Ef Coachella. I spent this last weekend out in the desert for a little get-together that’s come to be known, among a select group of revelers, as Great Friday.
There’s a bit of back story here.
Twenty years ago, some friends decided to host a big party for everyone who wasn’t going home to visit family for the Easter weekend – they called it the Good Friday party. The statute of limitations has run out on this one, so I feel pretty safe admitting that there was a lot of drug use. It was quite a thing.
Within a few years the party had gotten pretty big, and the hosts, if you can call them that, had become pretty well-established EDM (in our day we called it “techno”) DJs. So they moved the event to the magical, permissive expanse of the Mojave and turned it into a weekend-long event. I’ll tell you, there is nothing like the way a bass beat echoes over a dry lake bed at dawn. Nothing.
In more recent years, a lot of us have become parents, which made disappearing to the desert for Easter weekend tough, unless you wanted to bring your kids out to that harsh, intoxicated environment (which I didn’t). So a few years ago the event got pushed to the weekend after Easter, and renamed Great Friday.
So that’s how the whole thing started. And now, sadly, I can tell you how it ended.
This weekend was the last Great Friday event. The organizers either have moved away to distant lands or will be moving soon, and without them there’s no music. Without music, it’s just a camp out – which is still fun, but will never be the same.
It seems an interesting coincidence in my mind that this event, which has been such a touchstone for me throughout my entire adult life, is coming to an end as I finish my first novel – a deeply personal story that is set in the Mojave. And why is it set in the Southern California desert? Because I fell in love with the place at these parties. I love the way the full moon paints the landscape in silver light. I love the way the sage bushes squeak as their thick branches blow in the wind. I love the way the light changes as the sun sneaks up on the horizon from the other side of the planet. I love shaking my bootie on a dance floor that stretches for miles. And I love, love, love my rowdy friends, who really are the best part.
I guess that’s life, though. Things change. Twenty years of partying with the same group of friends is a pretty good run. If I have one parting wish, it’s that I have managed to capture just few hints of the magic of the Mojave in my story. I guess only time will tell.
Here are some shots from the weekend:
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