Watch Where You Step: the Eagle Rock Music Festival, October 6, 2007
I don't think I'd ever seen so many kids with skateboards in one confined area in all my life as I did Saturday night at the Eagle Rock Music Festival. And I used to hang out in skateparks. A rather large chunk of Colorado Blvd. in Eagle Rock was closed off as bands took to playing on stages, in parking lots, and in several cases, behind chain-link fences up and down the street while teenagers and dogs scattered about your ankles. I got to see bits and pieces of bands as I tried to get a look at everything. However, I was a bit pissy cause they changed the times of some bands. Which meant I missed the Monolators set, which sucked, cause I've had their "You Look Good On the Train" song stuck on repeat in my head and I would have liked to have seen them again. Ah well.
So, let's talk about the mess that was parking and people who are inconsiderate and don't like to let you parallel park without trying to drive up into your trunk. Ugh. Had we just driven up all the way to Eagle Rock and Colorado, we probably would have seen the giant sign for the shuttle, but we didn't and ended up driving around for what seemed like at least 25 minutes until we found a spot far, far away. Walking down Colorado we could hear Bodies of Water starting their set and we began to sing along to I believe "These Are the Eyes", but I can't quite remember if that was it now or not. Not very long after we watched a couple bands we ended up at the Chalet for a couple drinks, so, you know- cloudy memory. Anyhoo, outdoor shows tend to have crappy sounding equipment, and such was the case tonight. Bodies of Water sounded, and looked, great, but the speakers were kinda crackly. In the background there was also playing the film "Westworld", although I'm not so cool to have figured this out for myself but had to be told what it was. Somehow the two meshed perfectly together. Anyone who reads this thing knows how much I like this band, however tonight we had to step away to catch up down the street with the Mormons.
So, I've been trying to catch a Mormons show for awhile now and I almost forgot they were playing tonight but remembered just in the nick of time. I've heard that this band puts on a show and is really fun to watch, and THEY WEAR HELMETS and have a whole uniform thing going on. And it so happened that every nice thing people have said about them is true. They play music that sits somewhere between Devo and Me First and the Gimmie Gimmies (who are a punk amalgam of a bunch of well known punk bands- oh and I guess minus the show tunes too), somewhere in that vein of punk music. There is a great stage presence to them, even if that stage is a parking lot outside a place called Panang. The lead singer jerks around the stage like a kid on too many pop rocks while the rest of the band looks they're at their happiest behind their respective instruments. Although, the one guy standing there with his arms crossed in the background-who was obviously one of the band due to the same stage uniform-was kinda intimidating looking, like he's the bully of the group. Although I think he pulled a t-shirt out of his backpack (yes, they wear backpacks too) so maybe he's just the mobile merch man, which would be kinda cool anyways.
It's funny though to take a band like this out of a club element and plop them down into a music festival like this where in front of me a five year old girl with a glow stick headband proceeded to dance harder and longer than any of the teenager punks. But I guess that could be said about many of the bands tonight. Music festival events always seem strange to me, and I think I'm glad they are pretty much all done for the season. I am very happy to be getting back into a club tonight, even if that increases the chances of beer getting spilled on me by about 1,000.
