Stic-of-the-Week: Coachella it's a wrap!

Jay-Z, Taken by: Mark Kobe

Three days of music, fashion, and sunshine in Indio, CA. Nothing is quite like Coachella, a music festival surrounded by mountains, desert, and palm trees.

Day 1:

LCD Soundsystem, Taken by: Mark Kobe

Jay-Z, Taken by: Mark Kobe

We arrive at LAX from Chicago and make the long traffic laden drive down to Coachella. Ticket, check, cute, trendy outfit, check. We make our way through the excited, drunk line of music lovers to get our wristband. We managed to catch LCD Soundsystem, Vampire Weekend, Echo & the Bunnymen, and the much talked about Jay-Z performance. This was the first time I've seen LCD Soundsystem, they really impressed me with how they got the audience enthused. Lead singer James Murphy had all white on and seemed to have endless stories between songs. Then we ran over to see Vampire Weekend, which have been getting more hype since their latest album was released. They played songs from the new Contra CD, along with some from the first record. I wasn’t overly impressed by their performance since this was the third time seeing them. I’m not sure if they were sun struck or what? Jay-Z opened up with Empire State on Mind and proceeded to rap some of his older stuff from the Vol.2…Hard Knock Life, which I don’t think I’ve listened to that CD since my freshman year of high school so it got me really excited! Then to conclude things his wife Beyonce made a surprise visit it to the stage to sing the duet "Forever Young".

Muse, Taken by: Mark Kobe

Day 2:

We make our drive over from Palm Springs to Indio. We started the day off with The Temper Trap, Band of Skulls, Tokyo Police Club, The xx, Dirty Projectors, Hot Chip, MGMT and end the night with Muse. My favorite performances that day were The xx, Hot Chip, and MGMT. The xx put on an amazing performance; it was so soothing, it almost put us in a daze (in a good way). The xx was contrasted with the dance-beats of Hot Chip, who were amazing live, rousing everyone to dance and sing through the entire performance. The crowd at MGMT was filled with eager fans that knew most of the songs and were singing along to their electric pop music.

MGMT, Taken by: Mark Kobe

Day 3:

I never felt so tired, but still we make our way over to Indio. We caught up with Matt & Kim, Julian Casablancas, Spoon, Phoenix, Pavement, and Little Boots. Little Boots impressed me the most, she was simply amazing! Her tunes, like "The Remedy", make you just want to dance the night away and grind up on people around you. Matt & Kim were great too and kept bringing up the most random things between songs, like how Kim needed to get a wax so she could wear her short jean shorts as the crowd cheered on.