The Best of Coachella

April 23, 2013, 12:50 a.m.
MADELINE SIDES/The Stanford Daily
MADELINE SIDES/The Stanford Daily

With Coachella 2013 having just come to an end, The Daily sat down with Stanford students in attendance to get the inside scoop on celebrities, tent shortages, lightning machines and, of course, the music.

Best act: “Definitely Major Lazer. They interacted with the crowd a lot; at one point they got into plastic bubbles, like gerbil balls, and just started rolling around in the crowd, trying to run.”—Brielle Butler ’16

Cool new band: “I thought [new wave band] Tonight was really good…it was in the [smaller] Mojave tent but they never drop the music when you expect them to, so the anticipation builds. Overall it was a great concert.”—Pooja Pradhan ’14

Favorite discovered band: “During Jurassic 5’s performance, a bunch of DJs battled for five minutes. It was completely different than the music I listen to. I think that’s the Coachella experience, discovering a band that you never listen to and falling in love.”—Maria Mateen ’13

Most problematic housing situation: “We forgot half of our supplies and didn’t even realize until we got there. We bought a tent, we bought sunscreen, we bought all these chairs—we didn’t even remember to bring the tent. We slept in sleeping bags on the grass.”—Jenna Wisch ’16

Best (or only) celebrity sighting: “[My friend] poked me and was like ‘Do you think that is [Pretty Little Liars actress] Lucy Hale?’ while [Hale] was walking away. I decided that if I didn’t run up to her and ask, I’d regret it for a long, long time, so I kind of ran up to her…She was so sweet. I had my phone out and she was like ‘oh, no, the lighting will be better this way’ so she had us turn around.”—Kierstyn Smith ’16

Most memorable moment: “James Blake was playing a late afternoon show, so the sun was setting and was in his eyes the whole time. It was hot, so security was using those…industrial misters to spray water and cool people off, and the way the sun hit the water, he was playing under a rainbow.”—Tevin Tatro ’15

Coolest thing you saw: “There was a huge lightning machine—you know, the glass balls that you touch your fingers to and lightning comes out? It was like those, but no glass, and huge, and so the lightning was just shooting out. They had a fence around it so no one could get too close.”—Trevor Freed ’16

Jana Persky contributed to this report.

A quote that previously appeared in this article has been removed because the context of the story told in the quote was misattributed. The Daily regrets the error. 

Edward Ngai is a senior staff writer at The Stanford Daily. Previously, he has worked as a news desk editor, staff development editor and columnist. He was president and editor-in-chief of The Daily for Vol. 244 (2013-2014). Edward is a junior from Vancouver, Canada studying political science. This summer, he is the Daniel Pearl Memorial Intern at the Wall Street Journal.

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