With all apologies to the people that were inconvenienced when day one of Head Trip ended early due to potential lightning, the general consensus on the ground during day two was largely the same: “It’s pretty epic that it’s turning out this way, though.”
The situation went down as such: At exactly 9 p.m. on Saturday night, Chris Lake and Fisher (playing as Under Construction) were ripping it on Head Trip’s sole stage when the music was abruptly cut off. “That was probably the best show I’ve ever played,” Lake later tweeted. “Right before the music cut, Fish had said similar. We unfortunately didn’t get any warning and didn’t get any chance to explain to you what was happening (we didn’t know either) and we got rushed off site.”
As they were rushed away, the roughly 90,000 of us on the field were instructed to walk back to our vehicles due to the approaching weather, the remnants of Tropical Storm Rachel moving inland as the storm hit the SoCal coast. Within 30 minutes it was raining, and the remainder of night one was soon cancelled completely, meaning that a headlining set by Calvin Harris wouldn’t happen.
As big of a bummer as this all was – Head Trip took place Oct. 10-11 on the Coachella grounds in Indio, Calif., a location that doesn’t feel as enchanted under cloud cover – the dejected ambience made the thrill even bigger the next morning, when Head Trip organizer Goldenvoice announced that Harris had joined the Sunday night lineup.
“In an unthinkable situation, every artist made sacrifices for the greater good of the show, resulting in a truly once in a lifetime day of music,” Goldenvoice’s senior vp of talent Danny Bell tells Billboard. “It perfectly exemplifies what makes this genre of music and the artists that drive the culture forward so special.”
The camaraderie extended to Peggy Gou filling in on day two when The Blessed Madonna became unable to play the show for reasons that have not been announced. The revised Sunday bill would thus feature DJ Harvey, Gou (who’d also played b2b with Four Tet the night prior), Dom Dolla b2b Kettama and then Skrillex followed by Harris followed by Swedish House Mafia. (Even the city of Indio got in on the goodwill, confirming to Billboard that they will not fine Goldenvoice for Swedish House Mafia’s set running 33 minutes over the sound curfew.)
If you were alive and raving in the early and mid-2010s, the weight of this bill is epochal. Skrillex, Harris and Swedish House Mafia are three indisputable architects of the EDM era and the hallowed U.S. dance music boom the music fueled. Alongside a few others (Avicii, David Guetta, Zedd, Martin Garrix), they changed the trajectory of dance music in America, blowing down the doors for the millions of kids who entered the scene in the early and mid-2010s.
Head Trip appears to be the first time all three of these artists played the same festival on the same day on the same stage, back-to-back-to-back. Head Trip was an 18+ show, but the crowd seemed fairly equally balanced between younger attendees and a lot of us who were there for EDM, giving the night a dual energy — nostalgia for some, discovery for others — as many of the essential anthems of the era rolled out one after another.
These are our seven takeaways from the fest.