Author: Malcolm MacLeod
Next Saturday Oct. 5, the Eagle Rock Music Festival (ERMF) is coming back to town, albeit with significantly fewer performers. The festival has grown immensely popular over recent years in the Los Angeles music scene, drawing up to 100,000 fans with 70 acts and 11 venues. However, the donations and fundraising efforts that support the festivities have proven insufficient in sustaining this trend of massive shows and has forced the event’s organizers to cut back on spending.
Despite this year’s downsizing, festival curator Brian Martinez and two Occidental students closely involved with the production – Michael Spieckerman (junior) and Allan Van Vliet (senior) – wanted to assure all festival-goers that this year has the potential “to be the best one yet,” Martinez said.
The festival, produced by the Eagle Rock Center for the Arts, began 15 years ago as a small community festival known as Dahlia Days. The crowds that have flocked en masse to Eagle Rock for recent festivals are a far cry from those humble beginnings, and festival-goers have come to expect nothing but the best from ERMF. This year there will be one main, outdoor stage and six indoor venues, each showcasing a different genre while at the same time drawing attention to local businesses. Having cut the number of acts in half from 70 last year to 35 this year, Martinez and his peers insist that this year’s festival is a case of quality over quantity.
“In the past, we had to worry so much about things like security, and keeping those seventy acts organized. Now we can really focus on quality programming, and bringing the full potential out of every act,” Martinez said.
Martinez is pleased by positive feedback about the downsizing of the festival. This praise is well deserved, as Martinez and his peers have gone to great pains to reward the town of Eagle Rock for its commitment to the arts. By featuring local artists alongside the headlining acts and using local businesses as concert venues, the festival does a great deal of good for the community. ERFM brings in nearly $2,000,000 in revenue.
“It’s all about supporting the community, and we’ve received an overwhelmingly positive reaction for the most part,” Martinez said, in reference to the festival’s downsizing.
The festival route spans six blocks, beginning at the intersection of Eagle Rock and Colorado. Festival-goers can look forward to seeing an array of acts from nearly every conceivable genre. The headlining acts will be Bosnian Rainbows (responsible for the percussion on the Grand Theft Auto 5 soundtrack), Nguzunguzu (multi-genre club music) and b2b Kingdom. These acts will play on the main stage, but music lovers should make sure not to miss out on the smaller shows happening indoors at a number of local venues.
One of the day’s most interesting and eclectic shows will take place at the Los Angeles Filipino American United Church of Christ. The performers at this venue will include sitar and harp players, cellists and EDM artists.
“I challenged them to create ambient sounds that would accompany the acoustic capabilities of the church, which should make that show in particular a really unique and special experience. Its more an installation piece even than a concert. Accompanying the music, we’re going to have different videos projected onto the inner architecture of the church. It’s definitely worth checking out,” Martinez said.
For those with less experimental tastes there is a diverse offering of more mainstream genres. Fans of punk, metal, jazz, blues, tropical, world dance, and EDM will not leave the event disappointed. Those willing to risk inducing flashbacks from that awkward square dance freshman year will be able to do so at the Americana stage.
Spieckerman is also involved with KOXY Radio. In the same way that KOXY encourages students to explore new music by bringing independent bands to campus, Spieckerman brings the same attitude to his involvement with ERMF by encouraging Occidental students to take advantage of this great cultural opportunity.
“It’s an affordable, accessible way for Oxy students to discover new music,” Spieckerman said. “You don’t come to this festival because of the big name acts. You come to see something you haven’t seen before, to experience something new.”
Van Vliet reiterated Spieckerman’s enthusiasm for discovering new music.
“A lot of these bands we bring in for KOxy or the festival are on my iPod now, and honestly I listen to them all the time,” Van Vliet said.
To all those Occidental students thinking of going to the ERMF, $10 and a bike valet ticket are a small price to pay for the opportunity to explore new and exciting sounds.
This article has been archived, for more requests please contact us via the support system.
