Concert Review: Radars to the Sky, the Happy Hollows, and Castledoor @ Sunset Junction, Day One (8.23.08)

By Travis Woods

The 2008 Sunset Junction Street Fair came and went last weekend in a sweat-sheened and sun-flared boozy blur of music, v-necked and mustached hipsters, rivers of Red Bull, and SoCal-ized Americana kitsch vendors. Yet, despite whatever claims of unity the fair was constructed upon and still tangentially purports to highlight, Day One of the two-day affair was, in nearly all respects excepting the overwhelmingly good music, a massively shuddering and disorganized letdown lost in a sundrunk haze of overblown pricing, gargantuan delays, clueless staffing, and disrespect to both the bands playing and the Angelinos watching. The only unity or unifying theme found within Sunset Junction, at least on the first day, was one of disappointed, disgruntled division.

The problems arose at the very beginning. As the fair was scheduled to begin at 10 am, I arrived fairly early, at 10:45am, to find a parking spot before the insectile deathlock of endless spirals of cars in search of free parking around residential streets adjacent to Sunset was to begin in earnest; also, I wanted to catch up with and speak to several of the bands playing before the day honed into a dizzy swirl of beer-sloshed blood-alcohol contents and UV-slapped skin. Arriving at the Bates Stage gate, I was told that there were a few delays, and that no one was being admitted. When asked how much longer the delay might take, I was told “about 10, 15 minutes.”

To kill time, I asked where the will-call booth was located in order to nab my press pass.

“Ummm, we don’t know what’s going on. They were supposed to show up an hour ago, but no one’s here. They should get here in about 10, 15 minutes.”

I waited until 11:30 am. By that time, Sunset Junction was still closed, and several would-be fairgoers had come to the ticketbooth, each being told, over the course of 45 minutes, that there was a slight delay, but that the festival would be open in about “10, 15 minutes.” At one point, several street cops working the fest denied the Happy Hollows’ van access to the grounds, telling the band they had to park at the entrance and walk all of their gear to the stage. It was also at this point that I began to notice I had heard no soundchecks all morning.

Finally, around 11:45 am, the operators of the still non-existent will-call booth arrived. Upon requesting my pre-approved press pass, I was told that I wouldn’t be receiving one this year: “Look, if we give a pass to every writer who wants to cover this, we wouldn’t make any money off of it.” Even if I was already guaranteed a pass? “Yup, sorry.” Realizing I was staring at a lost cause, I angrily made my way back to the Bates Stage entrance, and asked if they were admitting yet.

“No, but it should be open in about 10, 15 minutes.”

I then asked if it was a possibility that Radars to the Sky, who was scheduled to perform in 10 minutes, was still going on at noon, and if some of us in line were going to miss the beginning of their set.

“I dunno. I mean, we’ve never been that late. But I can’t guarantee that you won’t miss it at this point, either. There are a few of our cars parked inside, and we have to move them before we can let you in. But we don’t know who’s in charge so we’re kind of just waiting about—”

“10, 15 minutes?” I asked.

“About that, yeah.”

“Look, if I slip you a $20, will you just give me a wristband so I can get in?”

“We haven’t been given any yet.”

There was a brief pause.

“But you’ve got, like, 200 wristbands in your hand there.”

Another pause, this one twice as long and awkward.

“Oh. Oh yeah. Whatever, ok then. Here.”

I made it in by noon, and by 12:15 pm others began finally drifting in as well. Radars had yet to take the stage—in fact, they had not been allowed to set up at all, as the night’s closing performers, the Cold War Kids and Broken Social Scene, had just begun their soundchecks. Word was that the will-call table, which is set up in order for fans to avoid delays and hassles, was as gridlocked and stagnant as the endless metal caravans circling Sunset in search of parking. Classical Geek Theatre’s Mouse, who had a will-call ticket, had to wait nearly 45 minutes in line before getting inside just in time to catch Radars’ set, which started a little after 1:00 pm. Several others were not nearly as lucky, and missed the one-hour late opening act to a two-hour late festival.

Despite the maddening frustrations in orbit around the Bates Stage, what happened on it while Radars to the Sky performed was something else entirely, as the band played a heat-blistered set of complex and witty indie rock that made it easy to forget the shameless profiteering and callous neglect that has snaked throughout the Sunset Junction (dis)organization.

Radars to the Sky is a band that is cleaved into two sonic extremes—thoroughly dense razor-riffed indie rockers streaked with gentle melodicism and literate lyrics on one end of the spectrum, and on the other, loose and weaving (yet meticulously constructed) multi-part epics that collude hushed intimacy with explosive, nerve-knotted space rock tinges. On Saturday, the band opted for the former, unleashing a concise blast of their most gnashing and bashing music before swinging back to latter with the gorgeous, insistent “I Might” and the fever-dreamed “Big Bang.” Inexplicably playing the opening set (of the bands I saw, theirs was the most intense and complete set—though, to be fair to the other bands, Radars was also the only early band that played anything close to a full set, as all the acts following them were given abortive, 15-minute mini-sets to get the festival back on time), it would have been more appropriate for the band to have ruptured their riptides of intellectual guitar frenzy at dusk, just before Broken Social Scene and the Cold War Kids.

Regardless of the hour in which they played, Radars’ set was an excellent one, with frontman Andrew Spitser attacking his mic with lashing, tearing vocal cords while guitarist Seamus Simpson leapt, spun, and erupted near the lip of the stage, around which a sizable crowd had coalesced—one of the few, if not the only, positives to emerge from the band starting late was that it enabled them to play to a larger afternoon crowd. And, after dealing with one inexplicable headache after another in an effort to simply hear several local favorites play, that crowd was, if only for a moment, deeply rewarded by Radars’ set of searching, searing rock ‘n roll.

Any lineup that features Radars to the Sky, the Happy Hollows, and Castledoor in quick succession of one another is enough to make any appreciator of local indie giddy with anticipation—these three bands alone constitute some of the best, most exciting and/or visceral music that hums along the path that connects the Silverlake Lounge to the Echo to the Echoplex to Spaceland to the Troubadour and beyond. Which is why this year’s Sunset Junction generates so much frustration and letdown within Web in Front, as, following Radars to the Sky’s set, the Happy Hollows and Castledoor were only given just over 15 minutes in which to perform their sets, in order for the festival to gain back the hour they lost in their own ineptitude. Giving bands like the Hollows or Castledoor under 20 minutes to excite a crowd which had been hassled and hamstrung and overcharged under a smothering blanket of L.A. heat by a cross-eyed and money-lusting group purporting to back social progress is not only a dismally unfunny joke, it’s deeply unfair to the fans, and especially so to the bands who were there to share their art and livelihood with those who have come to love it.

The Happy Hollows fought admirably to maintain good spirits—it’s kind of impossible to imagine frontwoman Sarah Negahdari not happy onstage as the band’s music rips and ripples through her as she becomes a frenetic conduit for the electric howls they generate—by doing what they do best: blending three-minute pop songs into punk-torn art eclectica. From what we, the audience, were able to gather, the Hollows were shaping a furious set that followed their more adventurous elements as Negahdari whirled across the stage, locked in a fret-tapped passion, and bassist Charlie Mahoney screamed above he and drummer Chris Meanie’s rumbling rhythms. Death to Anders’ guitarist Nick Ceglio guest-performed on a few tracks, and all seemed to be well until someone backstage shouted “one more song, that’s it!” and the Hollows had to collapse their set a mere 17 minutes after it began.

There were groans from the crowd as the band had to step down after the aborted set—the Hollows were building upon the energy of Radars’ set and taking it into brain-frying levels of musical release when they were told to pack it in, leaving everyone both on and off the stage looking mildly confused and very irritated. Although, it must be said that even within the constraints of their too-brief window of time onstage, the Happy Hollows managed to accomplish in a few minutes what most bands can’t do in an hour—someone should’ve doused the stage with a fire-extinguisher as soon as they stepped off.

Of the three local bands Web in Front was most looking forward to seeing on Saturday, it seemed that Castledoor suffered the most from Sunset Junction’s mismanagement. Theirs is music that is as often subtle and nuanced as it is explosive and expressive, and they were forced to rush their set in order to pack in five briskly-performed songs songs rather than only play three at their proper pace.

Because of that, it was difficult to engage with the music, although frontman Nate Combs was a pin-striped blur of activity who nearly saved the entire set with his impassioned interactions with the crowd. But, at that point and from the audience’s perspective, it was simply getting to be too much—the bands were rushed, it was synapse-meltingly hot, everything was $5 too expensive, and no one seemed (at that point, anyway) to be enjoying themselves—we were there because we had paid and now felt obligated to stay in the hopes that we would somehow get what we paid for, eventually. But when the best three bands of the day are ushered away after standing onstage for less than half an hour and your skin is beginning to crackle into a crisped hamburger sting and all you have to show for it is the repeated assertion to friends, “Well, they would have been really good, if…” it’s time to begin thinking in terms of cutting your losses.

I stayed for the remainder of Castledoor’s set, which, however abbreviated and therefore disconnected did have a kind of desperate immediacy not often associated with their relaxed, chiming beauty; and despite the stone-disappointment of the day so far, one had to take the pluses where one could find them in a line-tangled sea of minuses.

Though it’s hard to separate the frustration over Sunset Junction’s mismanagement from the music it seemed so focused on knocking off-course, what was heard was uniformly excellent; however, one is a little more than just slightly hard-pressed to justify returning next year to a festival that charges twenty dollars for less than an hour’s worth of music from three bands you can easily see all night for free at the Echo or Spaceland, a festival that is so obviously more concerned about bottom lines and profits than it is any kind of supposed reconciliation between juxtaposed communities or the support of local music.

It’s naïve, I suppose, for anyone to be surprised by this, though—any organization as long-standing as Sunset Junction is eventually going to become entangled by tentacle-suckered red tape and dollar-lust (check out this LAist piece—apparently it’s illegal for Sunset Junction to charge anything since it takes place on several public streets); that doesn’t mean one can’t be disheartened however, especially when so many just came to bond with friends as a myriad of local sounds washed over them.

All of this was pinballing between my ears when, as Jonathan Rice stepped on stage right before 4 pm, I decided to leave. The best bands of the day had already played, and I simply wasn’t in the mood to hang around any longer. I went home, had drinks with a friend as I spun through the new Castledoor record and Rademacher EP, thinking that if the festival could at least capture just half of the sense of fun I was feeling then, capture that sense of camaraderie soundtrack’d by your favorite music, rather than acting as if it were all a rushed obligation, then no amount of hassles would keep people away. I thought of this, and, as I slipped into a sunburned sleep, hoped for the best on Sunday.

Coming Tomorrow:

Sunset Junction, Day Two

August 26, 2008 | Filed Under Concert Reviews, Exclusive Features 

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