Live in LA

—Greg Burk

SIX DEGREES FESTIVAL at Six Degrees Warehouse, downtown L.A., September 17 Strange things happen when you mash up art, fashion, politics and downtown Los Angeles. For one, you get scammers, like the shipping company that arranged parking across the street from the Six Degrees Fest’s five interconnected warehouses. After grifting $5 per car, they changed their minds, causing partygoers to race madly to beat a phalanx of tow trucks sent to impound everything in sight. The dissonance was also evident inside the event — a downtown art/music/shopping extravaganza marking its second year. In the Zone 5 fashion area (the event was divided among several warehouse “zones”) they were blasting Motorhead at deafening levels. (It was so loud, in fact, I almost forgot how bad Lemmy would want to kill himself if he knew he were being used for a sales soundtrack.) J. Boogie’s rousing set limped to a finale when songbird Gina Renee called for more nonviolent rallies and fewer antiwar protests — which would’ve been fine, except that she was sporting both a camo hat and a Che Guevara tee. The Ninja Tune label fronted some quality musical acts, including Ammon Contact, Dwight Trible and Blockhead, who played his Apple laptop to an audience that mostly stood and watched, waiting for who knows what to happen. (Things got better when some b-boys started breakdancing and fake-fighting.) But it was the funk collective Breakestra, armed with real instruments (!), that supplied Six Degrees with its highest temperatures, jamming without pause through everything from James Brown to Jurassic 5 without a water break. Watching Do the Right Thing actor/activist Roger Guenveur Smith lug around a huge cardboard box soliciting dollars for Katrina relief was a blast, but I wasn’t surprised when some jackass reached in and took a handful of cash for himself. We’re just that kind of country sometimes, especially when politics get arty, baby.

—Scott Thill