Coachella Festival
April 29, 2007
Indio, CA
In the buzz surrounding last week’s announcement of the 2011 Coachella lineup, I thought it would be appropriate to dedicate this installment of Ticket Stub Tuesday to my first ever experience at the famous festival in the desert. It took me awhile to confirm that 2007 was indeed my first Coachella trip. I thought for sure it had been earlier, that I had been more often, and that I couldn’t have waited 8 years to get with the program. Then I remembered why I never made it out to Indio until 2007 and the circumstances that made it an event I wouldn’t miss for the world.
When you work in baseball, the little color coded schedule on your fridge or in your wallet becomes the blueprint for your summer. Darkly shaded boxes are dates you won’t be doing anything outside the ballpark. Unfortunately for Coachella, it falls square in the middle of the first month of baseball season and in my case, the Minor League scheduling gods apparently don’t like good music. Nearly every year since I started my career in sports in 2002, Coachella landed on the weekend of a homestand.
In 2007 though, it didn’t matter that Coachella fell during a stretch of home games. Ending what felt like years of rumors, it was announced that a reunited Rage Against the Machine would headline Sunday night. After working almost 300 straight games, it would be the first home date I’d miss in my career. Aside from being one of my favorite bands growing up, I was lucky enough to see some of Rage’s biggest shows back in the day- the most noteworthy being their final show before unexpectedly breaking up in 2000. Seeing that my RATM partner in crime K.C. and I saw their final show, we had to be there when they reunited.
