a band you genuinely enjoy, interrupting some of the only solo time you get during your busy work week, how would you feel about them? There’s a border between superfan and I-need-a-restraining-order-against-you, and some of you have crossed it. Leaving that right there.
I’m trying to like, cram all our stories into this post, which is basically impossible. Um. At one point we took a spin on the giant Ferris Wheel, which has great views but also a lot of not-ground under it. I am scared of heights. I made nail marks in boyfriend’s arm. Oops. Chris may or may not have made nail marks in Tammy’s, but I got super cute pictures of them out of it. (Those two: so photogenic!) By the time the night most nights ended, around one in the morning, I couldn’t feel my ankles and the cloud of dust that greeted us on exit did not please me. Bandanas later solved that problem, but on the first night, I totally was like, dying and fell asleep on the car ride home (sorry, Chris) and then fell straight into bed after washing my filthy, dusty feet. Coa…chella….? The second lazy night went better, with Tammy regaling us all with a Coachella Imagine Story she found on Tumblr. My boyfriend will never be the same. And what else, what else. Idk, there’s just something really great about Coachella? Indie music (and California mainstream, which is mostly rock/rap) attracts a lot of douchebags, to be sure, but also a lot of happy, friendly people, and overall the festival was full of good vibes (and the overpowering scent of ganja, but whatevs, that was expected) and rainbows and unicorns. And there’s something to be said for that last day, where we skipped the morning shows to swim in the pool of our hotel and drink beer. All in all, this was probably the most relaxing vacation I’ve had in a few years and a really great experience to have if you love music and California (or to summarize, my life). Totally recommend it.