Sunset Junction Day 1 - 08-23-08

Moo!

Usually Sunset Junction falls on the same weekend as GenCon, so Saturday was my first time attending the event. The festival is older than I am so I can't really speak towards what it used to be, or how its history of uniting the Latino and gay residents of Silverlake may or may not have been displaced by corporate interest. (Oh, but it looks grim.)

But as a first-timer, day one of the east LA street fair was a scarcely mitigated disaster, made easier to handle only by a couple of well-played sets by local bands early on.

Taking public transportation from Echo Park to Silverlake was difficult. To begin with, the Metro drivers did not seem to have been briefed on where festival goers would want to deboard. Then again, it was hard for festival goers themselves to know this since the Sunset Junction website offered no map of the festival grounds. Huh. Maybe because 24 hours before the festival, the organizers themselves did not yet know. (This meant no layout maps w/ schedule available on-site, either.)

Will Call tickets were only available at the Bates entrance -- on the west side of the festival. I spoke with security workers at three different entrances and not one knew where the Bates entrance was. How is this possible? How can you work security and not know the entrances? In fact, two people did not know what "Will Call" was, and another did not know that Will Call buyers did not print their tickets and did not need a printed confirmation. Finally one worker actually admitted me without a wristband so that I could walk across Sunset to the Will Call pickup -- and he sent me to the wrong end of the street.

I arrived at Will Call five or so minutes after the first band was supposed to start. The Will Call pickup site did not yet have the list of Will Call buyers. This did not matter since the Bates stage was about an hour behind schedule before gates opened, thanks to a lengthy Cold War Kids soundcheck. Will Call finally started admitting attendees an hour after music was supposed to start.

The idea of buying your tickets in advance is to reward those purchasers, not punish them.

As a result of the delay, local bands were told to cut their sets to 3-5 songs. Sunset Junction has a noise curfew to meet, so the compromise was rational. The unfortunate thing is that these bands agreed not to play a month before or a month after the festival. They were rewarded with paltry fifteen minute sets that prevented them from flexing their talents.

Perhaps the bands ultimately fared better. They played for less time, but because they were playing later, they played for more people. Still, for a festival that purports to celebrate the neighborhood's culture and diversity it is ironic that they cared little for the offerings of local musicians. At least the Red Bull was free!


And then there was the joy-disrupting emcee of The Bates stage, Diz. You may remember Diz from the seminal Nickelodeon television show Out of Control (00:50), or perhaps you have purchased a magazine from her. Diz's shrieking introductions to the bands on the Bates stage seemed to ignore the fundamental function of the microphone: It amplifies things for you. You know, so you don't have into yell into it.

Her intros were vapid, and clearly she had no knowledge (or even awareness) of the bands she was introducing. It is an insult to the musicians in our community to introduce them by saying "I hear they're really good" or "you're really going to like this". Let the music speak for itself, it doesn't need empty hype.

Out of control.

Why is she the Emcee? I understand it is a tradition, but why not Kat Corbett? Well, obviously, because Indie 103.1 so closely associated with the event, but wouldn't have Mr. Shovel or Jose Galvan been a more appropriate, respectful choice? If this is a festival that is really about the neighborhood then organizers should make sure that knowledgeable people present the neighborhood's musical offerings.

Speaking of those offerings...


Radars to the Sky, one of Los Angeles' best-honed acts, had the embarrassing opening slot. (They should have been playing just before Broken Social Scene) They made the best of it though, delivering a passioned, energetic (if shortened) set of their classic-styled indie rock. The impact of a Radars to the Sky set exponentially increases as the songs follow each other, like a pressure cooker, so the shortened length was particularly damaging. But they played courageously all the same. The faces behind me reflected this.










The Happy Hollows had a slightly harder time of it, though they still sounded pretty great. I think they thrive on atmospheric vibe and the vibe was not good considering the festival gaffes, so that being understood, I was impressed. The positives: "Lieutenant" gets to be a better song with every performance and "Colors" is fast becoming my favorite. Death to Anders guitarist Nick Ceglio assisted on a couple songs. Hollows frontwoman Sarah Negahdari, one of LA's finest, deftly used most of the stage space as she frolicked about.











Somehow it has been eight months since I have seen Castledoor. They were one of my Top 10 Local Bands in 2007. Castledoor combines the shambling sounds of indie rock with fluttery folk qualities and puts a male pop vocalist at the front of it. The mixture is typically delightful.

For some reason I found their performance at Sunset Junction a little underwhelming. A lot of the charm of the band seemed to be gone and I wonder if maybe they grow weary of their songs. Or perhaps they are simply better suited for a more intimate setting. Nathan Cole's voice still does it for me.

Doo doo... doo dee doo doo dee de doo de doo...

Bodies of Water aren't my bag. "Ohhhh, whoaaa, ooo" is not a song lyric.



I caught two songs of Jonathan Rice and was really bored. I saw some snippets of the Scorsese Bob Dylan documentary last week and it made me realize how meaningless a singer-songwriter today can be. Really? You really think you have something to offer to the singer-songwriter universe 40 years after 1960's Bob Dylan? You got something better, different, or unique/specific to today?

"The middle of the road, it's summer time in California"? Really? Good luck, man.


I like a lot of psych rock revival and don't pretend for it to be a new thing. But The Entrance Band were so much of an old thing that, well, it was sort of like having the Led Zeppelin wikipedia entry read to you.




Langhorne Slim had the rootsy Americana thing going on by the bushel. More of An Aquarium Drunkard kind of thing than a Classical Geek Theatre kind of thing, but they were fun. At least they sounded genuine.



As a whole, the Bates' stage on day one was an abortion. The best, most exciting live acts played first, were demeaned by a witless Emcee, and had their sets halved. Organizers clearly paid more attention to managers and publicists than they did the culture bubbling-up from the pavement beneath their own feet in their own neighborhood. This should not surprise me. There was free Red Bull! I shortchanged myself by not expanding my own horizons at the other stages.


I had a generic, flavorless papusa and a seven dollar beer for the experience. I tried to watch Broken Social Scene, but I got over Dave Mathews Band eight years ago and decorating that kind of droll with some hipster flourish and a little bit of guitar buzz does not an interesting band make.

(photo courtesy of Simon Cardoza)

(photo courtesy of Simon Cardoza)

(photo courtesy of Simon Cardoza)

(photo courtesy of Simon Cardoza)

(photo courtesy of Simon Cardoza)

The prospect of The Cold War Kids was not enough to keep me.

(photo courtesy of Simon Cardoza)

(photo courtesy of Simon Cardoza)