Looking around at Sunset Junction, the majority of the crowd was the young, trendy music fanatic. There were a huge variety of bands covering a wide array of genres like indie, rock, reggae, and electronica, but most of them seemed to cater to a modern generation of concertgoers. There were however, two exceptions, the Ohio players and Lee Scratch Perry.
The Ohio Players headlined on Saturday night at the Hoover Stage. They are a legendary American funk and R&B band formed in Dayton, Ohio in 1959 and best known for hits like “Love Rollercoaster,” “Fire,” “Funky Worm,” and “Skin Tight.” I made my way over to the stage to catch their set. Fashionably late, the show didn’t start until after 9:00pm so I was able to spend some time getting to know the crowd. As we were packed in like sardines, people began to get restless. I looked around and realized that a good 90% of the crowd was an older group and clearly diehard Ohio Players fans who had come to Sunset Junction only to see their show. The band finally took the stage with a proud introduction of, “All the way from 1959, the original Ohio Players.” The crowd cheered and the OHP walked onto the stage clad in a classy white shirt/white pant combination, with the exception of the bass player who opted for the fish out of water approach and a shiny shirt with snakeskin pants. He did stand out on stage, if that is what he was going for. The instrumentation was airtight and included smooth vocals, a saxophone, guitar, bass, trumpet, bongos, drums, keyboard, which all fit together in a perfect harmony. Each and every one of these guys is a phenomenal musician and they’ve clearly lived up to their reputation of playing with each other for so long. A few songs into the set, I heard “LA, let’s turn back the clock, turn back the day to the 1970s. Do you all remember that? There were lovely ladies everywhere and we always wrote a song about women” trickle down from the stage and the crowd enthusiastically belted out the lyrics to “Skin Tight.” Almost the whole audience was dancing and the few that weren’t stood out like a sore thumb. At one point I glanced to my left and saw a rail thin homeless man contently rockin’ away. As I left to head to the next stage, the Ohio Players had transitioned into “Jive Turkey.” I could not get that song out of my head the rest of the night.
Lee Scratch Perry wowed me as the Sunday night headliner on the Sanborn stage. Another older performer at Sunset Junction, Lee still gets on stage at the ripe age of 74 and is as influential as ever. I noticed that his crowd was more mixed, with quite a few younger fans in attendance, but everyone was clearly into his tunes. He had a huge turnout and before he graced the stage people started chanting, “We want Lee” and “We love Scratch.” Lee’s setup included a younger backing band and a lot of candles and incense. The band kicked it off and Lee appeared holding incense in one hand and a microphone in another. Keeping up with the fashion fever at Sunset Junction, he wore high top sneakers that were yellow, red, and green with gold bling, rolled cuffed jeans, a Superman cartoon t-shirt, a hat with a gold ball on the brim, and a marching band style jacket with gold tassels. His knuckles on both hands were covered in gold rings and he had a microphone necklace and a few others around his neck. Remember those old bookmarks you used to get from your elementary school librarian? Well he had those hanging from his jacket as an extra touch of pizzazz. His belt buckle had an American eagle on it and was red, white, and blue. His beard was purple and when he took off his hat after the first song to scratch his head, he had multi-colored hair. Every time I looked at him I took in another detail and wondered how long it took to coordinate that ensemble. Lee walked to the edge of the stage and crooned lines like “And together we should be in peace and unity” and “When God bless you, no one can curse you.” He asked the crowd if they were happy to which they replied, “Yeah man.” My favorite part was when he sang “Touch your head, shake your leg” and acted out the lines like a Rastafarian hokie pokie.
As we patiently awaited the line-up for this year’s Sunset Junction, we knew it would be filled with trendy bands like Ghostland Observatory and Edward Sharpe. The curve balls, however, were the older guys whose performances proved that age brings with it not just experience but also a great stage presence and a thoroughly enjoyable show.
Words by Nicole Jones. Photos by Sidney Bensimon
