POP MUSIC REVIEW : Sunset Fair Puts the Emphasis on Diversity

There is nothing unusual about a female country singer coming in from New Orleans to wail standards ranging from “I Saw the Light” to “Jones on the Jukebox” at a Los Angeles festival. Nothing, that is, except that this exceptionally powerful country thrush with a carrot-top haircut was named Tim Williams, and most of the folks two-stepping around the stage in the closed-off Sunset Boulevard intersection were male couples.

No, this definitely wasn’t Country Fest ’88.

What it was was the Sunset Junction Street Fair, held annually over the Memorial Day weekend in the Silver Lake district to promote community unity between such disparate groups as gays, gangs and ethnic minorities. Besides the wildly diverse music taking place on two stages, the wildly diverse fair-goers could also ride on carnival attractions, sample foreign foods, and stop at booths manned by activists ranging from Atheists United to Episcopalian church members distributing free condoms.

Saturday’s opening-day lineup included such rowdy rock stalwarts as Thelonious Monster and Leaving Trains; the traditional Latin American strains of Huayucaltia; and an especially promising new L.A. band called Fifteen Minutes, which deftly manages to suggest Neil Young & Crazy Horse possessed by the spirit of Jim Morrison.

Sunday night, the Alienz mixed American oldies with Spanish-language numbers, followed by El Chicano, which rounded out the bill on the eastern stage with a blazing set of tight Latino fusion as the tarp behind the stage caught the severe winds and threatened to turn into a windsurfing sail.

Over at the western stage, Tim Williams’ knockout country-Cajun-blues vocal gymnastics (with X member Tony Gilkyson sitting in on guitar) were followed later by a typically roughhouse, rave-up fine time from local favorites Dave Alvin & the Allnighters (also featuring Gilkyson, natch).

The full moon and bizarre regalia of many passers-by prompted at least one fair-goer to think out loud Sunday of Halloween. But “Hey baby,” sang Alvin, “it’s the Fourth of July”--and for a few moments, with the celebratory Alvin crowd and the intense wind blasts approximating the feel of bombs bursting in air, you could believe it was.