No Stranger to Scandal, Spitzer Says Weiner ‘Can Come Back’

As he considers a potential mayoral run in the wake of an online sex scandal, the former congressman Anthony D. Weiner has won a vote of confidence from a politician who can identify with his predicament: Eliot Spitzer.

Mr. Spitzer, who resigned in 2008 as governor of New York amid revelations that he had solicited prostitutes, said in a radio interview that Mr. Weiner “will make it as a serious candidate if he plunges in, as I think he will.”

The former governor predicted that after a period of public contrition Mr. Weiner would “very soon go from being the candidate who had to fight to get in to being a candidate.”

Mr. Spitzer made the remarks during an interview with Mark Green â€" himself a former candidate for New York City mayor â€" on the radio show “Both Sides Now,” to be broadcast at 9 p.m. tonight on WOR 710.

Mr. Spitzer seemed to encourage Mr. Weiner to run for mayor. “I think he can come back,” he said.

“He will have to persuade the public,” he said at another point. “He can do it.”

In an article that was published online this week, Mr. Weiner told the New York Times Magazine that he was weighing a bid for mayor and believed it was “now or maybe never for me, in terms of running for something.”

Mr. Spitzer made clear that Mr. Weiner would face a tough campaign, given the crowded field of Democratic rivals already in the race. Four years ago, when Mr. Weiner considered running for mayor, he “was the outer-borough, tough voice against Michael Bloomberg,” Mr. Spitzer said. “Now, he doesn’t have Michael Bloomberg as a foil.”

He added: “All the other Democratic candidates are trying to take the same space in one way, shape or form. So I think the harder part for him will be to explain why, in a field with Chris Quinn, Bill de Blasio, Billy Thompson, John Liu, how does he stand out and can he actually rise to the top of that field.”

Mr. Sptizer was joined during the interview by Mary Matalin, the conservative commentator, who was less generous in her assessment of Mr. Weiner. “He can’t help himself,” she said. “He’s an obnoxious guy.”

She added, “He is not charming. He is not Ed Koch charming.”

Even as Mr. Spitzer seemed to agree with Ms. Matlin, he pointed out that Mr. Koch was not considered charming when he won the mayoralty in 1977.

“Anthony Weiner,” he said, with a mix of admiration and disapproval, “made his name on the floor of the house acting out in a way that would have gotten most second graders sent to the principal.”

Coachella: A Few Sparks of Creative Rock

INDIO, Calif. â€" American rock music might get a bad rap, but its cancer begins from within. Major labels have all but tabled creative ambition, meaning that even bona fide indie stars may have to content themselves with being mini-scene champions for life. Early on Saturday at Coachella, there was a suite of young American bands trying to find a path out of the darkness.

First came the incandescent hardcore band Trash Talk, from Sacramento, who played short, smart and brutish. The frontman, Lee Spielman, looked a bit under the weather, but he still pounded the microphone against his forehead, fired back at a heckler and crowd-surfed even with his right leg in a cast.

A little ways away, the Nashville band Mona was punching its way through a set of greaser rock with melancholy undertones. “Cool party!” one of the band members kept saying, and it was refreshing to think he didn’t quite mean it.

Neither of those bands, though, feel like part of a larger zeitgeist-to-come, even if a hardcore revival is imminent (it’s the new metal â€" start the countdown) or if Mona has lots in common with a king-size post-bar band like the Gaslight Anthem, which will play here on Sunday.

Just after Mona finished, Shovels & Rope began playing on the adjacent stage. If there is an American rock movement of the now, this acoustic twosome from Charleston, S.C., is close to the nerve center. A married-couple folk act, Cary Ann Hearst and Michael Trent, they scream Newport Folk Festival more than Coachella, but in a post-Mumford & Sons world, this qualifies as pop. Of all this afternoon’s young bands, they were the softest, but they might make the loudest crash.

Coachella: Photos From Day 1

The photographer Chad Batka captured highlights from the first day of the music festival in California. See larger versions of the photos here.

Coachella: Photos From Day 1

The photographer Chad Batka captured highlights from the first day of the music festival in California. See larger versions of the photos here.

Coachella: Photos From Day 1

The photographer Chad Batka captured highlights from the first day of the music festival in California. See larger versions of the photos here.

Coachella: When the Band Is a Second Gig

INDIO, Calif., â€" It’s nice to have a hobby â€" a job can be stressful, especially when you are good at doing it and it keeps the lights on.

For a musician to take on a second band as a relief from the first generally implies that the one on the side is both less complex and less taxing than the main gig. But even with that said, there will be expectations, pressure and opportunity from the start on any such project.

For one thing, if you are a famous and well-regarded talent in your own right, you get to skip the usual hazing period and secure your charming little side project a slot at Coachella, beating out all sorts of charming projects by people who are not otherwise famous.

Friday’s lineup was teeming with such line-jumpers, performing with various degrees of laurel-resting. Early in the day came the Shouting Matches, a shambolic blues-esque outfit whose sales pitch is that it includes Justin Vernon of Bon Iver. The group took almost a half-hour for sound check, and its set was almost as loose. Mr. Vernon, such a precise and processed singer in Bon Iver, was here far more at ease, pushing his vocals no harder than the amiable songs demanded.

Later, in the dance-centric Sahara tent, Dog Blood performed a loud but not thunderous set. It’s a collaborative project of Skrillex and Boys Noize, and does not quite live up to Skrillex’s typical punishment or Boys Noize’s characteristic exuberance.

Other side projects sprinkled throughout the day included Divine Fits, which features Britt Daniel of Spoon among others. The somewhat dolorous Deathfix included Brendan Canty, drummer for Fugazi. And late in the night, Nick Cave played with Grinderman, his reunited side band, looking pleasantly agitated.

At midnight, behind a scrim, How to Destroy Angels took the stage in the Mojave tent. A side project of Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails â€" it also features his wife â€" it is a drowsy approximation of trip-hop, and is curiously inert, especially from someone so tactile and ferocious in his day job. Maybe he has nothing left to give.