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Brit Abroad: What I'm Learning From My First Coachella

Welcome to America, land of fit people in shit fedoras.

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Coachella is far from LA. Like really far. You cannot get a cab from the airport, even if you try really hard, it costs like $300. Instead, you need to search Facebook looking for anyone offering a free ride and show up at a stranger's house on Friday afternoon to find everyone rolling blunts and drinking smoothies. Get in a car with them and get high the whole way, only stopping for In and Out burger. Order your burger "animal style" because that is the cool thing to do, even though you secretly prefer it plain. This way, you'll make a bunch of new friends, get to the site for no more than a bit of gas money, and if you're lucky they'll leave you with a tab of acid as a parting gift.

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No British or European festival will prepare you for Coachella. I guess the only thing you can compare it to is when the character of Stifler's brother is introduced in American Pie presents Band Camp. Having been at SXSW earlier this year, Coachella is pretty much the flip-reverse. There are no musos, nor does it feel like a lot of music industry guys. It's mostly teenagers in various stages of undress, celebrities and weird old people who seem to just be waiting for RHCP to play, even though they're not on the bill.

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The first thing you notice is how fit everyone is. Like physically fit. There are no beer guts, unseemly hair or splodgy BCG scars; everyone is tannned, toned and trimmed so as to be the best specimen of human they can be. This physical fitness is offset by some of the heinous fashion choices ever made. Clothes. Honestly, everyone at this festival looks like they fell through a Matalan backwards. Boys in vest tops with gashy slogans like "The Summer Never Ends". Girls whose outfits are entirely based on that scene where they go to the mall in Thirteen.

A fun game you find yourself playing is hot vs. shit clothes - a battle between whether someone's symmetrically pleasing face is outweighed by their choice in fedoras and gypsy skirts. - The famous people you see are SO ACTUALLY FAMOUS that they make the Glastonbury VIP feel like a week of bad bookings on Celebrity Pointless. Within 10 minutes of arriving I see A$AP Rocky, Jordan Dunn, Jared Leto, Emma Roberts and Ke$ha - her hair triple dyed in blue, yellow and green, presumably in solidarity with the people of Rwanda.

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You need people-watching games and celeb-spots at Coachella because the line-up is pretty patchy. There were strong daytime sets from Haim and Nicolas Jarr but neither felt like an electrifying moment and in between things got sluggish with the likes of Ellie Goulding and Girl Talk on the mainstage. Ellie Goulding has had a lot more hits than you remember her having. This is probably a similar phenomenon to when you bury memories of human atrocity because your body is unable to process them.

Girl Talk is still trying to make mash-ups happen. Mash-ups are like the mating call of the fit-but-fedora-wearing bros and broettes. They all grind up on each other while "Niggas In Paris" plays over the guitar line of "Song 2".

The Knife smashed it, though. Their weird performance, which is 80% performance dance piece, 20% Karin Dreijer Andersson screaming into a microphone like Edward Scissorhands watching some Chris Cunningham videos. The tracks from Silent Shout, now eight years old, sound as weird and spectacular as they ever have.

And then Outkast! Outkast! Their first show in over a decade! The reason we're all here! They open with "Bombs Over Baghdad" and "shit is popping off" - as my newfound bro friends would say. So why does the majority feel so flat? It's certainly a thrill to hear them run through the best of Aquemini and ATLiens with as much technical prowess as they had when they had nothing. But also, it feels like they don't want to be here. They haven't updated their show much in the years they've been out the game and can't really compete with the fan-friendly setlists and big production of other rapper headliners. People leave throughout their set, and the crowd is about a third of the size by the time they're reaching for "The Way You Move" and "Hey Ya". I imagine this was a cool set to watch on Youtube, but with dodgy sound and vibes, it didn't come close to the sorts of fun-production solo sets Big Boi was playing a few years ago.

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If you think British festivals have a tendency to treat punters like cattle, just wait till you come to Coachella. After Outkast, the cab queue was about 5 hours long, with little other way to get off site apart from pre-booked shuttles and Uber, who were surge charging at 4x. After waiting till 4am in a fenced in queue with no toilets, no water and no cabs in site, but plenty of thick dust, we eventually had to give in to high-demand capitalism and pay $300 for a 30 minute Uber ride - the same as it would have cost to get here from LA. Shame on Coachella for treating its patrons like shit and shame on Uber for partnering with the festival, claiming to offer a service, and then quadrupling their prices for no other reason than they know people were desperate. That's a pretty shitty way to run a festival.

Still have that acid though.

Follow Sam on Twitter: @SamWolfson

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