Q+A: Katie Bain on Her Forthcoming Book Desert Dreams: The Music, Style, and Allure of Coachella
Interview previews new book out Oct. 21!
Katie Bain’s Desert Dreams: The Music, Style, and Allure of Coachella (Quarto) will be released on October 21, with preorders available now. We are thrilled to share a Q+A with her today!
Tamara Palmer/Music Book Club: Could you describe your process in putting together this book? How long did you work on it?
Katie Bain: I spent a month or two creating the outline, then wrote the book over four months — almost entirely on nights and weekends. The primary process was research. I read hundreds of articles about Coachella and its origins in outlets ranging from the Coachella Valley's local paper The Desert Sun to CNN to Al Jazeera to, of course, countless Tweets, Instagram and Facebook posts from artists, fans, the festival itself, etc. I watched dozens of hours of performances, from charmingly crappy YouTube videos of Pearl Jam playing on the field in 1993 before the first Coachella happened to Beyonce's high gloss Coachella documentary Homecoming. But undoubtedly the most important research was the 13 years I've gone to Coachella -- and if you count the years that I've gone both weekends, I've been 17 times since 2008.
What are your core memories from your first Coachella?
It was intensely hot. I'd moved to Los Angeles from Wisconsin six months prior and had never experienced desert heat like that. I remember spending part of the afternoon sitting in the shade under an art structure and then later that night being in one of the tents for M.I.A.'s set. She was really late and the vibe inside was packed and pretty hectic and the gunshots and cash register noises from "Paper Planes" kept playing through the speakers. I remember feeling that everything else I was seeing and doing was just kind of killing time before Prince's show on the mainstage. He'd been added to the lineup two weeks before and was the reason I went to the festival at all. He played this version of "Little Red Corvette" where the verses were slowed down and extremely sexy. For some reason I remember the song lasting for like, 15 minutes but going back to video of the performance online, it was just six or so. And this was all before I had a smartphone, and I don't recall bringing a camera, so I have no photographic evidence of any of it. My friend and I drove back to L.A. that night, and I think I had to work the next morning.
What do you think are the biggest misconceptions about this festival?
I think it's less that there are misconceptions about Coachella and more that there are cliched and myopic ideas about it that don't consider the full breadth of what it is and what it offers. The knee jerk reaction is obviously that it's an influencer content farm blah blah blah. I mean, it is! It's kind of wild and hilarious (and dystopian) to scan the field at any given moment, and especially around sunset, and see how many mini photoshoots are happening as people work to get whatever shot they've been imagining. This aspect is especially intense during the first weekend. But that's just one layer of it all. It would take me a while to list all the positive attributes of the festival (teaser: they're all in the book), but I think ultimately people get what they go there for. If you go to takes selfies in front of the Ferris Wheel to post on Instagram or whatever, you can easily achieve that. If you go for the music, then there's more available to you than you'd ever be able to be physically present for. The musical curation is impeccable and I've seen some of the best shows of my life on that field. I know I'm not the only one. But that aspect doesn't necessarily get discussed as much as the things people like to criticize.
Do you personally like the hologram performing phenomenon? Is there any hologram you would actually like to see do a set at Coachella?
I was there for the Tupac hologram in 2012 and saw the ABBA Voyage show in London a couple of years ago and enjoyed the strangeness of both things, but I don't see a reason for Coachella to ever have another one. For me holograms are more about novelty and technology more so than the music itself, and I'm not sure there's an artist who I'd want to experience in this way. Unless it's like, Mozart. Then hell yes.
Do you have any favorite music books of all time that you'd like to share with our open-minded readers?
Keith Richards' Life and Simon Reynolds’ Generation Ecstasy. And while it's not explicitly a music book, Claire Dederer's Monsters presents some really interesting ideas about how to think about and approach art, music included, made by problematic artists.
Previously in our Q+A series:
Colin Steven on Publishing Electronic Music and Counterculture Books at Velocity Press
Yoel Gaetán on Chronicling Punk in Puerto Rico with Forgotten Youth Records and Books
Jason Pettigrew on Writing a Book About Ministry's Third Album
Melissa Locker on Her Brand New Book About Oasis Fans
Ira Robbins on Publishing Peter Silverton’s ‘London Calling New York New York’ and What’s Coming from Trouser Press Books
Donna-Claire Chesman on How CRYBABY Came to Her in a Dream
Cary Baker on His First Book and How Busking Can Help Main Street USA
Gina Arnold on The Oxford Handbook of Punk Rock and Working with Academic Publishers
Tom Beaujour on His New Lollapalooza Book and Producing Successful Oral Histories
John Morrison on Boyz II Men and Chronicling Philadelphia Music History
Mark Angelo Harrison on Telling the Spiral Tribe Sound System Story
Lyndsey Parker on Writing a 'Stranger Than Fiction' Memoir with Mercy Fontenot
Christina Ward on Running Feral House, a 36-Year-Old Indie Book Company
Ali Smith on Speedball Baby and Telling Stories Without Shame
Arusa Qureshi on Her Love Letter to Women in UK Hip-Hop
Lily Moayeri on Her Favorite Music Books and Writing from a Personal Place
Megan Volpert on Why Alanis Morissette Matters and Writing 15 Books in 18 Years
Mark Swartz on Biggie + Yoko Ono as a Crime-Fighting Duo and Other Fictional Ideas
Annie Zaleski on Cher, Stevie Nicks and Pushing Past Writing Fears
Nelson George on His Next Book and Making Mixtapes in Paper Form
Michaelangelo Matos on Writing and Editing Music Books
