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Coachella 2015: When it’s your birthday at Coachella, you …

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Coachella 2015: Day 3
AP

When your birthday happens smack in the middle of Coachella, you:

—Start right at 12 a.m. the night before ... at Coachella. Ushering in the celebration—so to speak—was Swans, the experimental/(mostly) instrumental New York act. Which is to say, I sat on the grass next to my half-conscious and equally exhausted boyfriend, letting the guitar swells and impressively metered drumbeats take me elsewhere. Swans typically play two-to-three-hour sets that provide even more dynamic narrative and meditative effects, so this felt like a teaser. But for me, having never experienced the veteran act before, it was enough to be revelatory.

—Wake up to dine at Palm Springs breakfast institution Rick’s and have some of the best home fries of your life. You consume too much, which, unbeknownst to you, ends up limiting how much you can eat from the incredibly detailed, turntable cake your boyfriend advance-ordered and has delivered—one that looks like those rock-star cakes Hakkasan has Freed’s bake when Tiësto wins a Grammy. Gracias, mi amor.

—Get treated to brews in the parking lot, and then more in the craft beer garden. Which trumps any and all birthday shots from years before.

—Trip out to Panda Bear, which makes you wish for just a second that you’d seen his more intimate Bunkhouse show two nights previous, if you had only not been at Coachella.

—Ride the 135-foot Ferris wheel with your boyfriend while John Talabot—a favorite DJ you rarely get to experience in person—plays the neighboring Yuma Tent. As if on cue, you board, the wheel begins to move, and Talabot launches into a remix of your fave current jam: Jamie XX’s “Loud Places” (sung by his XX bandmate, Romy Madley-Croft). After de-boarding, you run into the tent and dance to the rest of Talabot’s set, which includes more new favorites ... and a remix of Underworld’s “Born Slippy,” the anthem of your college years.

—Watch a former Las Vegan, Jenny Lewis, play with her old Rilo Kiley bandmate Blake Sennett (despite that act’s acrimonious breakup) during “Portions For Foxes” and later meet for the first time another Las Vegan who gives you the thumbs up on a story you broke the week before. Even at Coachella, you’re never too far from home.

—Score a $10 paella dinner from a festival food vendor that’s remarkably as good as any other non-José Andrés-cooked paella you’ve ever had.

—See St. Vincent for the first time ever and catch enough of her fantastic new single and closing song, “Birth in Reverse,” just before entering the paaaacked Gobi Tent, miraculously finding your boyfriend and witnessing Jamie XX close his own disco-tastic DJ set with an original version of “Loud Places.” How does a day offer so much win?

—Watch what’s been declared as the final live performance—well, second-to-last, as there’s one more Coachella weekend to come—by French techno producer Gesaffelstein, who pounds you and the thousands smashed up against you with 70 minutes of minimal synth chord progressions and clean, unrelenting beats (to say nothing of his pupil-pummeling light show). At the end, he cues the breathy sample and breakbeat from his eviscerating 2013 collaboration with Kanye West, “Black Skinhead,” hinting at a possible 'Ye appearance and Coachella Moment. But alas, it’s just a tease. You’re nonetheless gratified by the triumphant set.

—Shop for records and score Miles Davis’ In a Silent Way for $10, partly because you can’t help yourself and partly because, f*ck it, it’s your birthday.

—Catch a solid, transportive slice of the Yuma Tent set by new techno/house supergroup J.E.S.+S. (that’s Jackmaster, Eats Everything, Skream and Seth Troxler), hoping it signs on for Electric Daisy Carnival in June. Remembering that EDC is only two short months away unnervingly halts my dancefloor fantasia like a trainwrecked DJ set.

—Look at your phone mid-dance and realize it’s time to get ahead of that enormous Drake audience still a half-hour away from leaving, because, hey, you’re now pushing 40 and are already facing a rough Monday given your fatigue and deadlines. So you join the small but steady human stream pouring out of the gorgeous Empire Polo Fields and pass through the same gates you entered exactly nine hours earlier. The clock clears midnight, and the ride back to the hotel feels like 30 minutes of afterglow. Enter into the record books another rewarding Coachella weekend—and an all-time great birthday.

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