The 2013 first-weekend of Coachella is in the books, and like its predecessors, there were certainly enough magical moments to make it worth all the walking and standing and suffering through enduring heat and even a major dust storm on its final night. (Also, in my case, moments that made it worth the three separate flights it took to get from West Central Florida to Palm Springs.)
Although the headline of New York Times reporter Jon Carmonica's review claims "Nostalgia Trumps Newness," in fact, this springtime music fest has always married the past with the current, and sometimes the underground present, as well as the growing up-and-comers in the indie, hip hop and electronic dance music worlds. [Photo courtesy of the Coachella FB page.]
FRIDAY
It shouldn't come as a surprise that the first awesome moments of the festival for me and all others gathered inside the Mohave Stage came Friday afternoon around 4:20 p.m., when Johnny Marr launched into the opening chords of The Smiths' "Stop Me if You Think That You've Heard This Before."
The 49-year-old has spent most of his post-Smiths career (which ended in 1987) playing with a variety of bands, with the exception of his own group, Johnny Marr and the Healers, in 2000. But he has a strong new solo release out now called The Messenger, and those songs went over very well with those in attendance. But it was his three Smiths songs that blew everyone away. He also performed "There is a Light That Never Goes Out, and absolutely melted down the audience in the Mohave stage with the epic, "How Soon is Now?"
[More after the jump...]
