Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival

Overview

The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, commonly referred to as Coachella, is an annual music and arts festival which takes place at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California, which is best known for its music performances by aritsts from a variety of genres, including rock, indie, hip hop and EDM.

Background

In early November 1993, the grunge rock band Pearl Jam performed a concert at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California, which established the location as a concert venue. On October 9th, 1999, the first Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival was held at the polo club, featuring the artists Beck, Tool, Chemical Brothers, Morrissey and Rage Against the Machine as headliners. After a brief hiatus in 2000, the event returned as an annual single-day festival in April 2001. In 2002, Coachella became a two-day event, which expanded to three days in 2007. In 2012, a second weekend was added to the schedule.

Developments

Online Presence

On February 6th, 2009, the /r/Coachella^[1] subreddit was launched, which gathered upwards of 19,200 subscribers. On April 19th, 2010, YouTuber StankShag uploaded footage of an inebriated man having difficulty putting his sandals on at the festival, which gathered upwards of 7.6 million views and 4,300 comments over the next seven years (shown below, left). On April 23rd, 2013, Jimmy Kimmel Live uploaded a Lie Witness News segment to their official YouTube channel, in which various Coachella attendees were asked about their feelings toward non-existent bands (shown below, right). Within four years, the video gained over 17 million views and 8,700 comments.

Philip Anschutz Controversy

In early 2017, after the year’s Coachella lineup was announced, Afropunk reported that the owner of the festival, Philip Anschutz, was a climate change-denying conservative who had donated large sums of money to anti-LGBT groups.^[3] This inspired the creation of poster parodies that lampooned the festival’s tie to Anschutz.

Related Memes

Coachella Fashion

Image macros mocking the hippy-style fashions associated with women attending the festival, most notably including flower crowns, frequently circulate across various social media platforms (shown below).

Coachella Lineup Poster Parodies

Coachella Lineup Poster Parodies are photoshopped variations of the promotional lineup posters for the Coachella festival.

Tupac Hologram

Tupac Hologram is a Pepper’s ghost optical illusion of the deceased rapper Tupac Amaru Shakur that premiered during a performance at the 2012 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. Although the event was widely reported as a hologram projection, it was actually created using similar technology to that of the Japanese virtual pop star Hatsune Miku.

Jumping Alex

Jumping Alex is a photoshop meme featuring a photo of the Arctic Monkeys guitarist, songwriter and vocalist Alexander David Turner jumping on stage in mid-air at the 2012 Coachella festival. The images are typically edited to make it appear as if Turner is jumping in a variety humorous contexts.

Coachella Kid

Coachella Kid is the nickname of a young boy who was filmed enthusiastically rapping at the 2017 Coachella festival (shown below). On April 18th, a collection of Coachella Kid videos were published on BuzzFeed.^[2]

Search Interest

External References