Given the once-in-a-lifetime line-up, a game-changing format and its uber-hipster offerings, it is no surprise that Desert Trip has been dubbed the “spaceship” of music festivals by industry insiders, such is its forward-thinking nature.
But the inaugural edition, which runs over two weekends (October 7 to 9 and 13 to 15) and features six legendary performers and bands – the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Roger Waters, The Who, Bob Dylan and Neil Young – was nearly scuppered by more down-to-Earth matters.
An opening-night debacle serves as a timely to reminder to promoters: no matter how you dress up your festival, it is the fundamentals that will determine whether your event is deemed a success.
Sure, big-name acts on the bill can help with ticket sales – however, it is the more mundane aspects such as hiring capable staff, implementing smooth crowd-control procedures and providing accessible transportation that determines whether a festival ultimately succeeds and survives.
On that score, the Desert Trip organisers have a steep, but achievable, learning curve to tackle.
To be fair, the two and a half hours it took to ferry thousands from the picturesque Californian city of Palm Springs to the festival venue – the Empire Polo Club, normally about a 30-minute drive away – was not entirely the fault of festival staff.
A faulty underground cable caused a massive power cut, resulting in the diversion of festival-going vehicles away from the main roads to smaller side roads, which caused massive traffic jams.
To make matters worse, the majority of the staff I encountered upon my arrival at the mammoth venue were clueless about simple navigational questions – either they had not been given a clear briefing or, more worryingly, it was also their first time at the venue.
With much of the crowd arriving at the polo club clearly irritated, it was up to their musical heroes to calm them down.
Bob Dylan is not the sentimental type – but even the 75-year-old trailblazer, who wore a black suit and white fedora, acknowledged the monumental occasion by playing a rare set more about with his past than his current work.
Baby boomers hungrily savoured a slew of classic material – albeit that the wistful croon of old has been replaced by deeply guttural delivery.
Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 was a barnstormer courtesy of that stomping honky-tonk beat.
Don't Think Twice, It's All Right has taken on a more defiant tone over the years, due to Dylan's increasingly grizzled vocals. Where in the 1963 original Dylan seemed uncertain and vulnerable, the new take seemed declarative.
When he partly sneers: “You could have done better but I don’t mind/ You just kinda wasted my precious time/ But don’t think twice, it’s all right,” you just know there is no turning back.
Dylan also reinterpreted certain folk and rock staples to fit in with his current exploration of vintage rhythm and blues.
Highway 61 Revisited possessed a cinematic quality. The driving guitars – once the hallmark of the 1965 original – were downplayed to support the murky and swampy sounds of Dylan's mouth organ.
In some cases, Dylan's craggy vocals only served to empower certain songs. In the desolate Love Sick, you could feel his despair and anguish. In Make You Feel Love, those torn vocals were transformed from stinging to stirring as he skipped over a gentle shuffling rhyme to plead for a second chance.
That emotional nakedness didn't last too long – Dylan completed the set with gnarly versions of The Ballad of a Thin Man and Masters of War.
He left the stage without a farewell to the crowd – not that it was expected from pop culture’s greatest poet and contrarian.
Headlining the opening night, The Rolling Stones delivered another trademark energetic performance that offered a couple of surprises.
Perhaps aware that a sizeable number of the crowd has probably seen the group several times over the years, the four-piece – augmented by a seven-stron supporting band, including a two-piece horn section – mixed things up by mixing the well-worn hits with the live debut of a two cover versions and the dusting off of an old live favourite.
Kicking off the set with one of rock's great siren calls, Start Me Up, Jagger was all hip swivelling swagger as lyrics were yelped out rather than sung.
You Got Me Rocking made good use of Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood's twin-guitar attacks, before the dynamic Out of Control, with its crafty transition from hushed bluesy verse to ecstatic pop chorus.
With the group having just announced their first new studio album in more than a decade, the covers collection Blues and Lonesome, will be released on December 2, the Stones used the Desert Trip stage to showcase the galloping lead single, Ride Them Down. It was the fist time they had performed the The Jimmy Reed cover live since 1962.
Jagger took time to pay tribute to the other artists on the Desert Trip bill, before the live debut of a faithful – yet ultimately unnecessary – cover of The Beatles Come Together.
Gimme Shelter was a fantastic showcase for new backup singer Sasha Allen, who owned the stage as she delivered the heart-rending, show-stopping gospel solo turn to conclude the track.
With an encore that featured the always dependable You Can't Always Get What You Want and (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction, complete with the mandatory fireworks, the Stones only reinforced their status as not only legends but still a live spectacle that is tough to beat.
It is a good thing too, as the good vibes they generated were needed as the departing crowd was faced with another nightmare journey, which did not start well as a result of a lack of large-sized exits from the venue – and, once again, confused staff who were not any real help.
A shortage of promised shuttle busses also left thousands of fans, many of whom were older and at risk of dehydration, queuing for a further hour in a long lines.
Such was the disappointment that fans took to social media and began giving the Desert Trip the nickname “the desert trap”.
With two more days and another weekend of shows to come, organisers have plenty of work to do get things back on track.
sasaeed@thenational.ae
Engine: 3.5-litre V6
Transmission: eight-speed automatic
Power: 290hp
Torque: 340Nm
Price: Dh155,800
On sale: now
'Operation Mincemeat'
Director: John Madden
Cast: Colin Firth, Matthew Macfayden, Kelly Macdonald and Penelope Wilton
Rating: 4/5
COMPANY%20PROFILE
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Gully Boy
Director: Zoya Akhtar
Producer: Excel Entertainment & Tiger Baby
Cast: Ranveer Singh, Alia Bhatt, Kalki Koechlin, Siddhant Chaturvedi
Rating: 4/5 stars
Essentials
The flights
Emirates, Etihad and Malaysia Airlines all fly direct from the UAE to Kuala Lumpur and on to Penang from about Dh2,300 return, including taxes.
Where to stay
In Kuala Lumpur, Element is a recently opened, futuristic hotel high up in a Norman Foster-designed skyscraper. Rooms cost from Dh400 per night, including taxes. Hotel Stripes, also in KL, is a great value design hotel, with an infinity rooftop pool. Rooms cost from Dh310, including taxes.
In Penang, Ren i Tang is a boutique b&b in what was once an ancient Chinese Medicine Hall in the centre of Little India. Rooms cost from Dh220, including taxes.
23 Love Lane in Penang is a luxury boutique heritage hotel in a converted mansion, with private tropical gardens. Rooms cost from Dh400, including taxes.
In Langkawi, Temple Tree is a unique architectural villa hotel consisting of antique houses from all across Malaysia. Rooms cost from Dh350, including taxes.
The bio
Job: Coder, website designer and chief executive, Trinet solutions
School: Year 8 pupil at Elite English School in Abu Hail, Deira
Role Models: Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk
Dream City: San Francisco
Hometown: Dubai
City of birth: Thiruvilla, Kerala
Jigra
Starring: Alia Bhatt, Vedang Raina, Manoj Pahwa, Harsh Singh
More on Quran memorisation:
How to protect yourself when air quality drops
Install an air filter in your home.
Close your windows and turn on the AC.
Shower or bath after being outside.
Wear a face mask.
Stay indoors when conditions are particularly poor.
If driving, turn your engine off when stationary.
Joker: Folie a Deux
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Lady Gaga, Brendan Gleeson
Director: Todd Phillips
Rating: 2/5
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COMPANY PROFILE
Founders: Alhaan Ahmed, Alyina Ahmed and Maximo Tettamanzi
Total funding: Self funded
Hotel Silence
Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir
Pushkin Press
Moon Music
Artist: Coldplay
Label: Parlophone/Atlantic
Number of tracks: 10
Rating: 3/5
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Almnssa
Started: August 2020
Founder: Areej Selmi
Based: Gaza
Sectors: Internet, e-commerce
Investments: Grants/private funding
COMPANY PROFILE
Initial investment: Undisclosed
Investment stage: Series A
Investors: Core42
Current number of staff: 47
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: HyperSpace
Started: 2020
Founders: Alexander Heller, Rama Allen and Desi Gonzalez
Based: Dubai, UAE
Sector: Entertainment
Number of staff: 210
Investment raised: $75 million from investors including Galaxy Interactive, Riyadh Season, Sega Ventures and Apis Venture Partners
Our legal consultants
Name: Hassan Mohsen Elhais
Position: legal consultant with Al Rowaad Advocates and Legal Consultants.
Zakat definitions
Zakat: an Arabic word meaning ‘to cleanse’ or ‘purification’.
Nisab: the minimum amount that a Muslim must have before being obliged to pay zakat. Traditionally, the nisab threshold was 87.48 grams of gold, or 612.36 grams of silver. The monetary value of the nisab therefore varies by current prices and currencies.
Zakat Al Mal: the ‘cleansing’ of wealth, as one of the five pillars of Islam; a spiritual duty for all Muslims meeting the ‘nisab’ wealth criteria in a lunar year, to pay 2.5 per cent of their wealth in alms to the deserving and needy.
Zakat Al Fitr: a donation to charity given during Ramadan, before Eid Al Fitr, in the form of food. Every adult Muslim who possesses food in excess of the needs of themselves and their family must pay two qadahs (an old measure just over 2 kilograms) of flour, wheat, barley or rice from each person in a household, as a minimum.
Aston martin DBX specs
Engine: 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8
Transmission: nine-speed automatic
Power: 542bhp
Torque: 700Nm
Top speed: 291kph
Price: Dh848,000
On sale: Q2, 2020
The specs
Engine: 1.6-litre 4-cyl turbo
Power: 217hp at 5,750rpm
Torque: 300Nm at 1,900rpm
Transmission: eight-speed auto
Price: from Dh130,000
On sale: now
if you go
The flights
Emirates offer flights to Buenos Aires from Dubai, via Rio De Janeiro from around Dh6,300. emirates.com
Seeing the games
Tangol sell experiences across South America and generally have good access to tickets for most of the big teams in Buenos Aires: Boca Juniors, River Plate, and Independiente. Prices from Dh550 and include pick up and drop off from your hotel in the city. tangol.com
Staying there
Tangol will pick up tourists from any hotel in Buenos Aires, but after the intensity of the game, the Faena makes for tranquil, upmarket accommodation. Doubles from Dh1,110. faena.com
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