Coachella 2012: Full lineup revealed; Dr. Dre, Radiohead headline
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Rapper Dr. Dre will close the 2012 edition of the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival, to be held for the first time over two consecutive weeks in mid-April. Headliners for the multi-weekend, six-day affair include rock acts the Black Keys, Radiohead and the Shins, as well hip-hop and dance acts Snoop Dogg, the Swedish House Mafia and Kaskade, among many others.
In keeping with tradition, the festival will host a number of artists on the reunion circuit. Brit-pop band Pulp, hardcore Swedish punk band Refused, Mike Watt’s post-Minutman band fIREHOSE and experimental Texas rockers At the Drive-In are among those on the comeback trail.
Sunday night headliner Dr. Dre is a something of a revival act himself. Though he’s stayed in the public eye via his branding efforts and production work, the Compton-raised artist has not released an album since 1999 and has spent much of the last decade working on his long-rumored ‘Detox.’
Coachella, run by AEG-owned concert promoter Goldenvoice, will be held over two consecutive weekends, the first on April 13-15 and the second on April 20-22. Each weekend is a separate ticket. Paul Tollett, who heads Goldenvoice and has organized the festival since its 1999 inception, said last year that the expansion was in reaction to the increased demand for tickets.
“We wanted to create access for as many people as possible,” said Tollett.
“The thought of this selling out super quick, and the only people who get to go are the people who bought the first minute or bought tickets for more than they sold for, that didn’t seem great to us,” he said. “We didn’t want to go with more people and ruin the experience. We can’t add a midnight show, and we didn’t want to add another city or raise the ticket price. So we decided to add another weekend.”
The lineup was unveiled Monday on the Goldenvoice and Coachella Facebook pages. However, Goldenvoice has yet to reveal updated ticketing information. A spokeswoman for the promoter has yet to respond to requests for more details.
Tickets were initially sold for the 2012 festival nearly a year in advance of the event. Three-day passes went on sale via Coachella’s official site for one week in June. In prior years, tickets were not sold until the lineup had been revealed, and were sold via Ticketmaster. Tickets were once again priced at $269, not including service fees. Goldenvoice had earlier said that if tickets remained after the one-week presale, they would be made available once the lineup was announced.
Though Coachella will close with a double hip-hop pairing of Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg on the two Sunday evenings, rock acts will get top billing the other nights. Bluesey rockers the Black Keys will anchor a Friday that will also feature singer-songwriter Cat Power, reggae legend Jimmy Cliff and psychedelic electronic act M83. Radiohead will close the festival’s Saturday evenings, with breakout indie star Bon Iver, reclusive indie rocker Jeff Mangum and noIse instrumentalists Godspeed You Black Emperor also on the bill.
Modeled after major long-running European festivals such as Denmark’s Roskilde and England’s Glastonbury, Coachella is coming off its second-consecutive sell-out year, hosting approximately 90,000 people per day. Tickets for the 2011 edition went in a record six days, and the event, held at the Empire Polo Grounds in Indio, Calif., is considered the unofficial kickoff to the summer festival season.
ALSO:
Coachella times two: ‘We’re going after artists who are going to play twice.’
Goldenvoice expanding Coachella into a multi-weekend event
So what’s the going rate for a giant Arcade Fire LED ball from Coachella?
-- Todd Martens
Image. Dr Dre. Credit: Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times
