Stardom on hold at Sunset festival

It’s pointless to speculate about which young Los Angeles bands playing the early hours of the weekend’s Sunset Junction Street Fair might rise up the ladder and be headliners next year -- the Silver Lake festival has a “no-repeat” policy barring appearances two years in a row. Real success in any case should be measured over a longer period of time.

There was much to commend among the bands that played earlier on Sunday, but none showed that something extra that would make them a pick to lead a scene or achieve the icon status of an X, which closed the festival.

The Vacation evoked a classic sense of scruffy rock sleaze and singer Ben Tegel has natural Jagger-ish presence, but the songs lacked the compelling power that brings a band above the crowd.

Your Enemies Friends took a darker, artier approach, alternating controlled fury and ambient dreaminess, a bit early Butthole Surfers and a bit contemporary scream-o.

Dios Malos is getting a lot of buzz, but this was not a great showcase for the Hawthorne quintet, which couldn’t make its Beach Boys-meets-Beck pop involving under the sun.

Fronting her band the Licks, actress-turned-rocker Juliette Lewis declared that she’s on a mission to “revive” rock ‘n’ roll. But her mannered and studied approach seemed closer to Pat Benatar than to real rock revivers such as the White Stripes.

For the scAvengers and Thelonious Monster, the issue hasn’t been reviving rock but surviving it, and the result was two of the day’s highlight sets. The former is the new version of Bay Area ‘70s punk band the Avengers, with singer Penelope Houston’s natural and personal brand of committed rock a model that escaped Lewis.

L.A.’s Thelonious Monster may be better than ever after its erratic years of mostly self-inflicted pitfalls, its set concluding with a wild medley of “Union Street” and the blues standard “Baby Please Don’t Go” featuring singer Bob Forrest’s teenage son Elijah on guitar and Red Hot Chili Pepper’s Flea sitting in for a trumpet solo.