The last day of a festival is usually the best day. Either you’ve grown sick of being in grass fields full of overgrown idiots or all your favourite acts are playing on the final day. For me at the Falls Festival, this was a bit of both. Promising personal favourites such as Busdriver, Jose Gonzalez, Regurgitator and Girl Talk, I was going into 2008 either with a big fat smile on my face or vowing never to return to the sea side. With heats predicted to reach 42 degrees in the daytime, I was going into the new year with a big fat smile on my face (and a sweaty body to boot) or I’d be vowing to never visit the seaside town again. Which is it? Only one way to find out (and it’s the hard way unfortunately). Let’s get on with it.

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The women, one of six behind the counter in the express lane at the local Foodworks looked depleted of energy when she informed me that the maximum cash-out from an EFTPOS transaction was $200. The ATM’s located in Lorne had ran out of a cash, so there was a rush in the store to by a few items as possible (for me it was a bottle of Coke, bottle of Sprite and the daily newspaper, pricey stuff as you can imagine) and then withdraw as much cash as you could. Despite the Falls Festival being in it’s fifteenth year of operation, it almost seemed like the seaside town couldn’t handle the sell-out crowd. If anything, it really points to getting a few mobile ATMs on the festival grounds. But if all I cared about was money, I could of stayed in Melbourne and visited multiple ATMs around the city - the Falls Festival was all about the music.

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About four months ago I decided that I’d go to a festival for New Year’s. Traditionally I don’t lot for New Year s, preferring to stay at home, drink and watch the fireworks from my backyard. When the rumours of Girl Talk, Gogol Bordello and Jose Gonzalez came up (amongst others), I stuck my name in the ballet and figured if I got an offer I’d take it, otherwise I’d just go to one of the other shows (Pyramid Rock and the Hip-Hop Showcase at the Corner Hotel were my two picks, in that order). Sure enough, I got the option to buy on the first day and took it up instantly.

So I worked out what I needed for camping supplies and saw the line-up announcements. No Gogol but the rest of the picks weren’t that bad – The Go! Team, Busdriver, Lior, The Herd, and a bunch of others that I’d hope I would discover. But as things got closer I wussed out and booked myself a nice hotel room just off the main street. While I vowed to myself that I wouldn’t write another entry until I finished my America trip report, I don’t want to put writing this off forever – so here we go, Day 1, even if it is Day 0.

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Four hours sleep is more then enough for any person, especially after a loaded day of music in the desert.

My phone rings at 6am for my wake-up call. I pick it up, stretch and go back to sleep.

My phone rings at 7:15. I pick it up and here “Mr. Brown, your transport is here.”

“I’ll be right down”

FUCKFUCKSHITSHITFUCKFUCKSHIT

Nothing is packed up. I throw everything into my suit case and put on yesterday’s clothes, which by now stink due to all the sweat. No time or space to fit in the six or seven cans of Mountain Dew Code Red, I have to go. I forget to leave a tip and head down stairs to check out and leave. After finding that I’ve been checked out by the staff member, I apologise to the shuttle driver and grab a seat in the back for my trip back to LAX.

I sleep for the majority of the trip, only waking up at Burbank airport for a dropoff and then at LAX. I actually feel much better thanks to the few extra hours of sleep and head down to the arrivals to get my shuttle to Anaheim. I’m still unsure if I’m able to check into my hotel room due to the credit card mess so I may be sleeping outside Disneyland with my pack. When we get to the Howard Johnson, before checking in I pull out my laptop and bring up Skype. Thanks to free wireless broadband at the hotel, I’m able to ring home and find out that my mum has sorted out the credit card issues and I’ll be fine to check in - thanks Mum!

I’m able to check in instantly and head straight up to my hotel room. It’s a fair bit bigger then my other room earlier in the trip which is a nice little bonus, so I take the time to ring home and let them know I’ve got my room. At this stage I’m deciding what I’m going to do for the night, I’m either going to have another nap or go to Disneyland, but I’m super tired and don’t feel like going out. I ask my mum to find out if I can have my trip extended by a few days - I’ll pay for the hotel room and if it’s only a few hundred to fly out on Friday rather then Wednesday, I’ll do it. She rings back and tells me that my Frequent Flyer membership allows me to have one free flight change - oh ship it! I will now miss out on my birthday at home, but at least I’ll enjoy my trip a bit more. I also check my Travelex account and notice I’m down to $80.. my money still hasn’t came through. I get on the phone andask why my money hasn’t gone through since it left my bank account more then five days ago - they say it’s security checks. I complain that I have no money in my account and need someone to get by on while this transfer is taking place, and the best they can do is offer me $25. I tell them where to go and end the phone call at that.

Rather then heading to a park, I decide to have a long shower then go and check out the Downtown Disney district. Downtown Disney is a shopping and dining section in between Disneyland and Disney’s California Adventure. They have a great deal of shops, both Disney and non-Disney. I take the time to check out Disney’s Grant Californian Hotel (which is an incredible sight and somewhere I wished I stayed, even if it was only for one night), a really great bookstore with tons of Disney related books and ESPNZone, the sports channel themed restaurant and arcade. I decide to take a look at the arcade before shelling out $20 to play a few games. They have the standard arcade games with a sports theme - basketball shooting, car racing games and the like. But with that they also have bigger interactive games ESPN’s NFL2Night, a game where you have to throw footballs to receivers and my favourite, NHL2Night - a beat the goalie game. I spend most of my points playing that and the various other games in the place. I vow that I will return here for dinner one night, just not tonight.

I walk around the various food stores and end up deciding on getting some take-out from Ralph Brennan’s Jazz Kitchen Express, a place offering short order Cajun food. I decide to grab a Gumbo Ya-Ya (a thick gravy/soup mixed with rice, chicken and sausage) along with a coleslaw and bread. I stop by store in the hotel to grab a couple of bottles of water and a can of Coke on my way back. I eat in my room while watching Scrubs - the meal is delicious, I really gotta find a place in Melbourne that makes Gumbo like they do (and given that it’s a fast food place in the middle of California, I’m sure that they make it a ton better in New Orleans).

I spend the rest of the night watching TV and surfing the web, only going downstairs to get myself an ice cream sandwich (which they make with oreos, and it was goooood). On the plans for tomorrow was something I was really looking forward to - Six Flags Magic Mountain and rap artist Nas over at the House of Blues - the days never stop being filled when I’m travelling.

One day into Coachella and I was ready for another week of it - way too much fun. Two days into Coachella and I wondered how much more of it I could take - the desert sun was beating this pasty faced fat man like an early-90s Drederick Tatum in ‘The Bout To Knock The Other Guy Out’. With Sunday being the most loaded day of the Coachella Festival, I figured that all the negatives had passed and I was in for an incredible day of music.

It makes it so hard to think that everything that follows is the 100% truth.

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So, for those who you who didn’t read or don’t want to read my last super-long entry, here is a summary without spoilers..

Mike got up and struggled to make himself breakfast, despite the fact that everything was already prepared. He got a crappy cell phone and headed out to the festival, where he had a great time seeing so many artists. Coming back from the festival, he got into a very bad spot that he feared he would struggle to get out of.

So with that out of the way, on with Saturday at Coachella.

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Just before I start - I wasn’t intending for this to come out so late. Real life gets in the way of blogging sometimes, and I hate that it does. I also warn that this is badly put together over several days, so it’s probably not the easiest read. Regardless, let’s get on with the show.

Friday April 27 - today was the day. Sure the trip to America was a big deal for me, given all the extra stuff I was getting up to but really Coachella was the reason I went. Just about everyone that I talked to thought I was crazy for making this trip, hell I still thought I was crazy. The time was finally here - Coachella 2007. But I decided that it was too hot for music, and when I saw someone asking to buy tickets I got rid of them cheaply and decided to head back to my air conditioned room. I was able to watch the festival on the net and all was well.

Oh come on, you and me both know that this did not happen.

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