Local Music Showcased at Sunset Junction Street Fair

With the L.A. Street Scene out of commission, the Sunset Junction Street Fair has become one of the city’s best free showcases for local music. The three-day event is also a celebration of the cultural and sexual diversity of the Silver Lake/Echo Park community, and this year’s relocation from a strip of Sunset to Echo Park resulted in a less radical atmosphere. It was as mellow as could be Saturday, with more local families and fewer sexual outlaws parading their tattoos and body piercings than at past events.

The weekend’s musical lineup included many Junction regulars, including a ditsy-sweet acoustic set from the Holy Sisters of the Gaga Dada; charged, X-style street-life observations from the Devil Squares; Echo & the Cure Division broodings from Red Temple Spirits and Shiva Burlesque, and the Nortena -meets-new-wave of the Alienz.

The most proficient players of all were the Bonedaddys, but the octet’s pan-global world-beat music was often unfocused, its high-stepping soca or high-life or reggae grooves subverted by cluttered arrangements and ineffective lyrics.

The group’s best moment remains its version of Manu Dibango’s “Soul Makossa,” where the rhythm, not an air of contrived eccentricity, does the work.