I went to Coachella this year and there are no doubt lots of influencers given its proximity to LA. However, as someone who goes to many festivals around the country, the production of the shows, sound quality, and attention to detail in creating an experience is the best I’ve seen from any festival. Also, Blur was NOT a headline and their show was phenomenal. You guys should go next year and experience it yourself.

Blur thinks we forgot how they treated Nardwar.

Massive American Blur fan since Parklife. I love them immensely, but Blur definitely never made even a minor impact in America - partly because American music media just ignored them no matter what they did and partly they refused to tour here with any regularity. (I’ve still never seen them and I’ve been a fan for 30 years). Song 2 is well known, but as a quirky one hit wonder type thing. And even then the Woo Hoo song didn’t make a name for Blur here. Your average American can tell you that Chumbawumba did Tubthumping. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard music fans in America say “Oh that’s by Blur?,” when talking about Song 2. So I see this as a confluence of Blur’s lack of effort in touring America over the years, the dull nature of modern Coachella, the generational issues (The Kinks might have struggled to get a singalong going at Woodstock ‘99), and the general ambivalence to Blur from American media over the decades. I do take heart that if Britpop were to happen today, in our more connected world, more people would’ve heard Blur in their prime over here.

I went to my first Coachella this year after living in the area for most of my life. I've always been a huge music fan, but anxiety kept me from attending for a long time. More recent years I've realized I had been missing something important to me in the form of live shows. Trying to make up for lost time I've been to a great deal of shows and festivals in the last 6-7 years. I avoided my local festival until now because of this narrative/bias that Coachella gets. The talk that it's just the influencer social media people and no one cares about the music turned me off. After attending my first Coachella this year, I also attended my second because I had such a great time I immediately got passes for weekend two. I've been looking for videos of sets to relive some of it, and keep running upon stuff like this with people shitting on the festival. Typically it's people who haven't been in a long time or ever been at all. Granted I haven't been to any fests outside of North America, the crowds/atmosphere stacked up favorably against any of the other festivals or shows I've been to. So many sets were straight up parties. Two of the six days I ended up in early mosh pits at the FIRST set of the day. Sure there are people that care more about their social media posts than the artists, but there's 10s of thousands of other people there for authentic reasons too. Sure there's corporate sponsors there for money, but the focus is a lineup of ARTISTS there for their ART. Unless you're determined to let it bother you, the social media and corporate shit just fades into the background and the enjoyment of the moment and music still shines through. I guess in that sense any festival is what you make of it. I'm there for the music and to let loose, and Coachella provided a top tier environment for that. The stage and sound production across all 10 stages was phenomenal. I met a ton of lovely people and danced my ass off with most of them. Managed to make a diverse path through the lineup and saw a mix of genres everyday. Some artists I knew and was already ecstatic to see, others I hadn't heard of but left as a huge fan. My only regret with Coachella is that I hadn't started going earlier in my life. I had a great time but it's been very deflating to juxtapose that with so much negativity about the festival, especially when that kept me away for so long prior. I will admit that even though weekend 1 reports higher ticket sales, weekend two felt more populated and alive. I missed most of Blur weekend one to watch Jon Batiste(who killed it btw), caught like the last 10mins of Blur and a good bit of that was Damon really rambling about some nonsense, crowd was definitely off but so was the performance by the time I got there. Weekend two I saw the whole set, Blur was electric and the crowd responded in kind, it was a great set imo and way different energy than the previous weekend from both sides. Besides the 10mins of Blur I saw Wk1 and one DJ at 2pm out in the heat Wk2 (not her fault), there wasn't a set I saw that the crowd wasn't having fun and giving the artists and themselves love. I definitely saw plenty of k-holed teens, people tripping in their own world, rolling and sharing love with everyone, or playing beer pong at 9am in camp. I don't really know why I typed all this, I know my essay here is probably moot and I kinda got carried away lol. I get it's a popular thing to shit on Coachella and that stuff gets views/clicks. I just find it Ironic that for so long I deprived myself of something so fucking awesome because I was wary of the social media and corporate soullessness that's often portrayed, when in reality that was itself just social media narrative driven primarily by people who weren't attending or competing brands. I'd love to hear more of the positives about the UK festivals the video posters have attended, rather than shitting on a festival they haven't. Would love to get some UK/EU fests under my belt myself, although I know experiencing a UK/EU fest wouldn't change that I had a great time at Coachella. Build each other up like we want these crowds and artists to. No reason to compare away the fun. If you somehow stumble upon this and are considering going, give yourself the experience once before allowing the narrative behind Coachella dissuade you. Like most of life, it is what you make of it and the kind of energy you put out will be reflected back to you. If you go holding your nose up expecting it to be shit, you'll probably have a shit time. If you go with an open mind and love for music, you may just find it's a really enjoyable time.

Blur sucked. It was a very sad performance.