Diary of Detour 2008

This past Saturday marked year three of LA Weekly’s Detour Festival — a three-stage, 30-band extravaganza that saw a whole block surrounding City Hall in Los Angeles shut down to play host to some of the area’s best local acts but bolstered by larger national bands just in case no one ever heard of The Mae Shi.

Events such as these normally bring to mind tens of thousands of sweaty bodies, reeking in the summer sun, smashed together and lined up to worship at the altar of blind consumerism.

But Detour Fest wasn’t exactly that.

Luckily the full brutality of the Southern California sun was stifled by the thick cloud cover, shielding the festival patrons from Sol’s menace, and the booths which would normally housecheap wares sold at exorbitant prices were replaced by political action tents and artists’ signing areas.

But have no fear!  Capitalism was in full effect, with the prices of food and drink hovering around the $7 mark, and anyone who wanted to eat or get drunk had to purchase the special currency cards sold at the entrance ($20 denominations only!).

But I digress.  My anti-consumerist mentality aside, Detour Festival had some wonderful things to offer up.  Early in the day, my photographer and I had the pleasure of catching a short set from Icelandic guitar solo act, Mugison, who is apparently more in the experimental vein.  Could’ve fooled me — his crooning vocals set to acoustic guitar and his partner’s synth effects recalled more of an upbeat Simon and Garfunkel with maybe a touch of Sigur Ros.  A quick visit to his MySpace site, however, gave me a different interpretation of the songs all together.

Making our way to City Hall Stage, our ears were suddenly accosted by the likes of The Mae Shi (mentioned earlier), whose adolescent energy was enough to send the entire attending audience screaming away, after the set, in a pre-pubescent, panic-like state.  Following this torrent would be The Submarines, who offered up a more mature female adolescence, with vocalist/guitarist/xylophonist Blake Hazard asking the audience to imagine the city being reclaimed by flora during a particularly storybook-style fantasy piece.

As the sun began its descent and eventually disappeared behind the towering skyline, we found ourselves at the Triforium Stage to see Georgia punk displacements Black Lips.  I can honestly say (and hopefully I don’t get too much hate mail for this) that I don’t understand why this band is so popular, but the turnout was very impressive and their stage antics were damn entertaining, especially when guitarist Cole Alexander puked on his rig during the last song.

With the equipment and vomit cleared away, the stagehands made way for Brooklyn-based world music/gypsy punk gods Gogol Bordello, who stormed Triforium with all the subtlety of a water buffalo protecting its young.  The band is amazing, simply put.  Their music and the live performance thereof is nothing short of an atomic blast of strong beats, sing along choruses, and a string/accordion section that renders traditional rock or punk as impotent as grandpa’s lap taffy.  Over the course of two hours, Gogol Bordello solidified itself as the festival’s greatest live act.  The only thing missing may have been the band members’ normal penchant for surfing the crowd on a giant bass drum, but for all intents and purposes, the band catapulted a day of otherwise tame music into a celebration of life itself!

After gaining a much needed respite in the beer garden and having a brief look at the DJ stage on the steps of City Hall itself, we trekked over to Main Street to catch headliners The Mars Volta.  Although one could have fit the rise and fall of the Roman Empire into the time it took for them to set up, the band came out and played a very impressive set to a crowd that couldn’t have been more ravenous.

The initial rush toward the stage produced a few casualties, which were quickly carried past us on the shoulders of friends and bystanders.  This unfortunate display of unruliness would set the tone for the next 2 1/2 hours of the band’s set, while my photographer and I grasped steadily for purchase in the maelstrom.  As vocalist Cedric Bixler Zavala wailed against a backbone of freestyle, space-rock madness, the crowd roiled and churned in a protean movement, the music only ceasing here and there before exploding once again, sending the throng into another spasmic blending of sweat and screams.

Alas, as The Mars Volta left the stage, we too were just as eager to depart.  After all, it had been a very long day.  We were tired and raring to hit the road…but there was something lingering on the drive back to San Fernando Valley that simply could not be shaken.  Thinking back on the day, it suddenly dawned on us that we had just attended a pretty damn good music festival.  In comparison to the consumerist clusterfucks that riddled our memories like the holes in the ground of some Air Force bombing range, the Detour Festival provided at least somewhat of an escape from the norm.  And after all these years of attending this music festival and that music festival, I could finally say, and nothing more, that “I had a pretty good time.”

All photos by Nathan Moffett for Buzzine