LA Weekly

By Peter Fletcher

I was reminiscing with my buddy, Bruce Duff, after watching Celebrity Skin at the Detour festival in downtown LA. We were talking about the LA underground music scene back in the late 80s and early 90s (and lamenting the lack of one nowadays) and how there was a camaraderie between the local bands. I may sound like an old coot, but it’s true.

Every week there was a cool bill that was spread around between acts such as: Celebrity Skin, Tex and the Horse Heads, Groovy Red Necks, the Ringling Sisters, the Antja Mimes, Dread Zeppelin, Dumpster, Junk Yard, the Hangmen, Osgood Slaughter and Tragic Mulatto (both from San Francisco but embraced down here), Plastic Cadillac, the Nymphs, Liquid Jesus, the Cadillac Tramps, Motorcycle Boy, L7, Haunted Garage, Christie McCool, Duchess De Sade, Hole, Karmagedon, Fag, Green Jell-O, Rommel’s Goggles, New Improved God, LAPD, Jane’s Addiction, (the one that got away), Seizure Salad, (One of my faves and was only together for about ten minutes), and my unit, Pigmy Love Circus, from downtown LA. These bands didn’t attract droves of hot girls in mini-dresses, and we didn’t make any money, but we could knock any hair band that played the strip on their collective asses.

There were venues ‘o’ plenty to dismantle and relieve of all beer on the premises. Along with the more mainstream rooms like The Whiskey, the Palace, the Roxy and Gazzarri’s, there was Madam Wong’s and Madam Wong’s West, Club 88, Lectisternium, the Coconut Teaser, the Music Machine, the Gaslight, Al’s Bar, Ground Zero, the Shamrock, Raji’s, the Florentine Gardens, Red Light District and the Club Lingerie.

Read on...

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Detour's over, but I just got sent a link to a ton of great shots from the DJ stage, including the Ed Banger set, including DJ Medhi and Justice. Great shots of the spinning, crowd surfing, fist-pumping action taken by Cesar Alvarado. Click the link to see the Flickr set from him.

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LA Weekly Detour Festival
Downtown Los Angeles, October 6.
By Randall Roberts

You can tell a good music festival by the number of sprinters, joggers, and speed walkers racing from stage to stage during set lulls -- you know, the excited fans torn between two bands, not wanting to leave one but not wanting to be late for the next. At good events, the crowd ends up in this semi-suspended state, present joy wrestling expected joy until one pins the other and, lo, you gotta take off running or commit to staying.

You can't see everything at the LA Weekly Detour Festival. But in an event with four stages, participants must decide on their festival philosophy: to float carelessly from stage to stage, or to commit. Those who decided on the former – which I did – missed some bands they probably should have seen, but were less stressed about it in the end. At one point I was walking toward the City Hall East stage when a grumpy girl in red Chuck Taylors angrily snapped at her boyfriend, “I can’t believe I missed Kinky.” (I felt the same way, but I was stuck at the Comedians of Comedy stage, where Brent Weinbach was obscenely, disturbingly brilliant.)

People ran to see Perry Ferrell’s Satellite Party as though he were doling out free joints (not that there was anywhere near a scarcity, based on an unscientific whiff test), but I’ll never forgive him for that shitty theme song for Entourage, let alone the very existence of Porno for Pyros. It was during his set that some girl, out of the blue shouted, “God, I love L.A.,” and she really truly meant it.

Read on...

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The show didn't end after Kinky, but my laptop battery did. After a full day of jogging up and down the streets to catch good bands, things seemed to slow after the sun went down - not in the quality of the music, but definitely set times. Satellite Party may not have started late, but they finished kind of late. Closing the set with "Stop," and "Jane Says" though (and "The Mountain Song" a little earlier), no one complained.

Raveonettes sounded good, but apologized for not quite matching the festive mood of the audience. "You've been drinking all day. We haven't." Indeed. Then the wait for Justice to start seemed to go for way too long. Most people didn't seem to mind though. Matt Fleischer wandered by trying to find a Sprite, which I had to admit sounded like a damn good plan.

Here are some videos of some of the performances from last night. A good time had by all. And unlike the Chicago marathon, no one got hurt.

Justice

The Noisettes: Count of Monte Cristo

The Noisettes:Bridge To Canada

Teddybears

Satellite Party - Jane Says

Satellite Party - Stop

Turbonegro

Raveonettes

Aliens

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Up until now, it's been a lot of pleasant surprises: bands that maybe a lot of people hadn't been too familiar with, but ended up digging.

Not so with Kinky. Thousands are standing in front of the stage, while Kinky do their Underworld by way of Mexico City Monterrey thing, and loving it big time. Of yeah, Pink just danced her way backstage.

Still, no more beer for me... Someone reading this would do well to bring me one. Here's some Kinky pix:

The really good news is that it's dark now and I'm not a good enough photographer to shoot bands in the dark, so I can go get that beer now.

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Who do I gotta blow to get a drink around here?

It's very annoying that you have to choose between drinks and seeing bands. The "beer garden" is roped off and you can't see a stage anywhere from it. I guess I get it though, because there's also a lot of 14 year olds wandering around, which, if I was 14, this would be a pretty cool place to be.

Shout Out Louds: They're fucking great. Read John Payne's interview with 'em. And they played a good 45 seconds of The Clash's Train in Vain, which is a pretty good way to make friends with a couple thousand dancing fools standing around downtown while the sun goes down.

I was on my way to see Comedians of Comedy when I got sidetracked by Obama's crew, then realized Shout Out Louds were playing and backtracked. Patton Oswalt, I'm sorry.

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"Yea Sweden!" Someone from the crowd yelled at John Englebert from Johnossi, "You've got good health care!"

"Yeah - California loves Sweden," he replied. Johnossi's album doesn't come out in the U.S. until Tuesday, but it'd be hard to be more impressed with it than their live show. A two-piece (acoustic Guitar and drums), Johnossi wrangles a surprisingly killer electric army out of his beat up guitar with the help of a lot of amps and pedals. The 2-piece rock/roots thing is nothing new at this point - nor are excellent bands coming from Sweden - but that doesn't mean you shouldn't check em out.

The Noisettes, from London, have a wicked not-secret weapon in their front-woman Shingai Shoniwa. Punk/blues/Karen O rolled into a pair of gold hot pants, they're currently holding the crowd pretty spellbound. And Shingai just invited the crowd back to her trailer "If you can sneak back there," so I'm gonna give it a try.

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I managed to miss the Aggrolites, which sucks, cuz they're mean and fun. I caught them at the Getty Museum courtyard earlier in the summer and they were excellent - too good to be playing so early in the day here at Detour. Well, I didn't miss them entirely... I could hear what i think was them, while I walked block after block around L.A. looking for the entrance to this place. roots reggae punk songs with slicked back hair and much tougher looking then their exellent musical chops might indicate.

Did catch, and as usual dug The Deadly Syndrome. Indie rock with synths and Chris Richards' shiny high voice sounded mighty nice on this clear L.A. day.

Every 15 minutes that passes out here I see more cops. It's like they're multiplying like bacteria. Come on down, there's still plenty of time before Turbonegro plays.

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Saturday, October 6. Gates are at noon. Here are the stage lineups:

City Hall East

Bloc Party 10-11:30
Teddybears 8:30-9:30
Satellite Party 7:10-8:00
Kinky 6:00-6:45
The Noisettes 4:50-5:35
The Cool Kids 3:40-4:20
Nico Vega 2:50-3:20
Pity Party 2:00-2:30

City Hall South

Busy P, DJ Medhi, Sebastian, Kavinsky, So Me 10:10-11:45
Justice 9:10-10:10
Moving Units 7:55-8:45
Autolux 6:40-7:25
Shout Out Louds 5:30-6:20
Johnossi 4:30-5:05
The Deadly Syndrome 3:40-4:10
Scissors for Lefty 2:50-3:20
Mink 2:00-2:30

City Hall West

Turbonegro 10:00-11:00
Celebrity Skin 8:50-9:30
The Raveonettes 7:30-8:15
Comedians of Comedy 4:55-7:10
The Aliens 4:00-4:40
The Aggrolites 3:05-3:40
Augie March 2:10-2:40
DJ Darren Revell of Indie 103.1 1:00-2:00

City Hall Plaza

DJ Paul V of Indie 103.1 9:30-10:30
Le Castle Vania 8:00-9:30
Busy P, DJ Medhi, Sebastian, Kavinsky, So Me 4:30-8:00
Franki Chan 3:30-4:30
Travis Keller 1:30-3:00
Bruce Perdew Noon-1:30

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Some performances from last year's Detour Festival...

Beck - Mixed Bizzness

Basement Jaxx

Beck - Clap Hands

Oh No! Oh My!

The 2nd annual Detour Festival is this Saturday in downtown L.A. Click here for ticket information and the full list of bands, including Kinky, Turbonegro, Satellite Party, Justice and Bloc Party

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