AN EXTRAORDINARY SNOW-LESS SNOWGLOBE 2017

Jan. 5, 2018 

Every music festival carries a unique reputation. They develop stories based on the collective experiences of their attendees.

All of the rumors I heard in anticipation of my first experience at South Lake Tahoe’s SnowGlobe included snow and great music.

When I arrived in South Lake Tahoe, I was immediately concerned with what I saw. Something was missing from the spectacular view of the lake. There wasn’t a drop of snow.

Ski runs looked unskiable. The final miles of the drive felt surprisingly comfortable with the windows down. If my car would even make the final miles of the drive at all was something I had worriedly pondered the entire way over from the Bay Area and rode on with absolute ease.

I began to worry that I had been misled. But with encouragement from a new crew that I quickly bonded with, as only a music festival can allow, and made the journey to South Lake Tahoe Community College to kick off the weekend.

Luckily, fans had plenty left in store for the night with killer performances on the two secondary stages. Troyboi threw down a groovy trapfest on the outdoor Sierra stage, with its colored-block visuals rotating among the forest in the background, while Tycho melted the crowd in the Igloo tent. With the single disappointment from Scott among the absolute parties held throughout the first day, I knew this festival would still live up to all of the hype I had heard previously and couldn’t wait for Saturday.

Day two brought more wonderful vibes, a little more mud, and a lot more onesies. K?D stood out in the early performances, rocking the Sierra stage prior to a long stretch of powerful main stage shows. Porter Robinson delivered with the hardest of any set I had ever experienced from him in precisely the fashion I’d hoped for following his debut album as Virtual Self in early December. Later on, Dillon Francis delivered an hour of nonstop, Tahoe-shaking drops before Madeon closed down the main stage with a show that couldn’t have felt more fluid in its set-planning and well-timed visuals.

That it was New Year’s Eve only added to the promise of an unforgettable Day Three that lay in wait Sunday. Joyzu, DROELOE, Quinn XCII, and Petit Biscuit ignited the crowds in the early performances before Snakehips. Ultimately, Gryffin brought the energy to a peak that would ride well into the early hours of 2018.

One of the most highly anticipated shows of the festival – San Holo on the Sierra stage – delivered on all of my expectations with crowd-pleasing drops of canon tracks We Rise and Light and a few surprise jam sessions on his guitar.

E-40, Jai Wolf, and Oliver kept the energy level high heading into the final shows of the weekend and the countdown to the new year as nearly every fan in the venue made their way to the main stage for headliner Alison Wonderland.