Well, the festival season is officially underway now. Over the next new months, rock fans with sufficient ambition and/or frequent flier miles can embark on a never-ending festival bender that includes the Pitchfork Festival (Chicago, July 18-20), Hardfest (Los Angeles, July 19), Download Festival (Los Angeles, July 20), Lollapalooza (Chicago, August 1-3), All Points West (New Jersey, August 8-10), the Virgin Mobile Festival (Baltimore, August 9-10), Bumbershoot (Seattle, August 30-September 1), All Tomorrow's Parties (New York, September 19-20), the Street Scene (San Diego, September 19-20), Austin City Limits (Austin, of course, September 26-28), the Voodoo Music Experience (New Orleans, October 24-26), the Warped Tour, Ozzfest...

...and that's just the big U.S. festivals, for starters. Truly ambitious festival regulars willing to brave international airlines' ever-lengthening baggage check-in lines (along with festivals' ever-lengthening porta-potty lines) can also make a transatlantic pilgrimage to all the big rockfests going on in Europe, like Britain's Reading and V Festivals.

But let's not forget where it all began this season: at the annual festival-kickoff event, the one, the only...Coachella. That's when all the real rock fans packed up their sunscreen and beer hats and headed to the California desert for the first of many days of rock 'n' roll fun in the sun.

We blogged earlier about the Coachella festival in April, and here are the day-by-day reports:

THURSDAY: Operation Desert Storm Begins

FRIDAY: Gettin' Smurfed, Cannonball Runs, And Other Adventures

SATURDAY: Partying Like It's 1999

SUNDAY: When Pigs Fly

But of course we couldn't see everything--especially, unfortunately, some of the smaller babybands that went on at the ungodly (well, ungodly by hungover-festival-attendee standards) hour of 1pm, when it was still something like 221 degrees in the practically-nonexistent shade.

So before we head out to any of the festivals mentioned in the opening paragraph above, we're going to get in the mood by brushing up on what we might have missed the first time around at Coachella. Feel free to do the same:

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