With the lineup announced for this year's Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival held in Indio, CA, one is torn between financial prudence and musical reward.
The general admission for the three day festival starts at $375 (before service charges). Many are seeing money as no object, since the first weekend already sold out. Tickets for the second (which has an identical line-up as the first, the only discernible difference is it's a week later, and probably hotter) are available to the general public on their website Friday at 1 p.m. South Florida time. But it just has oh, such potential.
Here are five reasons why you might skip paying your student loans this month and head West for Coachella.
1. To See Bands at the Top of Their Game
Whatever your preference for music, Coachella has a popular headliner for you. Skrillex will satisfy the EDM fans. Lorde and Pharell Williams will satisfy the pop tarts. The Knife is even on there. Arcade Fire, currently the reigning biggest band in the world, will put a punctuation mark on the weekend festivities, as they are the last band to go on headlining Sunday night.
2. Revisit Some Old Favorites
Coachella has always paid top dollar to encourage bands to reunite -- from Jane's Addiction in 2001 to The Pixies in 2004 and Pavement in 2010. This year is no different as Neutral Milk Hotel, the Replacements, and the Afghan Whigs have all found reasons to put the band back together. The biggest news of all is Friday night's headliner, Outkast, the Atlanta rap duo will play their first show together in close to a decade. Other old timers of note include Superchunk, the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Fishbone, Nas, and Bryan Ferry.
3. Find Your New Favorite Band
One of the highlights of a festival is being turned on to a new favorite band. This festival gives you a chance to see what all the buzz is about with acts like Chvrches, HAIM, and countless others them big city blogs have been raving about.
4. Eclecticism
Where else can you go from the heavy metal of Motorhead to the crooning of Lana Del Rey to the nineties nostalgia of Beck and Oasis's Liam Gallagher's new band Beady Eye? And that's just Sunday.
5. Breathe in the Desert Air
Many of the acts will be coming to South Florida in the near future. MGMT and Empire of the Sun will be playing Ultra Music Festival this year, for instance. Queens of the Stone Age and Disclosure will be performing at the Fillmore this winter, and the 1975 will be at Culture Room in May. But to hear their music under the clear desert sky, lit up by the milky way, is a whole new experience. And an excuse to get out of Dodge.
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