The festival kicked off in style with a House of Blues-hosted red carpet event honoring the influential rockers Motley Crue. After the SSMF performers walked the carpet and paid their respects to the media, everyone headed inside to watch Motley Crue get roasted while simultaneously getting their egos stroked. From there, an array of shows took over the Sunset Strip’s glorified rock bars as Buckcherry, Dredg, Nico Vega, The Veronicas, The Faceless, Lady Sinatra, Taylor Locke & The Roughs, and many more took the stage.

Saturday, police closed the streets and a full-fledged festival broke out on Sunset Boulevard. An East and West stage were set up at different ends of the strip and rock, metal, hip-hop, pop, and reggae bands took over.

Tribal Seeds entertained the masses with a dose of roots, rock, and reggae to early on in the day while Matt & Kim tossed their energy, as well as hundreds of blue balloons into the crowd. She Wants Revenge treated fans to tracks from their latest release “Valleyheart,” and the audience engaged in singing along to popular tunes off “Tear You Apart.” The recently reunited Bush, led by the ponytail-wearing heartthrob, Gavin Rossdale, performed new material as well as classics like “Everything Zen.” Guitarist Scott Ian joined Public Enemy’s Chuck D and Flavor Flav on stage for a recreation of the1987 rap meets metal hit “Bring The Noise.” Black Veil Brides and their sea of equally dressed up fans played a set of hard rock and metal accessorized with KISS-influenced make up, leather pants, and big hair, while Escape The Fate appeared as a modern day version of Motley Crue. Cobra Starship, The Dirty Heads, and Ray Manzarek and Robby Krieger of The Doors also performed.

While the madness of the street festival played out, the renowned Strip rock bars featured a rotating line up with performances by Semi Precious Weapons, Voxhaul Broadcast, Whiskey Six, Acidic, Vampires Everywhere!, Jordan Cook, Warner Drive, Queen Caveat, Piegon John, Imagine Dragons, The Limousines, and more – over 55 bands played the festival in total!

Everything halted, however, when Motley Crue summoned the masses to engulf the stage in preparation for their performance. When Sunset was sufficiently swallowed by Crue fans, several explosions went off and Vince Neil, Nikki Sixx, Mick Mars, and Tommy Lee took their place for a career altering performance. The notorious rockers paid homage to their hometown and dedicated “Home Sweet Home” to the city of West Hollywood. Their set included drum solos, fire, scantly clad female back up singers, a fake blood spew into the crowd, and street side renditions of “Smokin’ in The Boy’s Room,” “ Wild Side,” “Saints of Los Angeles,” and “Dr. Feelgood.”

In addition to the music, the people watching was quite a worthwhile pastime. From the leather jackets to the vintage concert t-shirts, tattoos, and overly teased hair, The Sunset Strip Music Festival was filled with diehard rock fans. A man on stilts, dressed as a tree, notorious for being the cause of mini heart attacks as he has been known to jump out at strangers in Hollywood, tromped through the festival, pausing to throw up a pair of devil horns and pay his respects to Motley Crue. Jesus walked the red carpet on Thursday night, got in on a few media photos, and high fived many festival attendees. West Hollywood’s Mayor John Duran popped up on a few music stages and Roxy Theater owner Nic Adler chatted with random crowd members making sure they were having a good time.

From the tattooed legends to the newest generation of up and coming rock stars, The Sunset Strip Music Fest had something for everyone. With the festival being a wrap, preparations will soon be underway for the 2012 version. Can’t wait to see who is on the lineup for next year!

The Electric Daisy Festival is quickly turning out to be the newest Coachella— a massive music extravaganza that has tapped the mainstream pulse of a nation’s youth, drawing in fans by more and more thousands each year.

But did you know it’s also likely to incite mass chaos and rioting in the streets – especially if those punk-ass raver kids ain’t happy?

With its official Grauman’s Chinese Theater debut, the premiere of The Electric Daisy Festival documentary was supposed to be a real red carpet gala affair, more a cause for celebration amongst the filmmakers/ festival planners/make-up artists/clowns/sfx coordinators/CGI people.

Coming from across town, it took over an hour to get there. Multiple helicopters flew within an eerily-close proximity of one another. Rumors abounded as to what could be causing the backup: Lady Gaga block party, Live set from EDF star DJ Kaskade, The I Love Lucy Turns 60! exhibit at the Hollywood Musuem… turned out that they were right on all counts. Tourists, denizens and L.A.’s finest, all colliding in a chaos just as I arrived.

Despite tweeting earlier in the day, “”Me+BIG SPEAKERS+MUSIC=BLOCK PARTY!!! RT!”, DJ Kaskade ended up canceling his set – especially when EDF fans flooded the boulevard, pelting cops with bottles and doing that move that makes it look like they’re picking apples. One guy reportedly taunted police, and the police shot him, as well as a few others, with a beanbag gun.

Two people were arrested on suspicion of vandalism — looking down upon the boulevard, you could see that one of the shops had been completely trashed – but otherwise it just looked like a lot of garbage, everywhere.

The end result: hundreds of people basically standing on top of one another to get a view of riot police, who’d been called in to disperse the ruffians in the streets. Ruffians who did little else than lie down on the street in defiance and/or taunt police – sort of a like bunch of raver Eddie Haskells taunt Kevlar-wearing Beavs. Altamont this ain’t, though it was the first time I might have ever felt something resembling a dash of sympathy for a cop.

But honestly all you have to do is Google ‘Electric Daisy Festival’ and one of the first headlines you’ll read is “LAMEST RIOT EVER!” After the crowds had dispersed, even gawkers had to agree. More pity to the schmucks who are going to have to clean up all this trash.

As for the premiere, it looked fantastic, and exciting, and like the people behind the whole thing had put a hell of a lot of work into it. But the actual festival has been marred with some serious bad luck lately – from a young girl’s accidental death to a few drug overdoses, and a consequential relocation to Vegas as a result. Hopefully this will end the drama; the festival itself should be the reason for commotion, not a few kids throwing tantrums.

View the trailer to the Electric Daisy Carnival Experience below

Words by Jeff Nau. Photos by Lisa Johnson.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0uEwlSoJp4

Carrot Top  – lookin’ good my friend! Lookin’ real good!

Hottie Playmate Holly Madison – now in the cast of Peep Show

Romany Malco

Photos by Dustin Downing