I arrived too late for the band Voxhaul who played at 3pm on the Citywalk stage, but the perspective to spend the whole afternoon and evening watching shows was already a little overwhelming.
Just when I reached the stage in front of the Hard Rock café, Red Cortez, a band from east LA, had begun playing, and their energizing rocking riffs, at times flirting with country, was right away appealing.
If they were selling tee-shirts printed with their name under the head of a mustached Mexican man, their music was not that influenced by out of the border rhythms but clearly anchored in the rock tradition of the 70’s and, who knows, their band name may be an homage to the Neil Young’s song?
Like the previous band, they were playing on the stage of the City walk, an artificial pedestrian street built around the Universal Studio amusement park, and a very popular hangout for Angelinos and tourists with its numerous eateries and shops. The LA Weekly 101 fest was happening in the middle of it, with three stages, a free one on the city walk, another one for DJs inside the festival, and a third one indoors, inside the Gibson theater where massive Attack and Thievery Corporation were performing the same night.
Some Red Cortez’ songs had this horse-galloping-cadence on keyboard, with guitars either grinding or brightly chiming above whipping drums. They had a little bit of everything (and I am not saying this in a bad way at all), a little bit of these psychedelic, reverberating and sliding guitars, a little bit of these chorus sung at three voices, a little bit of these long screams that sounded more desperate and hurting than angry. Most of their songs had these echoing guitars and were building a lot of suspense before the entrance of the rougher riffs, whereas they seemed to talk about starting the war in a song or about Inglewood, a LA neighborhood, in another one. This last one sounded like a difficult and painful epic climbing of some monumental mountain, or a fight against a violent wind. Showing a large range, they also did a mean cover of a Britney Spears’ song.
Shortly after Red Cortez, Saint Motel arrived on stage, and if I have seen these guys numerous times now, they are always a lot of fun with their sparkling and effusive rock, which never misses to draw a happy face on people.
They played nine songs and among them 5 new ones, although they have been playing them for a while now, but said they were done with the basic recording of these new songs. AJ, who is always doing the talking on stage, said they were really honored to be part of the LAWeekly 101 fest with Massive Attack and Thievery Corporation, just before starting ‘At Least I have nothing’.
The new and very danceable ‘Puzzle Pieces’ had some underlining Brazilian exotic guitar rhythms, with an almost David-Byrne-kind-of-song feeling at times, whereas ‘Skullet’ was a bouncing one, with a lot of rhythm changing and AJ very familiar high pitched vocals.
‘Funny brains’, whose lyrics, I think, say ‘My baby got a funny brain’, had an even more playful tone than most of their songs, with some sliding guitars and a rhythm that was breaking itself several times.
They have definitively found a sound that is theirs, and a Saint Motel song has always this very recognizable electrifying outbursts spread all over the tune, which unavoidably lead to these acrobatic scenarios of AJ rolling on his back, Aaron bending over him while Dak is staying almost stoic and Greg raises above his drum set, just as what happened during the jumping-out-of-control ‘Stories’.
They had to play their favorite old ones like ‘Dear Dictator’, ‘Eat your heart out’ and ‘Butch’, but they were new for many people over there who were hanging out at Citywalk, all surprised to get a free show in the middle of the afternoon, with such contagious and positive energy.