show review: eagle rock music festival, 10/03/09

pocahaunted @ the american legion hall

Saturday was the Eagle Rock Music Festival, a free event that I only learned about last night. Knowing how these free festivals tend to be, I was expecting a lot of shitty lowest-common-denominator local acts to be playing. Surprisingly, there were a few bands I actually wanted to see, so Rob and I decided to check it out. We got there a couple hours after the festival began (it was scheduled to run from 4-11PM).
The first acts we wanted to see were a couple of local dubstep DJs we had seen a few weeks back, opening for Mary Anne Hobbs and Flying Lotus. Gaslamp Killer was first, and I'm kind of bummed I didn't get any pics or video of him, because he's visually one of the most entertaining DJs to watch. Imagine Animal from the Muppets playing air trumpet and doing energetic dance moves, and you'll have the general idea. His set was mostly Eastern European and Middle Eastern music, which wasn't what I had expected. I assume he was tailoring his set to the all ages crowd, and perhaps taking the opportunity to take a break from dubstep.

DJ nobody

Next up was DJ Nobody, who weirdly was playing several blocks away at the other end of the festival. I'm not sure why he and Gaslamp Killer weren't on the same stage. At any rate, he played some pretty cool songs, including one ridiculous Mars Volta remix, but he definitely seemed to be half-assing it when it came to blending songs and, you know, actually DJing. It wasn't bad but it wasn't as good as the last time I saw him, either.

robedoor

Robedoor were another band that I had seen in the last month, opening for Ducktails at the L'Keg Gallery. I was pretty impressed the first time I saw them, and was looking forward to seeing them again. Unfortunately it took a little while to find the American Legion Hall in which they were playing- it was the only indoor venue at the festival, and tucked away on a side street past a bunch of food vendors. We got there in time for their two last songs, both noisy, heavy jams. They were pretty great.

pocahaunted

We journeyed to the nearest gas station so I could grab an energy drink, and returned to the American Legion Hall to catch Pocahaunted. They shared members with Robedoor, which I think I had heard about but then subsequently forgotten. They played a mixture of dub, funk, noise and rock. It was pretty killer.
"Wow," I thought as the energy drink started to kick in, "this band is really good!"
"Those two singers are really cute!"
"I feel great!"
"...I should drink more of this energy drink!"

no age

Although Pocahaunted ended their set quite a bit later than the schedule had predicted, it was still well before No Age were supposed to go on. We trekked back to the stage DJ Nobody had been on in order to catch Peanut Butter Wolf, but it turned out that stage was even further behind schedule than the Amercan Legion had been. So we returned to the stage No Age were playing on, and waited for the show to start. No Age are yet another band I've seen recently (come to think of it all of these acts play pretty frequently), and I'm not super into them, so I wasn't really dying to see them again or anything. Their set started out terribly- the sound from the speakers was so muddy and indistinguishable that all you could hear was a wash of guitar. But soon enough they added another amp to the stage, and things improved. It didn't really compare to their set at FYF Fest, but it was still good to see all the local kids getting super psyched for it. We left to go check out Peanut Butter Wolf, but the sound on his stage was so quiet that it was actually kind of infuriating to try and watch. So we bounced. All in all, pretty great for a free festival.

wait what the hell

That's The Bronx, an LA based screamo/rock/punk/whatever band whose name I've seen a lot over the years, but who I've never bothered to check out. Based on the music video above, I don't really regret that decision. HOWEVER, it turns out they've just recorded a mariachi-influenced album called "Mariachi El Bronx"???



I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around this; on the one hand, this sort of cultural appropriation isn't really any more offensive than, say, Beirut, although there is the issue that Zach Condon steals from cultures thousands of miles from where he lives, whereas The Bronx (or El Bronx in this case) are aping the ethnic culture of their own city. The Bronx don't obviously seem to be playing this for the "LOL we're white playing mariachi!!" factor, either. And the song isn't so bad. So... uh.... cool, I guess?

super barrio bros - s/t (2007)

the Team Teamwork album made me think of the other major videogame/rap crossover album I know of, the Super Barrio Bros record. this album features two Project Blowed rappers, 8-Bit Bandit and Dumfoundead rapping about videogames over videogame samples. it works pretty well- its really really nerdy, not just because its about videogames, but because the rappers are the indie-backpacker type that put together overly verbose rhymes. I'm not really enough of a rap nerd to get way into that style of rapping, and one of the rappers has a really nasally voice that kind of grates on me. but its still a pretty interesting album, one i'd say worth hearing at least for its novelty value. I probably would have been all over this if I had heard it five years ago.

Super Barrio Bros - Bosses
Super Barrio Bros - Outro Instrumental