Los Angeles Music Scene: Coachella and Stagecoach Cancelled

Not a surprise at all, Coachella and Stagecoach got cancelled for a third time. Originally scheduled for April 2020 and then getting shifted to October 2020 before landing on April 2021. Los Angeles Times (Jan 29) reports:

To the surprise of absolutely no one who has been paying attention to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival and Stagecoach Festival, scheduled for three consecutive weekends in April at Indio’s Empire Polo Club, have been canceled.

. . . Meanwhile, other festivals have begun to hint at possible returns later in the year. Chicago’s Pitchfork Music Festival applied for permits to host an event in September of this year, and Bonnaroo is currently booked for the same month in Tennessee. Several major festivals in Europe like Spain’s Mad Cool are, as of now, still on schedule for summer.

Bonnaroo happening in September? I don't know this for a fact, but I would bet that Tennessee hasn't locked down as hard as California. I would think this festival is a go. I don't know about Chicago. I know they locked down hard. I would bet that most European festivals will get cancelled if they have a summer schedule. Europe isn't exactly speeding along when it comes to vaccinating their citizens. 

Might Coachella get rescheduled for October 2021?  I suspect it would be partially based on a calculation regarding if a massive event like Coachella could be run in both October 2021 and April 2022 without running staff into the ground. I'm sure the fans would show up. Also, it depends on how well vaccinations go in California. The Los Angeles Times (Jan 21) reported the following on that:

Vaccinating Californians 65 and over could take until June to complete, the state’s epidemiologist said Wednesday, raising new concerns about when other groups will be eligible for the vaccine and underscoring the rapidly dwindling COVID-19 vaccine stockpiles.

Now perhaps that is just our politicians playing it conservatively and trying to get Washington DC to send more funds to the state. Yet, would Goldenvoice want to roll the dice based on what is being communicated by our politicians? The benefit of Coachella is that it is outdoors so considering that daily cases should be dramatically lower by that point in time even though we wouldn't have hit herd immunity (just basing that on the political communications), it might be worth taking the chance. There would just need to be some legal issues settled about this being a potential super spreader event as well as people providing that they recently tested negative.