What is usually happening for New Year Eve in Los Angeles? Not that much I would say, I mean there are billions of clubs, bars, restaurants which celebrate all over the city obviously, but where is our Time Square? Until this year it didn’t really exist, Universal Studio has been doing its thing on its city walk but is it really LA? No it’s an amusement park in the valley and the Rose Parade on New Year’s day is in Pasadena, so LA was in great need of something like this downtown LA celebration, this new Grand Park ‘N.Y.E. L.A.’ event, which should repeat the following years.
It sounded as a sort of revenge on NYC, since I heard many times people saying ‘it’s better than Times Square’ or ‘NY sucks’… oh come on children, this was the first year and we’ll see how long this will last! But it is true that, for some reasons, people are desperately looking for this sort of communal moment on NYE, this togetherness and falling-in-the-arms-of-a-stranger feeling and so far we didn’t have it. Then, the fact that the city had offered free rides by train or bus from 9 pm to 2 am was definitively a plus. I took the subway to get there, something I rarely do in our city of freeways and highways, and I almost felt as if I was back in New York ,… without the cold!
The event had started way before I get there, with music since the beginning of the evening, and I arrived at the end of Buyepongo’s performance and their fusion of salsa, cumbia, merengue, pleasing the crowd which had started dancing. It was already packed, and the whole thing was a plain success surpassing expectations, as the park (located between Los Angeles City Hall and Grand Avenue) reached capacity before 11pm, demonstrating the success of the event. At 10 pm DJ Daedelus took the stage, and I must say I still feel in a total generation gap when I see a DJ in action! It wasn’t really different for Daedelus – who belongs to this Flying Lotus, Nosaj Thing, The Gaslamp Killer, Baths LA scene – despite his interesting romantic dandy look (he was wearing a long white/grey elegant coat and had his hair all over the place with sideburns on his cheeks). Contrarily to Diplo, he had no gogo girls with him, but was producing kind of this same ADD oversaturated soup of rattled beats and auto-tuned voices, jumping from one beat to another, faster than you (I) can process. It was busy and messy, very busy, it was roaring, vibrating, jumping, and people around me loved it, of course. I still can’t make sense of any of this, but I suppose it’s perfect for this restlessly clicking-twitching generation. Still, he looked like a guy having a lot of fun doing his thing, and was removing his hands from his monome (a ‘non-traditional electronic instrument’ which ‘allows for massive improvisation’) as if it was burning hot, often putting his right hand on his heart, and having some ultra fast moves which was making the whole thing quite interesting to watch. After a while, I could quite anticipate what was about to come, speeding beats, ascending feeling, then a climax and a crash, and a restart at slower speed, yeah after few more bombastic and cathartic levels, I could see a pattern and I knew whom had planted it. People started chanting oo-ooo-oo, almost covering the music, then another fast transition,… and did this deserve one of these ‘Oh My God’? A few seconds of EDM style later, a few more fuzz/static voices on repeat, ascending distorted beats and a few more climaxes and rockets sent in into the stratospheres of techno-dance or dubstep (who can decide at this point?), I thought that this was exactly what people want at NYE, beats they can dance to, even though it sounds like chaos. By now, the set actually sounded like a 20-course-meal all packed at the top of each other on the same plate; at least, with his chief-orchestra vest and emphasizing hand movements, Daedelus had real style.
To get us into the new year, the multi-genre-influenced Fool’s Gold was next, and at this point I have seen them playing around enough times to know very well about their African-guitar-decorated melodies, their almost-Arabic throbbing rhythms and overall their world music bathing in a krautrock-pop mixture turning into long jams. Still, I always appreciate Lewis Pesacov’s ringing guitar, Luke Top’s soulful vocals, their overload of percussion and African saxo and their multi-ethnicity was a sure value for a LA crowd. The music was warm and joyful as always, even festive for the occasion, cheering up everyone and making the crowd doing a happy dance. ‘This is a dream come true’ said Top while looking at the large crowd… What did you get in NYC, Miley Cyrus or some sort of trashy celebrity? I hope that, if they pursue the Grand Park event in LA, they keep booking local bands that play music reflecting the eclecticism of the city. We have surely enough of them!
A few minutes before midnight, the 22-stories City Hall, which looks a bit like the Empire State Building, was the site of a ‘highly visual digital mapping display, the size and scope of which has never been seen in Los Angeles’ as it was described, and it looked totally great! The size of the crowd may have been a bit out of control at a point, a guy even jumped on stage during Fool’s Gold set and I thought for a minute that he was part of the show, but it turned out there was a sort of breach in the security! Plus Daedelus twitted later his monomer was stolen? What a shame! I just wonder whether Grand Park is simply big enough if the event is supposed to grow every year as they have predicted it. Still everyone in the subway on my ride back to home was super happy and intoxicated with this idea of a new year starting. The organizers said we made history and started a tradition? I am not a superfan of traditions but we can certainly beat NYC at this one, come on, we have the music and especially the weather!
