Posted in: Music Festivals by Francis Adams on January 10th, 2012 | 0 Comments
Headlining performers and reunion of bands will mark this year’s highly anticipated Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival at Indio
By Francis Adams.
At the time of writing this post, the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival’s Twitter account – @coachella – had 150,537 followers, a modest number considering the euphoria and the frenzy that has kicked up after the promoter announced the April 2012 lineup for the festival that will feature similar acts over two weekends as compared to last year’s one act.
The annual festival, at Indio, California’s Empire Polo Club, will be held from April 13-15 and April 20-22 and features headlining performers The Black Keys (on April 13 and 20) and Radiohead (on April 14 and 21), followed by Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg (on April 15 and April 22).
In Concert
Known for its reunions, this year’s expanded festival promises the fans the coming together of bands they would have reckoned will never regroup. Billboard, one of the world’s topmost publications, said on its website that Coachella’s allure will see a number of acts come out of their shadows. (See: http://bit.ly/xdZs3O ). The OCweekly blog though focused on the reunion of Refused, quoting the band’s lead singer Dennis Lyxzén’s comment, made two years ago, to Excite, in which he had said that Refused did not do justice to “The shape of punk to come” when it came out all tangled up, adding that they will reunite and do it right, for the band’s followers as well as for themselves. And what better place to stand up to that promise than at Coachella! (See: http://bit.ly/A4205q ).
Tickets please!
Announcing this year’s lineup, the huffingtonpost blog “Coachella 2012 Lineup Announced: The Black Keys, Radiohead, Dr. Dre & Snoop Dogg Headlining (PHOTOS)” ( http://huff.to/yoltx9 ) while hoping that tickets for the festival will be easier to obtain this year, said that coachella.com seemed to be buried under the enormous weight of its own success, a fact also highlighted by an LATimes blog titled “Coachella 2012: Remaining $285 passes to go on sale Friday” (See: http://lat.ms/zExW2r ).
Other blogs, led by the NYTimes artsbeat blog chose to concentrate more on the lineup marking the festival ( http://nyti.ms/zD7h0c ).
The more ardent fans of the festival should know that Coachella’s status was threatened when neighboring city La Quinta’s city council objected to the hosting of the festival at Indio citing excess noise and pollution trouble from the festival’s extension to two weekends. It took a bunch of protestors on foot and another on the Facebook page “Support Coachella Music and Arts Fest” along with a new agreement presented by promoter Goldenvoice to persuade officials at La Quinta to back down. (See: http://bit.ly/rixQwE )
This year’s line up:
