Reaching Coachella weekend mid-April means a lot to me: getting past the dark, dreary Winter and connecting with the sunny warm festival world again. The live streams from sweltering Deep Desert, California help me feel it might be safe to crawl out of my alpaca underthermals and that I should empathize with all the brave beset concert-goers suffering sunburn and dusty dehydration. I dream of attending in person again, but I end up thinking about what a pain it would be to pay, travel, traffic-jam, camp, and be stuck out in the vast, barren polo fields over several days with a quarter of a million other humans rather than just flannel pajamas streaming it. I can comprehend how it’s worth a fair amount of grief as an attendee for the experience, but what is it like for the performers? How on earth does Goldenvoice pull off such a huge project? I presume each of the acts are basically already on tour and they have their own set of roadies, transport/party vans. But with ~160 acts over the two weekends, how do the bands lock into the logistics months ahead and is there a glut of hundreds of tour trucks and buses on the I-10 from LA? Do the bands make a profit or to they take a loss for the exposure? Do they have to actually pay to play? Are any acts banned from Coachella? Like Cage the Elephant 2014, clearly tripping mental balls. Continue reading →