King Beenie Man's gonna be headlining Best of the Best 2013.

Come summer, reggae festivals are as commonplace in the States as Bob Marley tees are at reggae festivals.

Held every Memorial Day weekend in downtown Miami since 2007, Best of the Best is one of the only annual fests in the U.S. that puts the emphasis squarely on dancehall, and it's certainly the largest.

After taking on more and more hip-hop acts in its last few editions, this year's festival returns to its roots with a strictly Caribbean lineup.

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-Review: Best of the Best 2012 With Fabolous, Meek Mill, Ace Hood

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Since 1955, Haiti has offered the world a uniquely danceable and infectiously sexy music known as compas, konpa, and kompa. The Kreyol language has only been standardized in written form since 1979, so there are several ways to spell everything.

But what has hindered Kreyol's literal documentation has strengthened its oral tradition and imbued its speech patterns with a rhythmic musicality all their own. The Haitian cultural traditions of playful double entendres, shifting shades of meaning, and colorful aphorisms charge its music with a literary quality that highlight its rhythmic fervor.

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Via facebook.com/JamCruise

Feel it, maaaaaan.

As the superpositive peeps over at Cloud 9 Productions gush: "We want to take a moment to tell you, the Jam Cruise community, just how much we love and cherish you

"The memories of all we have been through together over the past decade mean the world to us, there truly is nothing quite like Jam Cruise and we don't take that for granted for one second!"

Oh yeah, these jammin', cruisin' folks "love you guys!" And that's why they've just unloaded a massively melodic and exotic lineup for your 2014 "musical adventure of a lifetime."

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Photo by Eric Garcia

The Wanee masses, fully prepped for a freakout.

My band, Juke, was invited to play our first Wanee Festival last year, up at the Spirit of Swanee Music Park in Live Oak, Florida.

We played the opening night's festivities, rocked out, and suffered from a bit of culture shock. This 500-plus-acre park just outside Georgia is in the middle of nowhere.

Now the four-day festival is absolutely awesome. It is incredibly well run and attended by nearly 40,000 people. But I still didn't understand it.

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-Uncle Scotchy (AKA Eric Garcia) Talks Dirty Blues and Boozing Better Than Your Daddy
-Wanee Festival 2012: A Mothered, Covered 'n' Capped Report From Juke's Eric Garcia

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Photo by Alex Broadwell

It wouldn't be Sweatstock without some good old-fashioned Miami freakiness.

Maybe in Canada the music festivals end with handshakes and strangers gently complimenting each other on their felt hats. But this is Miami, where nothing's over until it has weird, probably videotaped sex with you. And Sweatstock 2013 was no exception. But this time, instead of some gal with her second butt implant waiting on layaway, our half-remembered lovers were a pair of synth-melting party starters.

See also:
-Holly Hunt: "Without Churchill's and Sweat, It'd Be Nearly Impossible to Sustain a Scene"
-Sweatstock 2013 at Sweat Records:The 52-Photo Slideshow
-Sweatstock 2013: World of Shit, Nunhex, Beastplague!
-Sweatstock 2013: ANR, This Heart Electric, Testokra!

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Timothy Norris

Native American Headdresses
These have still not gone away. In fact, one particularly irritating woman (not pictured) wore a towering feather mohawk weave, a sartorial statement that combined racism with rave gaudiness. On Friday, she pushed her way in front of us, obstructing our and everyone else's view of the show. Congratulations, lady, you're Coachella's worst person!
-Andrea Domanick

See also:
-Coachella 2013: The 13 Best Moments of Weekend Two
-People Smuggling Drugs Into Coachella 2013, From Shoe Stashes to Marijuana Bras
-Six Tips for Doing Drugs at Music Festivals and Not Getting Screwed by the Police
-Hottest Dancing Girls at Coachella 2013 in Animated GIF!

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Photo by Alex Broadwell

No one eats mics like This Heart Electric's Ricardo Guerrero.

Sweatstock is for lovers.

Lovers of independent music and record stores, yes. But also lovers of drunken groping before the sun has fully gone down. A good chunk of the attendees of Sweatstock 2030 were conceived indoors (and out) this weekend, spurred on by a hurricane season clothing-optional dress code, some pretty solid drink specials, and the romantic sounds of sweetly strident pop, beachfront garage rock, and atonal punk.

See also:
-Holly Hunt: "Without Churchill's and Sweat, It'd Be Nearly Impossible to Sustain a Scene"
-Sweatstock 2013 at Sweat Records:The 52-Photo Slideshow
-Sweatstock 2013: World of Shit, Nunhex, Beastplague!
-Sweatstock 2013: Beatmachines and Otto Von Schirach!

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LP Hastings

Butterfly?!

The Visual Stimulations for People Who Were High
Coachella's art installations -- the ones designed to impress you while you're high, aka all of them -- were particularly impressive this year. There was the tesla coil, the crane that was formerly a flower but now a praying mantis, the giant florescent snail, the golf cart that looks like a jellyfish, as well as remote controlled sharks and butterflys (above). There was also a structure designed to look like a mid-century, Palm Springs modernist mansion, called the Mirage. Projections onto the house created the illusion of a swimming pool, and a swinging cocktail party. Then there was the "Coachella Power Station," at which guys in hippo masks and white lab coats stood in a glassed room, like mad scientists, playing around with computer, video, and stereo equipment. Occasionally, they danced to Ricki Martin. -Ben Westhoff

See also:
-Coachella 2013: The 10 Worst Moments of Weekend Two
-People Smuggling Drugs Into Coachella 2013, From Shoe Stashes to Marijuana Bras
-Six Tips for Doing Drugs at Music Festivals and Not Getting Screwed by the Police
-Hottest Dancing Girls at Coachella 2013 in Animated GIF!

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Photo by Alex Broadwell

Put another Sweatstock in the wrinkly, rain-faded books. The fourth installment of Sweat Records' anniversary party and Record Store Day celebration played out on three stages in Little Haiti.

But it's not just good times and dancing in the intermittent sun. It is also bleak, stomach-turning angst inside Churchill's, Miami's only concert venue to have athlete's foot, despite having neither any feet nor inclinations to athleticism. Bathroom-borne extremophiles and heavy music fans alike had much to rejoice in this Sweatstock, including a loud-as-fuck supergroup, some hairy punk and some menacing (and one-third shirtless) grindcore.

See also:
-Holly Hunt: "Without Churchill's and Sweat, It'd Be Nearly Impossible to Sustain a Scene"
-Sweatstock 2013 at Sweat Records:The 52-Photo Slideshow
-Sweatstock 2013: ANR, This Heart Electric, Testokra!
-Sweatstock 2013: Beatmachines and Otto Von Schirach!

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Photo by Marco Torres

This guy didn't bring any drugs into the festival, but his blasé attitude was not embraced by security officials.

If you were at Coachella, chances are you experienced full-throttle security measures attempting to snatch any drugs. As usual, these included three tiers of security checkpoints, at which eventgoers were frisked and searched. It can all feel a bit personal, particularly considering that drugs and Coachella are practically synonymous.

But the on-site cops' attempts to snatch our crops didn't stop many people from trying to have the best darn weekend of their lives. Here are some stories about attempted smugglings.

See also:
-Coachella 2013: The 12 Best Moments of Weekend Two
-Six Tips for Doing Drugs at Music Festivals and Not Getting Screwed by the Police
-Hottest Dancing Girls at Coachella 2013 in Animated GIF!

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