“You gotta go!” they said. “It’s just like ‘Coachella,’” they said.
“Except with more cow shit,” they said—but that time kind of under their breath and turned away so you weren’t really sure if you heard them correctly.
“Tickets are less than $30 U.S. dollars for the weekend and they would have been even cheaper if you’d gotten on top of your shit for once and learned how to make decisions more than a couple hours in advance,” they said.
And with that… you go. You go to Play Time Live Music Festival 2014, a.k.a. the Mongolian Coachella, with nothing but a backpack’s worth of tuna fish sandwiches meant to share and the totally untempered expectation that after making prolonged eye contact with an Asian rock god he will fall in love with your blondeness (read: personality) and whisk you away to his Korean summer home.
The weekend comes to a close… and no one has invited you to their Korean summer home, absolutely no one.
Oh, and you ate all the sandwiches yourself, unable or unwilling to resist their siren call.
With these facts in mind, it’s hard not to label the festival a total wash, but luckily you walk away with some hardscrabble bits of new knowledge and self-truths:
1. IT’S A NAME GAME
A requisite of becoming a successful Mongolian indie rock band is that your band name must fit a strict “THE + ENGLISH NOUN OF YOUR CHOOSING” formula. Shout out to “The Lemons,” “The Colors,” “The Compass,” “The Electrics,” “The Tourists,” “The Vibes,” and the breathtaking imperialism of the English language.
2. YOU FRIGGIN’ LOVE “THE COLORS”
Favorite Mongolian band EVERRRRR! Check out the vid.
And yes… those ARE a pair of limited edition tribal print TOMS wrapped around the end of his jorts clad stems. Good eye.
3. IF OFFERED A FLAMING STICK OF CANCER, AKA CIGARETTE, YOU WILL TAKE ONE.
Sitting around a painfully small fire pit with a crowd of Mongolian fashion designers, your gut reaction (after losing 3 grandparents to lung cancer) is to slap the offending death stick away and shriek “I DO NOT SUPPORT ‘BIG TOBACCO.’” But upon realizing the cinematic value of the moment you will instead gracefully accept the flaming stick of cancer and focus on how friggin’ cool you looked when you casually lit your cigarette on that smoldering log. Puff, puff, AWESOME!
4. EVERY MINUTE SPENT DANCING IN THE RAIN WILL RESULT IN A CORRESPONDING 15 MINUTES SPENT SHIVERING NAKED IN YOUR TENT, EATING KRAFT SINGLES, AND HOPING THAT YOUR PANTS DRY BEFORE YOU FALL OVER DEAD WITH PNEUMONIA.
That “oh-so-liberating” feeling you got when you peeled back the hood of your already drenched rain coat and jumped up and down with the fangirls in the front will fade very quickly… and then you will just be cold, wet, and very sad for the following 12 hours.
5. YOU’RE NOT PUNK BUT AFTER 1 ½ BEERS YOU’RE OKAY WITH THAT
Everyone at the festival looks like a long-lost Asian member of The Clash, leading you to question the moss-green crochet sweater you pulled on today. No matter, wasn’t your beloved creative writing instructor in a punk band in the 80’s? And you guys got along swimmingly! After nursing your beer and a half over the span of 3 hours, you feel bold enough to join in on the headbanging fun.
But then one of the sweaty punks yells out what sounds like, “P*sda! P*sda! P*sda!” and your host sister, blushing, tells you it’s the filthiest curse word in Mongolian. Though she is all of 17, she refuses to translate.
However, her friend takes a risk and looks you straight in the eyes.
“Vagina,” she whispers.
Your headbanging comes to a slow but definitive halt…
6. YOU WILL FORM AN INSTANT THOUGH OFTEN TOTALLY MISGUIDED CONNECTION WITH ANY AND ALL FOREIGNERS.
This leads to a slight awkward moment when you realize your beeline towards the middle aged Norwegian man may have been misconstrued as deeply age inappropriate “flirting” by his equally middle aged girlfriend.
7. TRY AS YOU MIGHT TO DENY IT, DEEP DOWN YOU ARE A CURMUDGEON AND YOU WILL CURL UP IN YOUR SLEEPING BAG BEFORE ANYONE ELSE AND SILENTLY CURSE WHOEVER MADE THE EXECUTIVE DECISION TO PITCH THE TENT LESS THAN 10 METERS FROM THE DUBSTEP STAGE.
Sopping wet and curled up with a comforter you have become a literal wet blanket, and it is here and now that you will finish the last of the tuna fish sandwiches and wait for 2 a.m. when the pounding dubstep is replaced with marginally softer hard rock.
No matter, the grand curmudgeon trudges onwards and lives to curmudge another evening.
The truth is that you’ve never been to Coachella, but you kind of hope it’s not all that much like Play Time because you spend most of it feeling out of place and very, very wet. Your failure to pick up the most basic Mongolian phrases leaves you clueless, ignored, and completely starved for whatever English conversation you can grab a hold of.
“It’s nice to MEAT you!” the lady with the cat whiskers cried, pointing at the little plastic pork chop attached to her bag.
And it is. It really, really is.
Photo credit: Mariah Oxley
(‘16, English) is from Minneapolis, “The Pittsburgh of the Midwest.”