Coachella Festival To Be Webcasted for All Three Days – 4/27 – 4/30

Organizers of Coachella, the popular annual music festival in the desert east of San Diego, have synced up with a large telephone company to provide live, continuous webcast from Coachella Central featuring some of the most talented and popular artists in indie and alternative music.

Coachella has become in recent years the indie rock scene’s answer to Lollapoloza, and indie fans come from across the globe to attend the festival.

Three-day passes for this year’s event sold out in a matter of days and single day passes for the weekend sold out almost as quickly. Camp site passes are also sold out, but of course, there are many tickets still for sale on eBay.

For all of the indie rock fans who cannot make it to the festival, the webcast should help fill in some of the gap, even though it is nothing like being there – of course.

Let’s just hope that the technicians and other folks have the server load capacity to allow tens of thousands, maybe hundreds, of thousand of fans around the world hear great indie and alternative artists like:

The Arcade Fire

Rage Against The Machine

Bjork

Arctic Monkeys

Interpol

Sonic Youth

Red Hot Chilli Peppers

The Kooks

Tapes n Tapes

!!!

Rufus Wainwright

Air

Blonde Redhead

New Pornographers

The Decemberists

See the entire line-up of artists scheduled to play at Coachella

While some fans, like me, would like Coachella to lighten up a little more like the Burning Man festival, it seems unlikely to happen.

In fact, there is a direct contradiction of course with the idealism of what indie music should be and the fact the Coachella is a very capitalistic, corporate sponsored and highly secured event.

The latter being the most annoying to fans nowadays, but since the Woodstock reunion disaster in 1998, 9/11 and the Virginia Tech shootings, fans who already have their tickets to Coachella (they are still also available on eBay, but of course, you’ll pay more), their campsite passes or area accommodations (there are basically no motel or hotel rooms available for the festival weekend in the area with a few exceptions of rooms going for $500 and up a night at two and three-star accommodations).

Coachella Tickets Go On Sale Today, Get Yours Before They Sell-Out

For many who have waited a good long time for the Coachella tickets to go on sale, the day is finally here. Tickets went on sale this morning via Ticketmaster, online and by phone.
No official count yet on how many tickets were sold, but with a line-up like they have for the three-day festival, you can bet these tickets will go fast. (here is a promo code on the tickets page that allows you a one year ‘free’ subscription to Spin magazine when you purchase the three-day pass).
Here are some friendly reminders to think about before you throw down $250 for the tickets. If you are only planning on going for one day, single day passes are $85 a pop and usually sell out faster than the three-day tickets.

If you are planning to camp on the site near the festival entrance, there is an additional $45 per day camping fee, plus all kinds of restrictions and regulations (this is not Burning Man folks).

Or, if you want to stay at an accommodation near the camp grounds, be ready to dish out (at the least) $200 a night (even for one star motels!!).

Take note that Coachella is not any Woodstock ’69 either. It is a commercial event. So all you hard-core-hate-capitalism folks (yeah!) may want to skip this one, or just listen to the webcast, which we will stream from right here on IRC. You also cannot bring any glass containers, booze and a whole bunch of other things. (Info: See links below for details).

You should be prepared to be searched, and will probably see some people turning around to leave after the security people at the entrance take away their weed and whatever else they think they can smuggle in. The word on the grapevine is that there will be feds at the festival, so be careful and discreet.

Note: Stay Tuned to IRC as we will releasing fresh band and artist profiles of many of the artists that are scheduled to play at the festival.
I’ll also update you on ticket sales, changes and updates. IRC is working on publishing a cool and comprehensive package that will include line-up changes, MP3s, band profiles, news, discussions, video, streaming audio, podcasts and a live web cast from the festival!!! So bookmark IRC with the bookmarklets below and/or subscribe to the IRC RSS feed.
Related Links
Coachella website – Tickets for sale
View the three-day list of bands and artists

The Kooks Add U.S. Tour Dates To Kick-Off at Coachella

The Kooks announced a blitz two-week spring tour of the U.S. that will start with their performance at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival on April 29.

The band’s debut album, Inside In/Inside Out, released on Astralweeks, has been one of the hottest-selling debuts for any indie band in years.

The debut has already gone quadruple platinum in the U.K. and the band is catching on in the U.S. and Europe as one of the hottest new indie rock groups to emerge in recent years.

Make sure to check the IRC website for an exclusive set of live acoustic gigs featuring songs from their debut album and TWO new songs – “Need To Be” and “Miss You”.

The Kooks Tour Dates:

(not all tickets on sale yet. See which are.)

04/29 – Indio, CA – Coachella
04/30 – San Francisco, CA – Slim’s
05/02 – Portland, OR – Doug Fir Lounge
05/03 – Seattle, WA – Crocodile Cafe
05/05 – Chicago, IL – Metro
05/07 – Columbus, OH – The Basement
05/08 – Toronto, ON – Lee’s Palace
05/10 – New York, NY – Irving Plaza
05/12 – Washington DC – 9:30 Club
05/13 – Boston, MA – Paradise Rock Club

Related Links
The KooksTicketmaster (tickets for the gigs just added are not yet for sale)
The Kooks – Official website
The Kooks – Popular fan club – Cool site for fans of the band