Day 2 started out with extremely low expectations. I was up really late the night before and couldn’t sleep in that late, so I thought I would be a little out of sorts all day. But luckily after 3 breakfast burritos (the third with extra jalapeno and hot sauce) and a few bottles of water, I was feeling a little more like myself again. I took a look at the set times for the day and while I was looking forward to a few acts, I hadn’t made any decisions about the night, and nothing really struck me as must see.

And I think its because of these low expectations that day 2 of Coachella was one of my favorite festival days of all time. It started out simply enough, with us sitting outside the Mojave tent to listen to a few tunes from Camera Obscura. I’d decided that since I just saw Beach House, I would head over to the Outdoor Theater to see The Temper Trap, but not until I met up with my cousin who was also in town for the fest. By the time he and his friends were ready to head to the Outdoor Theater, we could only catch “Sweet Disposition”, which was good and kind of made me wish I’d seen the rest of their set.

But up next was one of my festival must-sees, none other than Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. Their album is a favorite of mine, and it’s one of those that I just love every single song so much, so I couldn’t wait to see it live on stage, complete with their huge cast of characters. They opened up with “40 Day Dream” and went into “Janglin’” and their performance was exactly what I’d expected (though this was one part of the day that I did have high expectations for). About 10 people on stage, all playing various instruments from trumpets to pianos to guitars to washboards, and some of the happiest music on Earth. The love and energy up on the stage really carried through. My personal favorite was “Up from Below”, which really came to life on stage. A few songs after that were a bit out of key at times, but the set finished strong with perennial favorite “Home”. Various members of the band jumped in front of the stage to crowdsurf at various times, and Alex Ebert lent his shirt to a young man in the front who had a cut on his head. Hopefully that young man doesn’t have any sort of infection now. Just kidding, Alex, we love you kids. And special thanks to girl on guy’s shoulders #2834 for taking a few pics for me from up there.

Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros – Om Nashi Me

buy it on or amazon

At this point, my two highlights of the weekend were hilarious because they were COMPLETE 100% opposites. The upbeat, free-love Edward Sharpe et al, and the dark, haunting Fever Ray. The mere fact that I got to experience both within just a few hours of each other said enough about this weekend.

Next up, we decided since we were already at that stage that we would just stay for the XX. I wasn’t particularly excited to see the XX mostly because I thought that it would not live up to the happiness of Edward Sharpe, but I gave it a shot and really enjoyed it in all its minimalist glory. I was surprised to see that they didn’t have a drummer, but rather a sort of live beat-maker. And Jay-Z even showed up, since he loves the indie rock now. Also notable was that during their set, the top of the main stage seemed to catch on fire, with black smoke billowing away. But it stopped after about a minute fortunately.

After stocking up on water for the rest of the night, we headed back to Mojave to catch some of the Dirty Projectors. It was great to see them again with their interesting compositions and incredible and versatile voices. We didn’t stick around too long because we all needed to stock up on some food and water before spending some time at the Sahara tent.

Now, let’s take a minute to talk about the Sahara tent. If you recall from my Lollapalooza recaps, I spent a lot of time at Perry’s last summer. Perry’s, which was expanded last year and I believe is being expanded again this year, is the DJ section of Lollapalooza. It’s all open air and under the trees, and the crowd forms a sort of semi circle around the DJs, and there’s always some great dance music going on. It’s the perfect place to spend some time when there isn’t really another act going on that you want to see.

The Sahara tent is the same concept, only it is in a humongous tent which has a crazy light setup both on stage and throughout the whole ceiling. I described it on twitter today as Perry’s times a million on crack. Just unreal. I can’t wait to get this video put together next week so I can show some of the radness that goes on there.

After devouring a delicious falafel wrap and some garlic fries, we headed into the Sahara tent to catch the rest of Kaskade’s set. It was fun beyond belief and we had such a great time that we decided to stay for David Guetta, who, as you may recall, I had a ticket to see in Rio last summer before we unexpectedly cancelled the trip. So it was sort of fate that I was going to see him on this night. And wow, did he deliver. Some of the hotter drops that I can remember were Imogen Heap’s “Hide and Seek” (she seems to be a positive recurring theme this weekend) and with Major Lazer performing at the same time next door in the Mojave tent, Guetta paid tribute dropping in “Pon de Floor” at one point.

On the walk back to the other stages, I noticed the large string of balloons again in the air that stretched from basically one end of the fest to another, blowing violently in the wind, which had changed in color from white the day before to purple today. They were also flying free in the morning and tied down in the evenings, or so I thought. I’d been wanting to check out the pot of gold at the end of the balloon rainbow, basically to see how this thing was held in place without going away. And today I found out. There is a human being who literally holds this GIANT string of balloons down all day. I was so shocked that I had to take a picture. And all the while he’s just chatting up a storm with whoever’s around, as if it’s no big deal. But believe me, it’s a big deal, and crazy.

So, I skipped Hot Chip, MGMT, and Faith No More, but it was all worth it. We danced our behinds off for hours between Kaskade and Guetta, but the best part was, Tiesto was still to come. We made it back to the main stage in time to catch the end of Muse’s set, which I wasn’t planning on since I’d just seen them, so that was a nice added bonus. Then, like salmon swimming upstream to fertilize their eggs, we fought the crowd leaving Muse to see just how close we could get for Tiesto’s night-closing set. Amazingly, we ended up nearly dead center, about 20 rows back. This is not that impressive unless you’ve been to a night-closing set at a main stage of a major music festival. I’ve never even been remotely that close before in a similar scenario, so I was pretty pumped.

After the 40 minute wait between sets, it finally began. I couldn’t believe that the day had turned into a straight up electronic music festival, and had not planned on that at any point throughout the day, but as Tiesto killed it over and over again (man, those lights/lasers were intense!), I was glad that this was the way the day had turned out. Some of my favorites were his take on Editors “Papillon”, a song I didn’t particularly care for when it first came out but that I loved on this night. The other songs I recognized that found their way into the mix were Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ “Heads Will Roll” as well as “Feel it in my Bones” and Tiesto’s Adagio for Strings remix, which he introduced by saying “Here’s the old Tiesto classic of the night”, or something like that. Once energy had reached a fever pitch, the set ended with a Flaminglipsian touch, with gobs upon gobs of confetti being thrown into the crowd. As we walked out of the show, the ground was pretty much completely covered.

Then we left the parking lot with no wait, again driving over the fence that someone had knocked down the day before, and proceeded to blare fantastic 80s tunes the whole way home. A great ending to a great day and night.

So, the moral of the story is, sometimes music fests turn out exactly the opposite of how you expected them to, and sometimes that’s for the best. Looking forward to day 3, which features some of my favorites. Plus I get to see my friend Sarah spin at 3:45 in the green zone area, or whatever it’s called, between Mojave and Sahara.

I probably forgot a lot, but I’m glad I’ve been able to get down in writing whatever I can remember from each day, and I hope you’re enjoying it too. How I wish, how I wish you were here.

Again, sorry for the lack of pics, but I promise you I will make up for it with my video, if I can figure out how to use iMovie once this fest is over. My goal is to get a full glimpse of all aspects of the fest, and I think I’ve done a decent job at capturing lots thus far. But I really really like the picture below of the girl on the guys shoulders. So I’ve got that going.