Rock all this town

IMAGINE a map of Los Angeles that, instead of freeways and mountain ranges, showed the history of the city’s music scenes. The north is filled with Hollywood rockers and Laurel Canyon folkies. A colorful line follows Sunset Boulevard into Silver Lake and Echo Park, home to many of America’s most eclectic indie acts. South-Central, where hip-hop grew angry and conquered the airwaves, is there, as are the South Bay’s working-class punk dives. The line loops up through the decadent sleaze of the Sunset Strip, and the map shows a perfect circle, with a gaping hole over downtown and the center of the city.

“For a long time, it’s like Los Angeles had this empty space in the middle,” said Paul Tollett, co-founder of concert-promotion heavyweight Goldenvoice Productions. “You had a few spots, Al’s Bar for instance, but the idea that it was a place that a lot of people would be willing to go to see a show wasn’t there.”

This weekend, however, the hard-core kids at the underground venue known as the Smell and warehouse-crashing ravers won’t have downtown to themselves. The LA Weekly Detour Festival will bring top-shelf rock acts Beck, Queens of the Stone Age and brainy dance duo Basement Jaxx to the city’s long-neglected core. It’s the biggest bill of a weekend packed with music festivals spread through some of the city’s most unlikely neighborhoods for live rock. There’s the multi-culti art, food and music of the Grand Avenue Festival a few blocks away from Detour, a surprisingly awesome Eagle Rock Music Festival full of hotly tipped Eastside indie rockers, and the grup-friendly, NPR-approved TarFest in Miracle Mile.

Call it urban revitalization, a promoter’s scheduling nightmare or simply a return to repping your block (even if your block is the La Brea Tar Pits). There’s never been a better weekend for live rock music in Los Angeles County, and it may be a sign that the city’s quiet and culturally overlooked corners are beginning to find their own sense of cool.

A bet on downtown

For years, most live music downtown was either off the radar of the zoning board or didn’t last long enough to permanently affect the neighborhood. The biggest annual event was Giant Village, a 6-year-old dance-oriented festival that took advantage of downtown’s glittering skyscrapers and complete lack of neighbors to annoy.

“The festival has a very specific audience, and we haven’t really relied on downtown residents,” said Dave Dean, founder of Giant Village.

The downtown residential boom, coupled with the opening in recent years of the entertainment anchors of the Walt Disney Concert Hall and Staples Center, has spawned new bars, restaurants, galleries and other signs of nightlife. Yet outside an arena show or concert hall performance, rock fans still had to trek up Sunset Boulevard to Echo Park or the 101 into Hollywood.

But Tollett, the promoter who annually draws thousands to the Palm Springs area for the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, is betting that downtown finally has the residents, infrastructure and appeal for L.A.’s far-flung rock fans to host a large-scale festival.

“I think most people view it as a positive thing to have downtown become something really special, and that’s one of the reasons you see these newer festivals coming in,” Tollett said.

The debut Detour Festival’s lineup pairs big names with quirkier indie acts such as Of Montreal and Blonde Redhead, backpack hip-hop duo Blackalicious and the disco-infused norteno of the Nortec Collective. It’s a savvy bill that, like Coachella, should be appointment viewing for local rock fans. If the Detour Festival lasts, it also has the potential to become an anchor for a downtown music scene on par with its vibrant gallery and fashion culture. Spaceland Productions’ Mitchell Frank and Cedd Moses of Broadway Bar and the Golden Gopher are said to be planning some kind of live music venture downtown.

Though actual rock musicians may already be priced out of the real estate, the Detour Festival will be one of the first real tests of downtown’s potential as a concert-friendly neighborhood. “You’re in the city, you’re on the street, you can see City Hall and The Times from one of the stages, you get a sense of the area,” Tollett said. “For a lot of people it will be introducing them to downtown too, giving that landscape knowledge.”

Tollett isn’t the only festival promoter with eyes on downtown this weekend. A few blocks away, the Grand Avenue Festival is taking a more eclectic approach to pulling crowds toward the city’s center. The free festival (Detour’s tickets are $35.50) pairs the Latin electro-rock act Kinky and the daKAH Hip Hop Orchestra with cooking demonstrations, art exhibits and an artisan craft fair. Though they’re taking place practically within shouting distance of each other, the festivals aren’t competing so much as complementing each other.

“I’m hoping we have people who will go to one and the other,” said Carol Schatz, chief executive of the Downtown Center Business Improvement District and an organizer of the Grand Avenue Festival. “Cross-pollination would be great.”

Though this weekend’s festivals make it seem like rock bands are the only safe bet for pulling crowds, the abundance of cultural options of the Grand Avenue Festival makes it friendlier to families and infrequent concert-goers. The Detour Festival is drawing a preexisting audience to a new neighborhood, but Grand Avenue seems to be more of a showcase for the cultural life already present and growing in downtown.

“I always knew that you couldn’t revitalize downtown until it had a strong residential base. Now we have a sizable population that can walk over,” said Schatz. “Most Angelenos haven’t been to Disney Hall. It’s a special place, and this is an opportunity to visit and appreciate the institutions that already exist.”

O pioneers

In years past, the only way you’d spot the Eagle Rock Music Festival was if you were driving through the neighborhood and heard a band playing in a parking lot.

“Most people didn’t know that this festival existed, including myself,” said Jen Jenkins, a presenter for Giant Artists, the promoter for this year’s Eagle Rock Music Festival.

But a funny thing happened during the Brentwood-ization of Silver Lake and Echo Park over the last few years. The quiet hamlet just east of Glendale became something of an indie-rock pioneer town. Producer and Earlimart frontman Aaron Espinoza set up his recording studio and rehearsal space there, as has producer Dave Trumfio. And as the rents skyrocketed along Sunset Boulevard, artists living on the cheap began to press north and east. And because every hipster hamlet needs an annual street fair, the Eagle Rock Music Festival is vying to join the summertime staple Sunset Junction Street Fair as a formidable neighborhood festival. Local scene warriors and groovy dream-poppers Monsters Are Waiting headline a bill of up-and-comers including Great Northern, the Movies, Inara George and Future Pigeon. The lineup is heavy on L.A. acts and is meant to showcase the camaraderie of the area’s vibrant scene.

“All these artists who would normally be playing Silverlake Lounge and the Echo, we wanted to give them a platform where they could play for thousands,” Jenkins said. “There are some amazing independent artists here, and they’re all helping each other. They’re not all competing for the same spot on a major label.”

But while bands may be friendly with one another, the unfortunate luck of going up against Detour may mean that many music fans might be otherwise engaged that weekend. The free outdoor festival has plenty of appeal for bands and fans alike, but the artists are hoping that their potential audience isn’t festival-weary.

“It’s a nice departure from a bar or club,” Monsters Are Waiting bassist Andrew Clark said. “It makes it more special. But I guess I am a little nervous. There won’t be the usual concert-goers there.”

For the first time in the eight-year history of the Eagle Rock festival, Colorado Boulevard will be closed to vehicle traffic. The festival hopes to sell the rest of the city on Eagle Rock’s appeal, and now that it has some unexpected bohemian cachet, this weekend may be a turning point for the quaint corner of the Eastside.

“Silver Lake had its boom a few years ago, and Sunset Junction became its identifiable festival,” Jenkins said. “The same is true for areas like Eagle Rock; it was once a sleepy town, but it’s now becoming a bustling center for young artists. There’s a level of excitement and fresh ideas that wasn’t here before. These kinds of events could be used to introduce an area to a wider audience.”

Hitting demographics

As with Eagle Rock, most local music fans have had little motivation to hang out in Miracle Mile. Outside of a date to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art with an art-school beau or taking your little brother to the La Brea Tar Pits, the only reason for rock fans to stop by was Jon Brion’s residency at Largo or an occasional good headliner at the El Rey Theatre.

But the fourth edition of TarFest, held at various venues near Wilshire Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue, is also an unanticipated jolt of energy in an otherwise peaceful, nightlife-anemic neighborhood. The festival’s music program, headlined by local psych-shoegazers West Indian Girl and filled out with other spunky newcomers such as the Oohlas, the Submarines and Bitter:Sweet, hits squarely in festival sponsor KCRW’s demographic.

“Every neighborhood has something it can draw on,” TarFest Executive Director James Panozzo said. “West Hollywood does a wonderful job with Halloween; the same is true for Sunset Junction. A festival needs to speak to the fabric of the neighborhood.”

The four-day festival’s schedule -- the music is on Friday night and Sunday afternoon -- has residents’ diverse tastes in mind. An outdoor film program and gallery walk are reflective of the neighborhood’s more bourgeois elements, but a BYOB picnic on the Tar Pits’ lawn and multimedia art installations in the Desmond’s building should draw a younger crowd.

“We’re trying to address specific demographics,” Panozzo said. “There’s something for kids, hipsters, working folk. Some people will say we’re watering it down, but we’re not trying to sell everything to everybody.”

Earlier this year, Santa Monica’s Summer Strummer proved that a festival in a neighborhood not known as a music hub can attract fans from across the city while giving residents a new reason to dig their side of town.

This isn’t the first TarFest, but the music program is far and away its best yet and will likely surprise residents used to trucking over to Silver Lake or Hollywood to get their music fix.

“There is nothing ever happening [in Santa Monica], and we wanted to give the kids over there something to do and look forward to every year,” said Charlie Overby, co-creator of Summer Strummer and Swing House Studios. “I think every neighborhood should have them. There is a real sense of unity missing in just about every neighborhood I can think of, with the exception of West Hollywood.”

It’s that sense of community identity that seems to be the theme of this weekend’s gamut of rock festivals. Any neighborhood with an ear to the ground for its residents’ tastes can throw a party to be proud of. Those staying home this weekend do so at the risk of not only being irredeemably lame, but also of missing the chance to discover the new energy coming off their own streets.

“L.A. is a young town, but people are developing strong identities with their neighborhood,” Panozzo said. “Commuting is lame. People are taking the needs and wants of residents into their own hands.”

august.brown@latimes.com

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Music everywhere

LA Weekly Detour Festival

What: Street festival featuring Beck, Queens of the Stone Age, Basement Jaxx, Peeping Tom, Redd Kross, Blonde Redhead, !!! (Chk Chk Chk), Nortec Collective, Blackalicious, the Like, Of Montreal, the Elected, the Blood Arm, Oh No! Oh My!, Everybody Else, Wired All Wrong and DJ sets by Travis Keller and Steve Aoki, among others.

Where: At Main and 1st streets, downtown L.A. (Entrances at Main and Temple streets and Main and 3rd streets.)

When: 2 p.m. Saturday

Price: $35.50

Info: www.goldenvoice.com

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Grand Avenue Festival

What: Street festival featuring a performance by Kinky (2:30 p.m.) as well as choir and organ performances at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels; mime, jazz and ballet at the Colburn School; the L.A. Philharmonic in collaboration with daKAH Hip Hop Orchestra at Walt Disney Concert Hall; children’s workshops, music and dance at the Music Center; and a street fair featuring art, crafts, design and food tasting on Grand Avenue.

Where: Grand Avenue, between Temple and 4th streets, downtown L.A.

When: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday

Price: Free

Info: (213) 624-2146; www.downtownla.com/GAF_schedule_2006.asp

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Eagle Rock Music Festival

What: Neighborhood street festival featuring live performances on multiple stages from Monsters Are Waiting, Great Northern, Future Pigeon, the Parson Redheads, Bodies of Water, Teddy’s Cheer Club, the Movies, Francisco Aguabella, Eleni Mandell, Inara George, Jesca Hoop and others, as well as DJs and entertainment at various merchants along Colorado Boulevard.

Where: Colorado Boulevard, between Eagle Rock Boulevard and Argus Street

When: 5 p.m. to midnight Saturday

Price: Free; donations accepted to benefit Eagle Rock Center for the Arts

Info: www.myspace.com/eaglerockmusicfestival

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TarFest

What: Four-day festival of music, film and art held at various venues in the Miracle Mile area, featuring a Friday club show with the Oohlas and West Indian Girl at Molly Malone’s and an outdoor show Sunday with the Submarines and Bitter:Sweet at the La Brea Tar Pits Park.

Where: Molly Malone’s, 575 S. Fairfax Ave., L.A.; La Brea Tar Pits Park, 5801 Wilshire Blvd., L.A. See website for art, film venues.

When: 8 p.m. Friday (Molly Malone’s); noon Sunday (La Brea Tar Pits Park)

Price: Friday, $6; Sunday, free

Info: www.tarfest.com