FMLY Fest Don't Need 
No Stinking Venues

Dustin Muenchow

The Light Rays outside Bergamot Station in Santa Monica, in March of 2010

​Cameron Rath is a Charles Manson look-alike with a degree in urban sustainability. He's the mastermind behind FMLY, a gang of eco-conscious punk kids who put on bike rides and concerts in unlikely spaces.

A typical FMLY ride, held once a month, features 300 folks on bikes tearing ass along a nebulous path usually bookended by Culver City and West Adams. They hit the road in search of four or five under-the-radar bands that Rath has equipped with generators in the empty corners of the city -- such as a derelict shopping mall in Inglewood or a corporate cul-de-sac vacant after business hours. Like a treasure hunt on wheels, the riders take in half-hour sets from noiseniks like Professor Calculus or krautrockers like Religious Girls. After they've been whipped into a frenzy they hit the streets again, on their way to the next stageless miniconcert. "I have a loose definition of 'public space,' " Rath says.

Dustin Muenchow

Penmar Recreation Center in Venice, 2/2010

​FMLY doesn't stand for anything -- the tight-knit group's members simply see themselves as family. Perhaps their greatest triumph has been putting together all-ages shows in a city where such events are scarce. How so? By getting rid of the venue altogether. Now in its fourth year, FMLY Fest, like the namesake rides, is held at off-the-radar spots. Last year it was in a geodesic tent outside a vegan cobbler stand at Venice and La Brea, and this year it will be at Catnap, a community-sponsored rec center on Spring Street, on Dec. 29 and a Chuco's, a sprawling warehouse complex near the Chinatown cornfields, on Dec. 30.

Rath has booked four dozen acts, including psychedelic knuckleheads (Vacation Dad, W-H-I-T-E), let-it-rip garage revivalists (FIDLAR, M31, Cosmonauts), Smell-style indie acts (So Many Wizards, Pangea) and a surfeit of synth-heavy dance music. What these groups lack in common musically, they make up for in the "do-it-together" FMLY ethos.

"There's a special kind of energy that comes from not having a venue," says rapper Ryan Pardeiro. As one half of multimedia duo Kid Infinity -- FMLY vets who are playing their second fest -- Pardeiro released "The End Is Never Now" in June in honor of the resourcefulness that has become the hallmark of the FMLY Ride. (Sample lyric: "Take all that wasted trash, it's not nothing/Build it into something fresh that means something.")