POP MUSIC REVIEW : Eclectic Acts at Street Festival

Quick: At what community’s street festival would you expect to find a guy selling Ginsu knives next to a yoga meditation booth?

West Hollywood it is, where old age meets New Age--literally, in the two musical acts that opened the five-year-old city’s fourth annual Street Festival. On one of two main music stages Saturday was the spritely female geriatric sextet the Dixie Belles, while over in another corner of West Hollywood Park was the mellow jazz of the Ellen Schimmel Quartet-- both competing with the booming bass of a disco pavilion. Following the Belles, and eclectic in its own right, was the band Rotondi, with its polkadelic mix of Cajun and African rock: Post-Modern hipness you can dance to--though no one did.

The only disharmonious note of the sunny afternoon came when five people graphically but silently protesting meat consumption were removed from the park by security personnel. The vegetarians’ leader, who identified himself only as Jingles, accused the city of ejecting them in deference to meat-selling vendors, but officials said that only organizations paying for booth space were allowed to use the event as a forum for their causes.

The festival--also featuring reggae group the Skanksters, Tex-Mex rockers Alienz, Latin pop group Tierra and country-rocker Lucinda Williams--drew more than 100,000 people, event organizers said. The Sunday conclusion was expected to draw at least 150,000.