Given the general state of the economy, these are hardly the best of times. But when you take a close look at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Annual Festival, which was held in Indio, CA over two consecutive weekends in mid-April, it’s pretty obvious that they aren’t the worst of times, either.
Goldenvoice, the AEG-owned Coachella organizer, sold 150,000 general admission tickets for this year’s festival, arranged in a new double-weekend festival format, with one pass good for one weekend. The price: $285 (about $315 with fees). Most were sold within hours of when they became available.
The draw: Five stages, four DJ domes, more than a dozen art installations, all featuring an astonishing array of fresh and classic talent ensconced in the latest visual technology, culminating in the widely-reported 3D facsimile of the late Tupac Shakur performing with Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, Eminem, 50 Cent and Wiz Khalifa. (That much-discussed finale was provided courtesy of the wizards at AV Concepts and Digital Domain Media Group.)
Other big (if somewhat quirky) acts in the 2012 lineup included The Black Keys, Radiohead, Arctic Monkeys, The Shins, Bon Iver, Pulp, Florence + the Machine, Beirut, At The Drive In, Cat Power, Madness, Mazzy Star, Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, Swedish House Mafia, Afrojack, Kaskade, Avici, AWOLnation, the Buzzcocks, David Guetta, Feist, Justice, the Kaiser Chiefs, Kasabian, M83, Refused, Miike Snow, Squeeze, The Growlers, The Hives, The Horrors, The Rapture and tUnE-yArDs.
Ice, Wind and Fire
Coachella 2012 will also be remembered as best of weather/worst of weather, depending on if you like it chilly (the first weekend, with temps dropping to 40° F) or hot (the second, with Saturday’s 105° high just shy of the 107° record set back in 1958).
Neither the economic or meteorological climate seemed to put a damper on the enthusiasm among attendees, however, for the double-weekend festival itself. Advanced ticket sales for Coachella 2013 were offered the morning of May 17, and they, too, sold out within hours — despite a significant price hike, and no information about who would be performing. General admission and VIP weekend passes for next year’s double-weekend format, mirroring 2012, were priced at $349 and $799, respectively. (If you missed out, more passes should be available in January 2013.)
Solid Staging Support
Along with the eclectic assortment of performers (living and deceased), Coachella 2012’s stages were supported by crews and gear from Accurate Staging, All Access Staging & Productions, Brown United, PRG, Staging Dimensions and Stage-Tech Productions, among others. The weather-related stage collapses of 2011 were top-of-mind the first weekend, with 25 mph winds accompanying the cooler-than-usual weather.
“We know what this roof is capable of withstanding, and we have no hesitation of bringing things down if the weather requires it,” said Bobby Allen, production manager at PRG, of the main stage. PRG provided more lighting fixtures at the festival than any other company.
The main stage, featuring Brown United’s massive steel-legged “Optimus Brown” grid, held steady through the winds, but as a precaution, two massive LED screens on stage left and right had to be motored down to the deck for one of the windier afternoons, and lighting rigs were raised up to minimize swinging momentum.
The Main Stage
The main stage featured headliners The Black Keys (joined by John Fogerty on the second weekend to pay tribute to Levon Helm from The Band, who died earlier that week), Radiohead (accompanied by a Kinesys-controlled dynamic array of a dozen 2-by-2-meter video screens), Swedish House Mafia, and the Pepper’s Ghost likeness of Tupac Shakur.
PRG’s lighting rig included 48 Vari*Lite VL3000 Spots, 54 VL3500 Wash fixtures, 24 1400W Bad Boy luminaires and 24 Clay Paky Sharpy fixtures, along with 30 James Thomas Engineering 8-lite PAR 36 8-lites, 28 Altman MR 16 Xrays and 21 Wybron 8-lite Coloram IIs, among other gear.
To conjure Tupac Shakur back for two songs, “Hail Mary” and “2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted,” the main stage featured Digital Domain’s painstaking 3D imagery beamed down upon a reflective clear Mylar surface on the deck of the stage. Held at a 45 degree angle by its truss frame toward the downstage fans, the illusion was part of a larger live-wire urban set that included 12-foot triangular truss and more than 100 feet of LED tape, with set support from tour carpenters Jesus Arroyo and Zack Eastland.
The Outdoor Theatre
Visions Lighting provided all the basic ingredients for the Outdoor Theatre this year (including the 65-by-45-by-44-foot high roofing structure and the 108-by-48-by-5-foot-high stage, plus the lighting package). Along with a larger-size stage, this year’s enhancements included extra loading dock space and also an expansion in concrete anchor and guy wire reinforcement — helping ensure that there would be no issues with the first weekend’s strong winds. Refused, Mazzy Star, Madness, Miike Snow, Girl Talk, Florence + the Machine and The Weeknd all performed.
Visions’ crew included president Todd Roberts, LD and programmer Brandon Dunning, master electrician Colin Johnson, head rigger Richard Prather and also Canin Campbell, Shaun Grout and Derrick Seibert. The rig included 80 feet of circular truss, cut into four 20-foot quarters. Lighting gear included 24 Vari*Lite VL3000 Spots, 24 VL3500 Washes, 16 Elation Platinum Beam 5Rs, 24 Elation Opti-Tri Pars, 18 Atomic 3000 strobes and assorted single, 4-lite and 8-lite Molefays.
Three Tent Stages
Stage-Tech Productions, Accurate Staging, and All Access Staging & Productions provided the three tent stages — respectively, the Gobi, Mojave, and Sahara performance spaces.
RK Diversified Entertainment lit the Gobi tent and provided up-lights at the base of a large swath of palm trees surrounding the venue. They also provided LEDs for the small tent promoting the Beats by Dre line of $400 headphones. Attendees could chill on a 50-foot-diameter circular couch (from All Access) in the tent’s red-bathed space and watch the performers on the main stage on HD screens, listening through the pricey headsets.
Within the Gobi tent, RKDE’s LED-intensive rig included GLP Volkslicht Zooms and Chauvet fixtures ranging from Q-Wash 560s to COLORado 2 Tours, LED Pars and Legend 412s, rounded out by Martin MAC 700s and Atomic strobes. “That blend gave the stage a fresh, updated look,” noted RKDE owner/director Ray Woodbury.
The Mojave tent, meanwhile, featured artists ranging from Squeeze (making their Coachella debut) to Wallpaper (returning for the 11th time), also hosting indie artists including Jeff Mangum, acts including Refused and Mazzy Star and M83, Miike Snow, M. Ward and Dawes.
The biggest of the three tent venues, the Sahara tent, had a stand-out set for Avicii, who incorporating a 16-foot-high head-shaped sculpture. It served as a DJ platform with projected animations with moving lips and flashing teeth, synched with the songs.
To help provide lighting for the event grounds, Felix Lighting installed two LumenRadio TX2 RDM transmitters controlling three DMX universes of 20 Syncrolite 7K searchlights and 260 ColorBlaze fixtures from Philips Color Kinetics. Seventeen LumenRadio receivers were placed on remote lightFing towers up to three-quarters of a mile from the control center. Felix president Dave McKinnon credited the system for its ability to work effectively despite the intensively crowded wireless space at the event.
Creative Collaboration
For RKDE’s Ray Woodbury, one of the most memorable aspects of Coachella 2012 was that his daughter, at age 17, was able to run the console for bands without LDs at the Gobi tent. “It was fantastic,” he enthused.
If the spirit of Coachella can be summed up as a swirl of artistry coming to seemingly spontaneous fruition, for those supporting the shows, there’s more of an emphasis on collaboration than competition.
“Competition…that really never comes into play,” Woodbury added. “We all have our jobs to do, and if I could help one of the other vendors with anything, I would. I know they would do the same for me.”
