SLEAFORDS ARE DOING IT FOR THEMSELVES

Most people attend the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival with high expectations. Which is, objectively speaking, wild verging on nuts.

Coachella takes place in a desert. Do people not have a working understanding of geography? Have they not seen Chinatown? For something not evil to happen to you once you willingly follow a mob into the wastelands outside of Palm Springs takes a minor miracle. Even Moses had the benefit of a recipe for low-sodium saltines, and the self-esteem that comes with successfully parting a sea, before he tried his hand at putting on a multi-weekend desert festival. Still, despite all such logic, hope springs like water dragged kicking and screaming from the ground, to the tune of 90.4 million gallons a day, to sate the thirst of the more than 120 golf courses in the valley where the festival is held. In turn, Coachella, year after year, draws a veritable hootenanny of Instagram influencees, semipro vapers, token gestures to millennial/Xer indie nostalgia, and 1,001 rappers suckered by Big Guitar into believing that a live band equals authenticity. In the midst of this cross-generational migration, a Corn Dogs Gone Wild kiosk stands, squat and sturdy, like an American Lady Liberty, welcoming all who have $549-$l,609 and the drive to watch YUNGBLUD (pronounced “Young Blood”) perform “I Think I’m Okay” at dusk. Ellis Island never saw the likes of these dreamers.