Coachella Fest Selling Out

Posted by Sara Churchville Mar 1, 2007

If you haven't bought your ticket to the Coachella Music Festival yet, you might be out of luck. Although the organizers anticipated a banner year for the fest and added a third day, it wasn't enough it seems--the three-day passes were gone three weeks after they went on sale, and one-day tickets for Saturday, April 28 and Sunday, April 29 are also sold out, leaving only Friday's lineup for us latecomers.

Thank Madonna. In a bid to connect with a more,er, tangential (cooler?) fan base, she headlined the festival last year and, some might argue, ruined it. That Madonna would show up to such an MTV-unfriendly event was pretty shocking, at least to me.

After all, Coachella--begun in 1999 as a reaction to the greedy, cynical merchandising debacle that was Woodstock 99 ($5 bottled water?!)--was, inasmuch as the word can possibly have any meaning these days, counter-cultural. It was camping out in the desert near Palm Springs, Calif; it was all very 60s-meets-rave. Water, at least the first year, was free.

But of course Madonna's marketing moves, as they nearly always do, at least in music, paid off. Confessions on a Dance Floor sold 8 million copies and counting worldwide, won the Best Dance/Electronic Album at this year's Grammys, and debuted at number one in 28 countries.

So basically, Coachella has now become the mainstream hot ticket: the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Paul van Dyk, Rage Against the Machine, Willie Nelson (!), Lily Allen, Air and Jose Gonzalez are just a few of the performers those of us without tickets will be missing on Saturday and Sunday.

Here are the bios on each performer from the helpful folks at Coachella. General admission tickets for Friday only are $86 each. The $45 campsite tickets, however, are sold out.