Road to Coachella: Monica Topping
I vividly remember trying to describe to some visiting Canadian punk-band friends where Humboldt County is located. “Are we close to L.A.?” they asked. “Can we go to Hollywood tomorrow?” It’s so typical of non-locals to have no clear idea of how far removed Humboldt County is from the rest of California—or from the rest of the country, for that matter. It turns out that I also really had no idea until my friend Laura and I made our inaugural trip to Indio, Calif., for the Seventh Annual Coachella Valley Arts and Music Festival at the end of April in 2006.
Coachella started in 1999 as a small festival which focused primarily on modern rock and electronic music genres, as well as large sculpture installations. Beck, Tool, Morrissey, Rage Against the Machine and other on-air mainstays headlined the event, which drew about 25,000 people. Apparently it failed to generate any profit in its first year, and event organizers waited until 2001 to give it another go, with a re-united Jane’s Addiction as the headliner. Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival has grown through the years. In 2005, the radio station I work for, KSLG-FM, gave away tickets to the festival. I wished a couple of my co-workers a good trip as they set out to see Nine Inch Nails, Coldplay, and a pile of other artists who were in regular KSLG rotation.
Scooter rallies and good bands are the only things that can get me in a car for anything more than an eight-hour drive. While Coachella isn’t exactly a mecca for Vespas, the thought of five stages and nearly 100 performances in two days coerced me into a 16-hour drive for a weekend of musical goodness. Coachella in 2006 was home to Tool’s first show in three years. Depeche Mode, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, pop-legend Madonna and countless other smaller acts also performed.
The drive to Coachella meant leaving Eureka in the wee hours of Friday morning. We headed down Highway 101 to Highway 20, then over to I-5 and onto what I had been warned were some of the most congested highways in Southern California. Once the sun started coming up, I pointed out the mountain ranges across Clear Lake. Laura and I discussed some theories I was currently learning in my Color and Design class at College of the Redwoods. We appreciated the naturally occurring complementary colors the best we could before getting to I-5. The flat lands and sagebrush surrounded us for the majority of the drive.
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