So now that you've said goodbye to the last of the seemingly endless slew of summer music festivals (with interchangeable lineups!), say hello to the first of the slew of fall music festivals: this Saturday, our friendly neighbors to the north are throwing the first-ever annual LA Weekly Detour Music Festival.
Detour features several sure-hit crowd pleasers—Beck, Queens of the Stone Age, Of Montreal, Blonde Redhead, !!!—in addition to local Angeleno favorites the Like and Everybody Else. And what music festival is complete without DJ sets from festival regulars VHS or Beta, OBEY Giant creator Shepard Fairey (DJ Diabetic) and Steve Aoki (DJ Kid Millionaire)?
But the real highlights are the lesser-known acts such as the Austin trio Oh No! Oh My! (You think that name is bad? Oh No! Oh My! is actually named after a song by a band called the Robot Ate Me. And before that, the band used to be an experimental rock band called poor Yorik.) Oh No! Oh My! is another one of those bands that gained recognition through taste-making music blogs like Gorilla vs. Bear and Music (For Robots)—yeah, these kids really dig their eccentric names—but the e-attention is more than deserved: with “post-pop” (what the hell does that mean, anyway?) tunes that sound as if they belong on some kind of cutesy Volkswagen commercial, Oh No! Oh My! draw influence from such toe-tappingly feel-good pop rockers as Belle and Sebastian and the Magnetic Fields. Scoff at the name if you must, but take one look at the band's official website, ohnoohmy.com, and you'll see they mean business—really, really cute business. The splash page features a cartoon of three young boys flying a flaming Hindenburg-shaped balloon. Their self-released debut-LP cover art is an upside-down tortoise on railroad tracks—with a train headed right for it. And their song “Walk in the Park,” which could have easily been 2006's indie summer anthem, features dark, tongue-in-cheek lyrics under the guise of a head-bobbing, sunshine-and-lollipops sound: “Nice day for a walk in the dark/Nice day for a drive-by shooting/This world is a warm, sunny heart.”
Totes adorable!
The LA Weekly Detour Music Festival featuring Beck, Queens of the Stone Age, Basement Jaxx, Oh No! Oh My! and more at Main and First sts., downtown Los Angeles; www.laweekly.com/detour. Sat., 2 p.m. $35.50. All ages.
