Check out the guy in the red flannel at the bottom right corner of this shot by Mark "The Cobra Snake" Hunter from the LA Weekly's Detour Festival on Saturday. I can almost hear him thinking, "I've gone to every music festival in or around L.A. this summer, and I'm not quite sure why. Here I am squeezed in at Detour, getting armpit whiffs from the guy behind me. I've made it to the very front of the crowd and all I want to do is take a goddamn piss!"
Or maybe I'm just channeling here, because I think I might be suffering from festival fatigue. Ever since Coachella, which we endured so you didn't have to, it seemed like L.A. was saturated with music fesivals this summer. The season basically ended with Detour fest. Randall Roberts gives the festival a good look-over here, suggesting rightly that maybe French electro darlings of the moment Justice should do something about their live show: "Maybe they need a pyramid or something." Good idea.
I know a lot of people at the Weekly, both in the editorial and the business side, worked hard to make Detour happen. For that they deserve some kudos. But overall, most people I heard from said the festival was a good time but not as good as last year's. Couldn't compare as this was my first Detour. Still had a good time.
In any case, Lyndsey Parker, who blogs as L.A. Woman at NME.com, gives us a unique historical casting for Detour, arguing that it is a reincarnation of the mythical Street Scene fest in downtown L.A. in the late 1970s and early 1980s:
Years ago in happier times (1978-1986, that is), for one fabulous summer weekend per year, punk and grandmas and toddlers and jocks of all colors and creeds roamed the cordoned-off streets of downtown Los Angeles--arm in arm, hand in hand, all enjoying the rock stylings of local heroes like Jane's Addiction and the Three O'Clock -- and all was right with the world.
This weekend was called the L.A. Street Scene, and it was awesome.
But then some bad people with guns ruined it for everybody, the Ramones' Street Scene show was subsequently cancelled, thousands of angry young Ramones fans subsequently rioted, stormtrooping police officers subsequently beat on those supposed brats with baseball bats (OK, well, specifically with billy clubs)...and subsequently that was, unsurprisingly, the final Street Scene.
It was such a disaster that in his famous book about L.A., City Of Quartz, brilliant sociologist Mike Davis hypothesized that the death of the Street Scene actually signified the death of public space in Los Angeles.
Link. Of course, that was then, and this is now, meaning the commercial, commodified vibe that permeates the music industry today would be inescapable at Detour, as it was.
Congrats, once again, to everyone on staff who made Detour happen!
* Thursday update: Alexis Rivera, my now-former neighbor, informs me that the Justice set at Detour was only a DJ set, not their live show, which they presented on Monday at the Henry Fonda. Looks like it was wild. Plus, they had Rick James, Prince, Stevie Wonder, MJ, and Rod Stewart do their "D.A.N.C.E." on Jimmy Kimmel the other night. Is "electro the new disco"?
* See more at LA Weekly music blog Play, LAist, and Losanjealous.