Are you at Coachella? Guns N’ Roses, fans flock to desert

While Los Angeles is usually a center of American music, a small desert town near Palm Springs is the center of the music world this weekend.

Guns N’ Roses returns to Indio Saturday, set to headline the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival before a crowd of thousands following a two-concert stop south of the border.

Guns N’ Roses’ performance comes on the heels of a recent reunion announcement that brought three of the band’s original members together for the “Not in This Lifetime” tour, which kicked off April 1 at the Troubadour in Los Angeles. The tour took the band to Mexico City for two shows between last Saturday’s Coachella performance and today.

Frontman Axl Rose, guitarist Slash and bassist Duff McKagan are performing together for the first time since the mid-90s.

Rose, however, performed the band’s entire Coachella set sitting down on a throne made of guitar necks, his left leg encased in a walking boot after he fractured a bone in his foot during the band’s impromptu Troubadour show. AC/DC’s Angus Young also made an appearance with the band last Saturday.

Today’s schedule will also include Ice Cube on the main stage, who was joined last Saturday by Snoop Dogg, Common, MC Ren, DJ Yella, and his son, O’Shea Jackson, Jr. for a partial N.W.A. reunion.

Most of the day’s performances will play out at about the same times as last Saturday–with a few exceptions.

U.K. band Lush, originally set to perform at 4:35 p.m. last Saturday, had to cancel their first weekend appearance due to Visa issues. However, the band, which also recently reunited after a nearly two-decade hiatus, is set to perform this weekend at 4:35 p.m. today on the Gobi stage.

U.K rapper Skepta and DJ Sasha, who were forced to cancel their first weekend performances, also remained out of this weekend’s lineup.

A few opening acts have also stepped in to replace a few first weekend performers.

Palm Desert-based band The Flusters will open at the Outdoor Theatre instead of brightener, another group hailing from Palm Desert. Big Game and DJ Morsy will also replace Dirty Mop and Jimbo Jenkins at the Sahara Tent.

Other new additions for the second weekend include a tribute to the recently deceased Prince. The festival’s 2008 poster will be on display, highlighting the year Prince headlined the festival, as well as a shrine with purple flowers and decorations. The 57-year-old musician was found dead Thursday in an elevator at his Chanhassen, Minnesota studio.

Though tickets sold out months ago, select festival sets will be livestreamed at www.youtube.com/user/coachella for those who can’t make it. Youtube will feature 360-degree video streams and spatial audio, a feature that was only recently debuted for this year’s SXSW festival in March.

Those who are in attendance today will experience somewhat calmer, if not cooler, weather. Winds that pummeled the region Friday were expected to die down this morning.

A National Weather Service wind advisory that went into effect Friday at 5 p.m. for the Coachella Valley was set to expire at 5 a.m. today. Festival- goers and drivers alike were still advised to exercise caution from dust and sand that typically accompanies the desert winds.

The second weekend was expected to draw nearly another 100,000 people to the region, who poured into the Coachella Valley Friday morning via Interstate 10 and the 60 Freeway, slowing eastbound traffic considerably in some areas. Should traffic continue to clog highways today, Caltrans identified State Routes 62 and 74 as two possible detour routes.

However, the influx of visitors has also contributed to better things than traffic, according to a recent financial analysis. The annual festival brings in more than $704 million in spending by attendees according to figures released by the Greater Palm Springs Desert Resorts Convention & Visitors Bureau and the Coachella Valley Economic Partnership.

Thanks to a recent Indio City Council vote, the festival’s attendance will only grow in the coming years. This month, the council unanimously approved a plan to expand the festival’s attendance cap from 99,000 to 125,000.