Coachella 2013 united Brit-pop act Blur and rock acts the Red Hot Chili Peppers

Coachella 2013 united Brit-pop act Blur and rock acts the Red Hot Chili Peppers

Last year the Coachella Area Songs and Artistry Event used technical chicanery to make it look as if Tupac Shakur had been cut back again. So what do you do for an encore to one of pop music’s greatest miracle shows? Coachella planners have converted to rejoined Brit-pop act Cloud and one of L.A.'s longest-running stone functions in the Red Hot Soup Sweet peppers to core its 2013 festival.

Blur will be signed up with by rejoined countrymates the Rock Flowers, stone act the Really Yeah Yeahs, tale Lou Reed, France pop team Arizona and 3 Reznor's How to Eliminate Angels at the top of the invoice for the dual Coachella celebrations, set for the saturdays and sundays of Apr 12 and Apr 19 in the wasteland town of Indio. Other upper-tier performers consist of Moderate Rabbit, a double-dose of Chip Cavern (performing with Grinderman and the Bad Seeds), Yeasayer and Skrillex venture Dog Blood vessels.

Held at the Kingdom Polo Reasons since its 1999 beginning, Coachella has a popularity for introducing a intensely curated collection that joins the spots among  hitmakers, subterranean performers and those on the return pathway, all within an exclusive wasteland establishing that is progressively becoming more resort-like, with elegant choices to go with (at the biggest end of the VIP choices there are $6,500 air-conditioned tents).

The season's collection once again functions a package of expert performers and dearest conspiracy functions, such as the long-awaited come back of the Mailing Assistance, the electro-pop act presenting L.A. electronica manufacturer Jimmy Tamborello and Loss of life Cab for Cutie's Ben Gibbard. The Mailing Assistance launched one record 10 years ago, but has been mostly inactive since.

Other expert functions looking for a Coachella success lap consist of new trend act New Order, alt-act the Aggressive Femmes, pop-punk team the Descendents and the come back of famous regional hip-hop team Jurassic 5. Also showing are Lemon Nation punk stone characters Public Distortions and rap act the Wu-Tang Group, who are showing at Coachella in party of its Twentieth birthday.

For those looking to Coachella as a forecaster of upcoming, the collection is once again curved out with an variety of hype functions. Among the highlights: Crazy Belle’s dapper, tech-savvy mix of Isle lines and studio room shine, the bluesy hip-hop of Children These Days, spirit musician Allen Rock and the relaxing gadgets of Cleanliness Band.


The appeal for the industry is simple. “They pay you lots of money, and there's a large captive audience,” said Laura Ballance, co-founder of North Carolina indie label Merge Records.

Remaining tickets will go on sale Tuesday, Jan. 29, at 10 a.m. via the official Coachella website. The bulk of tickets were sold last May. Those interested in attending the first weekend must also commit to purchasing a shuttle pass. During the May sale, a wristband and a shuttle pass went for $399. Three-day wristbands for the second weekend will start at $349 and VIP options are available for $799 and up.

As in previous years, Goldenvoice will follow its Coachella festival with the country-focused Stagecoach Festival, set for the weekend of April 26. This is the final year of Goldenvoice’s contract with the city of Indio.

Goldenvoice, a subsidiary of AEG Live!, is in the process of seeking a long-term agreement with Indio through 2030, and a decision is expected in February. Residents have through Feb. 11 to express whether they support or oppose the contract extension, which would allow Goldenvoice to stage an additional two festivals in the fall.

The company in 2012 doubled its Coachella crowd by expanding to two weekends, and added a third day to the Stagecoach festival. The aggregate attendance at the desert festivals passed half a million for the first time, reaching 650,000.

The dual Coachellas grossed more than $47 million, according to data from Billboard Boxscore, the highest box office total ever for a festival. The industry trade reported that more than 80,000 passes were sold for the first Coachella weekend in 2012 and about 77,000 were sold for the second.

The festival’s popularity is such that the act of simply announcing the lineup has become an event unto itself. With an audience already committed to attending long before the lineup is revealed, pre-Coachella questions have shifted.


For instance, it’s no longer a mystery as to whether the event will sell out (Coachella has sold out three years running), but rather whom festival-goers will be seeing. It counts as news, for instance, when an artist releases tour dates with a not-so conspicuous hole around the Coachella weekends. Such was the case with the mysteriously moody Bat for Lashes and the finely tuned pop of Grizzly Bear.

Mock Coachella posters have long been an annual ritual – some relatively accurate, and some touting an all “hologram” lineup – and this year the Coachella message boards even birthed a fake news story. This week a hoax article that was said to have originated from this newspaper's website was posted and picked up by other media outlets.

For weeks prior to the announcement it was rumored Coachella would be among the stops on the Rolling Stones’ 50th anniversary trek. Speculation began in mid-December when a purported screenshot from the Rolling Stones smartphone app listed Indio among the band’s dates. When the official Coachella Facebook page posted what appeared to be a stone on the Empire Polo Grounds, it was taken as a not-so-subtle hint from promoters that the Glimmer Twins were bound for the Colorado Desert in April.

But it wasn’t to be. Still, Coachella will be relying on overseas artists to carry its fest. The gleaming Parisian pop band Phoenix, fest veterans, will return in a headlining slot anchoring Coachella's Saturday evenings, and the opening nights will rely on British co-headliners the Stone Roses and Blur.

Coachella will mark the first U.S. performance by Blur since the band reunited for 2009 shows at London's Hyde Park. Blur leader Damon Albarn has appeared as a Coachella headliner with his other band Gorillaz, but it was Blur that throughout the ‘90s created the kind of genre-blurring catalog that set the stage for the anything-goes, multiday feel of destination events like Coachella, Outside Lands in San Francisco, and Lollapalooza in Chicago.

The Stone Roses will also be making their first U.S. appearance since they reunited.

Coachella is considered the start of the annual summer festival season and has positioned itself as one of the premier music events in the country. But the festival market is a crowded one. This week New York City’s June Governor’s Ball revealed a lineup that includes much Coachella overlap, including Grizzly Bear, the xx, the Lumineers, Of Monsters and Men and Local Natives.

Coachella launched in October 1999 and has been staged in the spring annually since 2001. In 2007, it was joined by Stagecoach.