This weekend was supposed to be Coachella and while I had zero plans to actually attend, I would have been streaming several performances right on my couch as I do every year. Some of my friends still go to Coachella but a lot of us have shifted over to Couchella where we either watch together at a homie’s house or just text each other from the confines of our own home during certain performances. Coachella is always a big deal for my crew of friends that are way into music. When that lineup drops every year I’m looking at who I would want to see and who I haven’t seen. I thought the lineup construction this year was amazing. Just look at the headliners… Rage Against the Machine on Friday, Travis Scott on Saturday, and Frank Ocean on Sunday. That is a star-studded lineup of headliners right there! Some of the other acts I was looking forward to see were Flume, FKA Twigs, DaBaby, 21 Savage, Rex Orange County, Disclosure, Swae Lee, Roddy Ricch, BADBADNOTGOOD, Freddie Gibbs & Madlib, Steve Lacy, Big Sean, Lana Del Rey, Ari Lennox, J.I.D., Duck Sauce, TOKIMONSTA, and so many more… Once again, this Coachella’s lineup was outstanding. The festival will still be going on but it has now been pushed back to October. Until then, just look at that lineup below…

I have been to Coachella a total of 3 times. I went the very first year in 1999 when the event was only 2 days. I saw the lineup for the 2nd day and couldn’t miss it for the world. In the late 90’s, I was usually only able to see a lot of groups I liked at one event at raves. And I wasn’t a big raver or anything like that but raves in Cali had hip hop rooms and you could see a lot of good acts there. The vibe at raves were pretty cool too. Sure you had the typical weirdos all drugged out with their ears literally on the big speakers in crazy baggy JNCO jeans with pacifiers in their mouths but you also had crowds of people that LOVED music. Performances were hype! Lollapalooza had been a great festival for years but they didn’t have shows between 1997 - 2003. There were also other smaller festivals but music fans here in the States needed something new. In comes Coachella! For its inaugural year, Day 2 of the event was headlined by Rage Against the Machine and Tool. Do I need to say more? I was going to school at ASU (Arizona State University) at the time so I drove out to Indio, CA with my homie Adam and then met up with a good crew of my San Diego peeps including Clapick, Gabe, Joel, and more. We all crashed in one dusty grimey hotel room 20 miles from Indio. I think we probably had 8 of us sleeping in that room and it didn’t matter at all because we were HYPE for the show. Tool and Rage in concert at the same show? YES!!!!!!!!!!! They both absolutely killed it. And the icing on the cake was seeing Maynard James Keenan from Tool come out and actually sing his vocals with Rage when they performed “Know Your Enemy”. A lot of people don’t know this but Maynard is on Rage’s first album on backup vocals for that song. I wonder how many times they’ve ever performed that song together live?

The next time I went to Coachella was in 2005 with my buddy Holden. I think we met up with some of his friends where we spent the night? The event at that point was still only 2 days and we went to the Saturday show which was headlined by Coldplay. We weren’t big fans of Coldplay but they put on a good show. We also got to see Weezer, The Chemical Brothers, Bloc Party, M83, and others which was cool. But there were 2 acts specifically that we drove all the way out to Indio for. And if you were to look at the lineup, you would have to scroll down and squint your eyes a bit to see the artists that we were hyped for. If you didn’t know, I was and am a HUGE rap and hip hop fan. And in 2005, I had the chance to see 2 rappers I loved at one event so it was worth the price of admission. At the 2005 Coachella we got to see MF Doom and Jean Grae. Doom didn’t have many concerts outside of NYC and was riding a super high after his 2004 album with Madlib under the group name Madvillain. Jean Grae to me is the best female MC of all time. I think Rapsody will finish her career ahead of Jean but Jean Grae was so dope. I have no clue why her name doesn’t get brought up when fans discuss best female emcees but Jean had the wordplay, voice, and swagger. Her album with 9th Wonder, “Jeanius” is a classic. That day at Coachella was a blast. It still gets to me this day that we didn’t stay for Sunday to see Nine Inch Nails, The Prodigy, Black Star, M.I.A., DJ Krush, The Arcade Fire, and Diplo before he became Diplo. Regardless, Holden and I had a great time catching a bunch of live music on a suuuuuuper hot day out in the desert. Here’s the full lineup from 2005’s Coachella.

Now to the good stuff… The last time I went to Coachella was in 2012 and it was one of the best weekends of my entire life. Not only was the lineup amazing but I got to go with almost my whole crew of homies. This included Tony, Liz, George, Alexis, KevBones, Clapick, JerBones and Mickey. We rented an awesome house outside of Indio and when we weren’t at Coachella, we were partying at our spot pre-gaming, post-gaming, and just hanging out as lifelong homies. At the concert, we met up with other friends like Alina, Lindsey, Skittles, Springer, and Furley. Before I get into the event, please just take a few moments and look through this lineup. Don’t just skim though… Actually get into it.

Alright… I’m going to have to go for a day by day breakdown of this 3-day masterpiece. This below is also who I saw (from what I remember!) and with this, I can admit that I missed a lot of good EDM acts that some of my friends were literally running/sprinting through the field to go see. Those performances included Swedish House Mafia, Afrojack, Madeon, David Guetta, Kaskade, Martin Solveig, Sebastian Ingrosso, AVICII, Calvin Harris (I think he brought Rihanna out?), Dada Life, Porter Robinson, and Flux Pavillion. So yeah… I missed alllll of those really good acts and STILL crushed it. Don’t believe me? Here we go…..

2012 Coachella Lineup - Day 1 (Friday)

2:40 - 3:25 - Kendrick Lamar - Yeah… Kendrick as one of the first acts of the day. Nobody really up on him yet. Not a big crew there. Just Kendrick trying to make it as a young rapper from Compton, California.
4:30 - 5:15 - Gary Clark Jr. - DIdn’t really know much about him but he was great in this time slot.
6:30 - 7:20 - Arctic Monkeys - Dope!
8:15 - 9:00 - Frank Ocean - This was when Frank was starting to bubble. Not a crazy following at this point but you knew he was blowing up.
9:45 - 11:00 - The Black Keys - They opened by doing the opening of GZA’s Liquid Swords. Do I need to say more?

2012 Coachella - Day 2 (Saturday)

2:50 - 3:35 - Childish Gambino - Same as Kendrick on Friday… Not a lot of people there but those in attendance knew Gambino was special. He even brought out Kendrick and Danny Brown for a track which is a big hip hop head like myself loved.
6:30 - 7:20 - Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds - I didn’t know much about the group other than Noel Gallagher was from Oasis and Oasis is a big deal. Good show!
7:45 - 8:35 - St. Vincent - My buddy Clapick wanted to see them. Really good energy and a money performance.
9:00 - 9:50 - Flying Lotus - I was a big FlyLo fan and had never seen him before. The visuals were amazing. The video I’m hyperlinking too is footage from my phone. Great audio quality!
11:05 - Radiohead - Radiohead is just one of those groups that you have to see! We stayed for about half of the performance and made our way to go check out. Side note, it was before the Radiohead show where I first started to feel old. Springer, Clapick, and I were asking people for a lighter to spark our J and all of the pillheads looked at us so strangely. I was seeing the shift over to a pill obsessed culture right before my eyes.

2012 Coachella - Day 3 (Sunday)

5:20 - 5:55 - Thundercat - You can always count on Thundercat to put on a good show. I’ve seen him 4 or 5 times and each time I walk away happy.
6:00 - 6:45 - Gaslamp Killer - Me and all of my friends know him as Willie. We grew up in the same town in San Diego and hung out with the same hip hop crews back in the day. To see Willie’s ascension in the music business was amazing. Gaslamp Killer brought a gang of energy to the stage and KILLED it. Even had Gonjasufi out there with him for a bit so San Diego was repping.
6:55 - 7:45 - The Weeknd - Similar to Frank Ocean the day before, this was when The Weeknd was really starting to bubble. His album House of Balloons is a classic and he performed a lot of tracks off of that album. Cool to see him before he became a superstar. Also a trip to see how in love all of the girls were with him.
7:45 - 8:45 - Justice - All of my friends were way into electronic music but I honestly didn’t know much about the genre outside of Daft Punk. Justice changed all of that for me. The energy that those two brought was sooooo sick! Of all of the amazing acts I saw at this Coachella, Justice might have been my favorite. Our whole crew was together all dancing with the entire crowd.
8:25 - 9:15 - Girl Talk - The mashup king. Watched for about 20 minutes and got a good taste before we were on to the next one.
8:20 - 9:10 - Company Flow - I had never seen Company Flow. El-P, Big Juss, and Mr. Len all together performing. The 90’s hip hop fan in me had a huge music boner (pause) seeing this.
9:40 - DJ Shadow - We were front row for Shadow. He had a great set constructed and the show was good but to bail and get a good spot for the headliner of the night. Btw, after we left, DJ Shadow brought out Zach De La Rocha from Rage to perform. Yup…. Could have seen my idol from the front row. The video I linked up here represents the first time I’ve watched the performance. It hurt me too much over the years to even go look at this. Yeah, I’m a weirdo!
9:45 - 10:35 - Florence + The Machine - We only saw a few songs from them as we were passing through to the main stage but we enjoyed what we saw.
10:35 - Dr. Dre & Snoop Dogg - If you’re a Cali kid who grew up in The Chronic and Doggystyle era is there a better way to end a festival? I’ll answer this for you, NO! As a crew, I think we blazed up 17 joints and passed them around because this was one of those events that you knew you wouldn’t forget the rest of your lives. Snoop & Dre covered all of the classics. This is everybody that Dre and Snoop brought out that night.
- 2Pac hologram - Yeah… we were there. Too bad the news leaked out early that it was happening. Still amazing to have seen this. “Hail Mary” was the first song he performed. Well done!
- Kendrick Lamar - K-Dot was now signed with Dre at Aftermath so this made sense… Kung Fu Kenny was blowing up right before our eyes. He performed “The Recipe” with Dre.
- Wiz Khalifa - Snoop & Wiz… Old school, new school. “Young, Wild, and Free” live.
- 50 Cent - Fifty had to be on this. He performed a few songs with Tony Yayo and dropped “In Da Club” which the crowd went wild for.
- Eminem - Em on stage too? Yup! Em was out for a few of his classics as well. “Forgot About Dre” live? Yessssssir!
- Warren G and Kurupt - Ain’t no fun if the homies can’t have none right? Also included a tribute to big Nate Dogg who passed away the year before. RIP Nate!

That was my Coachella experience across 3 years in a very large nutshell! So while I’m bummed I won’t be able to stream Coachella from my couch or with homies this weekend, I’m grateful that I have a lot of past Coachella performances that I can watch on YouTube. Many of you have probably been to a Coachella or two yourselves. What do you think was the best year of Coachella? What are some of your favorite performances from over the years? Hit the comments section and let everybody know!