In my month in review posts, I generally share a combination of the restaurants, bars, and activities I have experienced in the past thirty days. October in Review is a bit outside the norm because the month itself was. I spent the past four weeks doing essentially nothing except working, sleeping and attending music festivals. On repeat.
A word of warning, if you are not a huge fan of live music and festivals, you might want to skip the text of this post. I’m sharing two straight weekends of amazing, once in a lifetime festival experiences that might not be everyone’s cup of tea. To those of you whose hearts beat to the same musical drum as mine, this one is for you.
A Desert Trip sunset.
If you’re a long time reader (who am I kidding, only my mom was reading my blog back then), you might remember that my husband and I traveled to Pittsburgh for a whirlwind of a 36-hour trip last June to see The Rolling Stones on their Zip Code Tour. We took that trip after our experience at the San Diego stop of the Zip Code Tour left something to be desired – specifically the acoustics in Petco Park are atrocious. We wanted a redo and were adamant about getting one because we assumed that The Rolling Stones couldn’t possibly have too many more classic performances in them.
If you are a not so long time reader, you might remember that in May of this year we saw The Who twice after attending one show and feeling that just one epic Who experience wouldn’t suffice. We were actually also considering flying from Paris to Sheffield, England to catch them again when we were overseas in September. That concert got canceled last minute and, alas, we missed out on seeing them for the third time this year.
The Who circa 1973 as featured in the Desert Trip photography exhibit.
I’m including this backstory to demonstrate that my husband and I are BIG fans of classic acts and make it a point to see them as often as we can. I have major regrets over not catching a few of my favorite bands before one or multiple band members died and have vowed to never let that happen again. Needless to say, when Desert Trip 2016 a.k.a. “Oldchella” was announced, we were 100% on board with purchasing tickets and attending.
Desert Trip 2016 began as a single weekend three-day festival in Indio, California at the same location where Coachella is held each year. From the start, it was billed as a music festival for the baby boomer generation, the dream Woodstock lineup, if you will. With a lineup of Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Neil Young, Paul McCartney, The Who, and Roger Waters, the term epic doesn’t come close to describing it.
The epic lineup.
As avid Coachella attendees, we assumed that passes would hit the market at a similar price point. How wrong we were. Passes for Weekend 1 of Desert Trip sold out immediately, predominately to scalpers who then put them back on the market at a marked up rate of 100+%. The prices were simply too high and we decided that it didn’t make financial sense for us to try to go. Weekend 2 was added on shortly thereafter, with tickets going at similarly asinine rates and, again, we opted out of attending.
Fast forward to the first weekend of October when the two of us happened to check StubHub and found two Weekend 2 passes (in the grandstands in VIP, mind you) for 13% of the original price. You read that right, 13% of the original price. We snapped them up and happily looked ahead to our Weekend 2 experience.
David Montgomery shots of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards from the Sticky Fingers days.
I was not able to get off work early enough on Friday of Weekend 1 for us to make it in time to see Dylan or the Stones, so we passed on Day 1, feeling comfortable about the fact that Dylan never quite delivers and that we’d seen the Stones twice already the prior year. When Saturday, Day 2, came we loaded up our car and made the trek out to Indio.
“Bright are the stars that shine, dark is the sky. I know this love of mine will never die.” – And I Love Her
Immediately upon entry, it was clear that our experience was not going to mirror that of Coachella. Beyond the obvious difference in the age of the crowd, everything from the staff working the festival to the front entry lines to the bathrooms equipped with flushing toilets was different.
We breezed through the front entry line (of which there was hardly any), past security (they didn’t even check bags) and skipped our way inside to the craft beer garden (my favorite place at Coachella and Oldchella alike) before finding the friends we spent the rest of the weekend with.
This photo is literally saved on my computer as “Creepy Neil” because Neil Young young looks ridiculously frightening here wearing a pelt that matches this dog.
By the time Neil Young took the stage our group was fed, beered (yes, you could carry alcohol around the festival grounds in the same manner as at Outside Lands) and ready to rock out with some old people. Neil performed for close to an hour and a half against the backdrop of a gorgeous desert sunset as we all explored the grounds, rode the ferris wheel (some of us got kicked off for not properly wearing our seatbelts) and generally marveled at how odd a scene it was. We took it all in as toddlers boogied with grandparents and baby boomers swayed in the desert night, clearly on acid.
Paul McCartney took the stage following Neil Young, giving a performance I had looked forward to for SO LONG. He had been on my list of must-see acts for over a decade but I hadn’t managed to actually catch him prior to this month so that performance was BIG for me. It was everything I hoped it would be and more and we ended the night belting out Beatles songs in unison with thousands of others. I would definitely call the sense of community and connection that radiated through the air transformative.
Warning: Always wear your seatbelt on the Grand Wheel or risk getting kicked off.
Sunday rolled around and my husband and I were basically bouncing up and down with excitement over seeing The Who AGAIN. We knew it would be an epic performance and The Who delivered! They put on such an amazing show! If you haven’t seen them and are at all inclined to, I highly, highly recommend making it happen.
Roger Waters closed out the weekend in a performance that ended up being, though politically charged, by far the best of the bunch. I obviously knew the man was insanely talented, but actually witnessing him live in such a beautiful setting was a much more powerful experience than I anticipated. On that high note, we hopped in our car and headed back to LA.
We finally got home five hours later after sitting in an unmoving traffic hell for over an hour and I got a few precious hours of sleep before heading off to work Monday morning. Suffice it to say that the week between the two festival weekends was ROUGH. By the time Weekend 2 rolled around I honestly wasn’t certain I could handle it. But…
Keith and his best friend, Jack.
I of course rallied and we headed back out to the desert on Friday night, braving hours and hours of rush hour traffic. The big differences in our experience Weekend 2 were that we saw the Stones, used our seats off and on when we weren’t hanging out with friends and attended the gigantic classic rock photography exhibit set up behind the stage (photos from which are interspersed throughout this post).
Now, on to the Stones. In Pittsburgh last year I experienced what I thought to be the best of the best possible Stones experience. The set list was perfection, the amount of energy the band members exhibited was unparalleled, and our seats were amazing. Weekend 2 of Desert Trip topped that experience.
Possibly my favorite play on words, ever.
As it turned out, our seats were ridiculously good, giving us an incredible line of sight to witness the most energetic performance of the two weekends. Jagger hit every. single. note, jumped around with more agility than I would ever be able to muster and even delivered a few songs that they rarely play in concert. I don’t think that particular Stones experience could possibly ever be surpassed.
When Saturday of Weekend 2 came we headed to the festival grounds once again, this time getting there early enough to check out the photography exhibit. The exhibition focused on showcasing the careers and history of the six billed performers/groups and was such a fabulous added element to the festival. It transported me back in time and made me appreciate, even more, what an incredibly special, one in a lifetime experience I was witnessing.
Taking in my favorites, The Who, at the photography exhibit.
Neil Young and Paul McCartney both took the stage, somehow both giving performances that topped the previous weekend. Rihanna even showed up to perform FourFive Seconds with McCartney, much to my elation and the majority of the crowd’s confusion. I think by the time Sir Paul’s last note rang through the desert air the great majority of us present were misty eyed.
Neon trees, quite in the literal sense.
When we headed back to Los Angeles on Saturday night we were exhausted to the point of not fully being able to appreciate what we had just witnessed and experienced. We ultimately did not make it back on Sunday due to my husband’s work schedule and our collective level of fatigue, and I’m actually thankful for that. The two weekends could not have possibly ended on a more beautiful note than they did and, as I become increasingly less tired, I’m able to look back and marvel at how truly magical of an experience we shared together with some of our closest friends.
And to end things, here is a creepy Desert Trip gnome that will haunt your dreams.