Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival

Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival (commonly known as Coachella, Coachellafest or Coachella Festival) is an annual three-day music and arts festival, organized by Goldenvoice (a subsidiary of AEG Live) and held at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California, in the Inland Empire's Coachella Valley. The event features many genres of music, including rock, indie, hip hop and electronic music as well as large sculptural art. The event has several stages/tents set-up throughout the grounds, each playing live music continuously. The main stages are: Coachella Stage, Outdoor Theatre, Gobi Tent, Mojave Tent, and the Sahara Tent (2006 also saw the addition of a smaller Oasis Dome).
On May 31, 2011, Goldenvoice announced that the festival will be held over two separate weekends, starting in 2012. The festival is renowned for its cutting edge lineup, showcasing many of the top and up-and-coming acts in music as well as reunions. Notable performers include Prince, Radiohead, Dr. Dre, Oasis, Daft Punk, Roger Waters, Madonna, The Cure, Kanye West, At the Drive-In, The Black Keys, Rage Against The Machine, Serj Tankian, Gorillaz, Bjork, Nine Inch Nails, The Strokes, The Chemical Brothers, Pavement, The White Stripes, Jay-Z, The Prodigy, and the Beastie Boys. The Coachella Music Festival has a desert setting (the city of Indio is a part of the California Desert), with daytime temperatures frequently rising to over 110 °F (43 °C).


Each year, the festival also features interesting installation art and sculptures. Most of the pieces are interactive, and provide entertainment and eye candy for attendees walking throughout the Polo grounds. Some of the works were initially created for the Burning Man festival. In contrast to the largely non-repeating roster of musical artists represented at the festival, a few of the visual artists, such as Hotshot the Robot, Robochrist Industries, the Tesla Coil (Cauac), Cyclecide, and The Do LaB, along side avant-garde performance troupe Lucent Dossier Experience, have appeared during several consecutive years at Coachella. Another installation to the art of Coachella includes the limited edition posters produced by poster artist Emek. Emek started designing posters for the festival in 2007 and has continued to do so each year since. Many of the 2011 installations and sculptures were done by The Creator's Project, co founder, Jimmy Wales. They were in charge of the main stage's setup, as well as Animal Collective's light show, and Arcade Fire's beach balloon drop.
On May 31, 2011, Goldenvoice announced that the festival will be held over two weekends starting in 2012.
Coachella 2012 tickets went on sale at on January 13, 2012 at 10am and were sold out by 1pm PST. During Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg's performance in the 2012 show, a hologram of deceased rapper Tupac Shakur came up from under the stage and began performing "Hail Mary" and "2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted". Following the performance, the hologram disappeared. Shakur's mother Afeni, said the next day that she was thrilled with the performance. Dr. Dre had asked her permission to use a hologram of her son. A hologram of another deceased rapper, Nate Dogg, was planned but Dr. Dre decided against it. Eminem, 50 Cent, Kendrick Lamar, Wiz Khalifa, Warren G, and Kurupt made unscheduled guest appearances. The 2012 edition also featured Pulp, Refused, At the Drive-In, Radiohead, The Black Keys, The Hives, Jeff Mangum, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Arctic Monkeys, Miike Snow, Afrojack, Gotye, Justice, Flying Lotus, St. Vincent, M83, Bon Iver, Kaiser Chiefs, The Shins, Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, Squeeze, Madness, awolnation, Fitz and the Tantrums, Santigold, Band of Skulls, A$AP Rocky, Childish Gambino, and The Weeknd.


Camping


In 2003 Coachella started to include tent camping as an option for staying at the festival. The campground site is on an adjacent polo field next to the venue grounds. The campground has its own separate festival entrance on the southside of the venue. Goldenvoice/AEG Live contracted out Kevin Lyman, owner/promoter of Warped Tour, Taste of Chaos, and Mayhem festivals, to coordinate and run the Campgrounds.Lyman's campground employees are usually his friends or employees from the Production Office of his tours.Lyman also has a series of interns come out from Citrus College, they are paid a minimal day rate and given free camping for helping work the grounds. The first year saw camping attendance around 10,000. For the 2007 festival, it was reported that camping attendance was in upwards of 17,000. The campground includes a karaoke lounge, general store, and shower trucks (semi trucks with around 6 showers in each trailer). Kevin Lyman was also contracted out to do the Stagecoach Festival camping, which is usually the weekend succeeding Coachella. 2010 introduced many new features to camping such as re-entry from the campsite to the festival grounds, parking your car next to your tent and a limited number of recreational vehicle camping spots.

Sustainability


The Coachella festival tries to reduce its carbon footprint on the environment every year which involves not just employees but also attendees. The festival highly promotes carpooling for its attendees which include rewards for people who participate. Attendees who choose to carpool with four or more people in one car and have the word "carpoolchella" displayed somewhere on their car have a chance to be selected by a secret spotter to win VIP tickets/pass for life for everyone in the car. In 2007 Coachella teamed up with Global Inheritance to start a 10 for 1 recycling program, in which anyone who brings ten empty water bottles will be given a fresh new water bottle for free. In 2009 the festival introduced ten dollar refillable water bottles of which purchasers would get free refills at a number of refill stations inside the festival and within the campgrounds.