Kevin Bronson on October 6th, 2014

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Sunday afternoon was hot. It was hotter still if you participated in CicLAvia and walked/ran/bicycled/unicycled/skateboarded one of the major thoroughfares in L.A. that was closed to automobile traffic for the day. And it was hotter even still if you were one of the five bands playing the Live Music Stage in Chinatown, where the sun baked the performers. Or, as Wyatt Blair put it, “provided a rich source of vitamin B.”

With most of the crowd retreating to the shade of the beer garden, the bands soldiered
on, highlighted by some mid-afternoon raging from re-formed punk quartet Go Betty Go. It attracted the biggest crowd of the day, including four youngsters who had taken the Greyhound bus down from San Jose to see the show. No kidding. After about eight years on the sidelines, Go Betty Go is working on a comeback album aptly titled “Reboot.”

Boys School finished the afternoon with 50 minutes of blistering classic rock, evoking everybody from Buddy Holly to Elvis Costello, with Brett Farkas finally going shirtless for an audacious display of soloing late in the set. Trapdoor Social’s hooks ’n’ harmonies shone brightly in their kinetic set of inspired songs. Blair gave a clinic in catchy, retro guitar-pop (the Ramones are smiling somewhere), and up-and-comers PARIS kicked off the afternoon with tunes worthy of a lunch-hour dance party.

Photos by Bronson