Spring Fling Fest, Dirty Laundry TV’s 10th Anniversary At 1720, Sunday March 3rd 2019

Alyson Camus|March 6, 2019

Big Fun, Birote the Musical, Dirty Laundry TV, Fatty Cakes and the Puff Pastries, Healing Gems, J. Mont, junkie, Jurassic Shark, Mike Watt & the Missingmen, Sister Mantos, Spring Fling Fest, Trap Girl, Worn-Tin

Mike Watt

Dirty Laundry TV has been doing its thing for 10 years, interviewing local indie bands (when they are doing their laundry in a laundromat) and organizing shows to promote new and upcoming indie bands. Hosts Colleen Green and Karrie K have been interviewing everyone from Black Rebel Motorcycle Club to The Vaccines, A Place To Bury Strangers, Cults, Dum Dum Girls, Ariel Pink, Liars, Twin Shadow, Mike Watt, and many others, while Michael Grodner has been organizing shows – he is part of the Dirty Penni Fest every year – when he doesn’t direct indie movies: he recently directed ‘The Icarus Line Must Die’ which follows Joe Cardamone’s tribulations, between fiction and real life.

Last Sunday, Dirty Laundry TV was celebrating its 10 years with a full afternoon and evening of music inside 1720, a warehouse, downtown L.A., and Spring Fling Fest had a lot to offer from 3:30 pm to almost midnight, 10 bands for 10 years, with of course an emphasis on the wild side of what the indie scene has to offer in Los Angeles.

J. Mont was such a new and young project that I haven’t found any trace of them in social media, but the trio was aggressively cruising with a dark mood while the singer and guitarist had a very confident flow over atmospheric melodies. They got loud and explosive, almost flirting with metal textures, a bit like Mogwai does it. Other bands had a very chaotic approach like the bizarre (in a good way) and entertaining Big Fun and its keytar weirdness sending laser beans into space. They were demented with a dissonant Moog organ, an Atari production, and a Devo-like attitude. Birote the Musical cultivated another type of weirdness, and the trio went for the full Chicano treatment with an old-school upright bass, a screaming animal on drums, elements of Cumbia, a real theatricality and even several beautiful trumpet parts. A bit later on, the expansive band Sister Mantos installed an intense tropical dance party with melancholic guitar textures and more nuances than your average Latino-inspired groove band.

Worn-Tin’s frontman acted goofy and crazy between the band’s melodic assaults and bipolar songs, and there was a mix of euphoria and melancholia all set long, probably dominated by pure joy, a real sweetness, and bouncy tempos… but he is the only person I have ever seen getting a tattoo on his tight while playing a song before collapsing on stage when it was over. Females were fully represented by the always-bold Fatty Cakes and the Puff Pastries, fighting once again the good fight over a ‘Panic Attack’, and partying like true riot goddesses with plenty of ice cream balloons and punk assaults. They started a violent pit and brought on stage another party girl, Drew from Trap Girl, which looked like the dark version of frontgirl Amber Fargano.

Mike Watt & the Missingmen could have felt a bit isolated as the only band with members over 50, but they had nothing to worry about, as they played their punk songs with the same furious passion and some youthful energy. Anyway, I have never seen Mike Watt lacking fire, and with his two Missingmen, he stayed loyal to his impetuous reputation and hurling delivery with his abrupt bass and their angular improvised-sounding songs.

Kids jumped, stage dived and crowd surfed at the sound of Junkie, a surf punk band which had all the joyful riffs that made Fidlar famous. They were all about these endless sweaty surf dances that made the crowd jump till exhaustion with a careless abandon. If the same ambiance closed the night with Jurassic Shark, everyone had the chance to calm down for a bit, with the subtle retro ballrooms of Healing Gems and their black and white Tropicalia island trip decorated of Hawaiian guitars, groovy organs, and happy percussions. The popular Monrovia-based Jurassic Shark and their punk rock emo brought the crowd on their toes for another wild party of fervent vocals delivered over a blend of post-punk and surf rock, ending with a quiet tune during a crowd-begged encore. Happy 10th Anniversary Dirty Laundry TV!