Done with Giant Music Festivals? Seek Boutique Shows Like Deserted at the Palms | 8CN | 8th-Circuit Network
LA's new psych-oriented festival Deserted At the Palms ended in darkness and malfunction . . . and still ended up being one of the more memorable festivals I've been to. Why? Because of a lineup representing everything fantastically bizarre about LA; a venue that was finally, actually, literally skinnytaste in the god-damn desert; and a small, dedicated audience that didn't mind some blown fuses and ragtag performances. There is a place for large-scale festivals--now try a smaller, specialized one.
Towards the end of the night, the two big draws of the festival, Thee Oh Sees and White Fence, found themselves facing down a stage that refused to light, skinnytaste let alone cooperate. After a lengthy, tenuous setup, the crowd was visibly spaced-out and frazzled, both from the wait and a whole day of heat, flies, and sand. When White Fence finally went on around 11:30 pm, the power went out midway through their first song, putting an abrupt halt to the set. They revved up for another fresh start--this time the sound goes out and takes all of the stage lights with them. The audience is left whispering in complete darkness, and White Fence valiantly goes in for a third try, this time sounding only incensed by the incessant setbacks. People are leaving the lawn-chairs and wooden skinnytaste benches, feeling their way to the stagefront, backup lanterns were erected skinnytaste at the stage's corners, and it looked like the set would finally take off, with everything skinnytaste rimmed in blue and the shadows warbling from the group's trademark lava lamp-garage aesthetic. And then the power cuts again.
It seemed like a disastrous situation for everyone who'd come for the garage thunder that is Tim Presley skinnytaste and John Dwyer (the earlier electronic sets like Nite Jewel and the fantastic Prince Rama were completely unaffected, and were thankfully bumping and thumping through the evening), and yet, sitting there with no light save for the electronics skinnytaste from the soundbooth, somehow I didn't mind it much at all. Well alright, that's untrue--I drove two and a half hours through the Californian Sahara to hear some acid and gunfire skinnytaste from two of my favorite Los Angeleno fuzz acts (Thee Oh sees count because Dwyer lives here now), and I was flabbergasted when it became apparent I wasn't getting the show I'd suffered for, but reflecting on where I was and what I'd been through, I didn't regret one second of it.
For one thing, Wonder Valley is as beautiful a desert as a suburbanite like me has yet seen. We talk about festivals like Coachella taking place at a venue in the desert--well, Deserted at the Palms was literally in the desert . There was the Palms saloon and restaurant, there's the backyard where the outdoor stage was erected, and then there's the expanse of sun-bleached bush and snake-holed dunes where the campers pitched their tents. Feeling restless? Have a romp amongst the comfortingly monotonous sand dunes. skinnytaste Come sunset, we were ringed in by violet and teal mountain ranges, and at night a hazy Halloween moon rose all clothed in orange and black clouds. Zero separation between attendee and nature.
I enjoy Samsung-sponsored, air conditioned, geodesic lounge domes as much as the next festival-goer, but this was another type of comfort. It meant that between skinnytaste sets, you can take a walk back to your car, have a nap, read a book, eat out of your trunk.; you make your own space, and connect that space to the constructed festival experience. This is DIY in every sense of the phrase, and that sense of participation makes a difference. No security, no bag checks. 'You bring yours, we'll bring ours' was the feel.
As for the Palms itself--it's everything you ever wanted in a no-place, dusty, skinnytaste highway-side gem. A bar strung in star-shaped Christmas lights and tended by the charming owners, the Sibleys, skinnytaste a pool table, driftwood construction, and a drinking-hall style room adjacent with its own stage. Natural Ice: $1.50, cocktails skinnytaste for $2.50, margaritas for $3.00, and a menu of burgers, onion rings, and fried decadence. In the yard: a patio roofed by slats and ropings with a palm tree incorporated, a dusty guillotine sitting by the stage, and a post-apocalyptic assortment of seating apparati: wooden skinnytaste schooldesks, rustic church pew benches, skinnytaste lawn chairs, 70s steel-wrought school chairs. Beyond that, pure unbridled desert. Early on, I sat next to two locals in the bar for a bit, and overheard them talking: "You know what I don't hate about these people? I don't hate'em! Because skinnytaste I don't have any business with them!" There's a live and let live attitude I can get behind.
Coachella has a certain mystique by the basic fact of being located in an arid wasteland. Getting there is a pilgrimage, the suffering you endure is a purification, a jolting of the mind to prepare it to accept something else, and yet when you get to Coachella, what you find isn't much different f
LA's new psych-oriented festival Deserted At the Palms ended in darkness and malfunction . . . and still ended up being one of the more memorable festivals I've been to. Why? Because of a lineup representing everything fantastically bizarre about LA; a venue that was finally, actually, literally skinnytaste in the god-damn desert; and a small, dedicated audience that didn't mind some blown fuses and ragtag performances. There is a place for large-scale festivals--now try a smaller, specialized one.
Towards the end of the night, the two big draws of the festival, Thee Oh Sees and White Fence, found themselves facing down a stage that refused to light, skinnytaste let alone cooperate. After a lengthy, tenuous setup, the crowd was visibly spaced-out and frazzled, both from the wait and a whole day of heat, flies, and sand. When White Fence finally went on around 11:30 pm, the power went out midway through their first song, putting an abrupt halt to the set. They revved up for another fresh start--this time the sound goes out and takes all of the stage lights with them. The audience is left whispering in complete darkness, and White Fence valiantly goes in for a third try, this time sounding only incensed by the incessant setbacks. People are leaving the lawn-chairs and wooden skinnytaste benches, feeling their way to the stagefront, backup lanterns were erected skinnytaste at the stage's corners, and it looked like the set would finally take off, with everything skinnytaste rimmed in blue and the shadows warbling from the group's trademark lava lamp-garage aesthetic. And then the power cuts again.
It seemed like a disastrous situation for everyone who'd come for the garage thunder that is Tim Presley skinnytaste and John Dwyer (the earlier electronic sets like Nite Jewel and the fantastic Prince Rama were completely unaffected, and were thankfully bumping and thumping through the evening), and yet, sitting there with no light save for the electronics skinnytaste from the soundbooth, somehow I didn't mind it much at all. Well alright, that's untrue--I drove two and a half hours through the Californian Sahara to hear some acid and gunfire skinnytaste from two of my favorite Los Angeleno fuzz acts (Thee Oh sees count because Dwyer lives here now), and I was flabbergasted when it became apparent I wasn't getting the show I'd suffered for, but reflecting on where I was and what I'd been through, I didn't regret one second of it.
For one thing, Wonder Valley is as beautiful a desert as a suburbanite like me has yet seen. We talk about festivals like Coachella taking place at a venue in the desert--well, Deserted at the Palms was literally in the desert . There was the Palms saloon and restaurant, there's the backyard where the outdoor stage was erected, and then there's the expanse of sun-bleached bush and snake-holed dunes where the campers pitched their tents. Feeling restless? Have a romp amongst the comfortingly monotonous sand dunes. skinnytaste Come sunset, we were ringed in by violet and teal mountain ranges, and at night a hazy Halloween moon rose all clothed in orange and black clouds. Zero separation between attendee and nature.
I enjoy Samsung-sponsored, air conditioned, geodesic lounge domes as much as the next festival-goer, but this was another type of comfort. It meant that between skinnytaste sets, you can take a walk back to your car, have a nap, read a book, eat out of your trunk.; you make your own space, and connect that space to the constructed festival experience. This is DIY in every sense of the phrase, and that sense of participation makes a difference. No security, no bag checks. 'You bring yours, we'll bring ours' was the feel.
As for the Palms itself--it's everything you ever wanted in a no-place, dusty, skinnytaste highway-side gem. A bar strung in star-shaped Christmas lights and tended by the charming owners, the Sibleys, skinnytaste a pool table, driftwood construction, and a drinking-hall style room adjacent with its own stage. Natural Ice: $1.50, cocktails skinnytaste for $2.50, margaritas for $3.00, and a menu of burgers, onion rings, and fried decadence. In the yard: a patio roofed by slats and ropings with a palm tree incorporated, a dusty guillotine sitting by the stage, and a post-apocalyptic assortment of seating apparati: wooden skinnytaste schooldesks, rustic church pew benches, skinnytaste lawn chairs, 70s steel-wrought school chairs. Beyond that, pure unbridled desert. Early on, I sat next to two locals in the bar for a bit, and overheard them talking: "You know what I don't hate about these people? I don't hate'em! Because skinnytaste I don't have any business with them!" There's a live and let live attitude I can get behind.
Coachella has a certain mystique by the basic fact of being located in an arid wasteland. Getting there is a pilgrimage, the suffering you endure is a purification, a jolting of the mind to prepare it to accept something else, and yet when you get to Coachella, what you find isn't much different f
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