Hitting all these festivals? Swerve

You won't be able to swing a hot dog on a stick without hitting some sort of music festival this month.

The biggest conflagration is the weekend of Sept. 28-30, when you can get Grand, Nocturnal, Neighborhood and Swerve. You'll need an event planner to manage these two days -- either that or good seats to the season-ending Dodgers-Giants series.

Most diverse is the new kid on the block, the Swerve Festival, whose stated intention is "to celebrate West Coast creative culture." It's a film/visual arts/music gathering at Barnsdall Art Park and the Echoplex, offering screenings of, among other offerings, the Ian Curtis biopic "Control" and the Paskowitz family documentary "Surfwise."

The full music lineup hasn't been announced yet, but sources say Devotcha and We Are Scientists will join the list of previously revealed indie acts the Black Angels, Bonde Do Role and Foreign Born (among others). There's an impressive roster of visual artists who will be mounting exhibitions over the three-day festival too. I think folks used to drink a lot of Red Stripe at shindigs like this, but that might be out of fashion now.

On Saturday, people will dance. In fact, the footloose crowd will be divided into two camps -- the crooked-haircut indie kids will no doubt favor Dim Mak's Neighborhood Music Festival (use that link only if you aren't really tired of "Glass Danse") and will feature the likes of the Faint, Mickey Avalon, Spank Rock, Crystal Castles and, of course, Steve Aoki. (My sleeper pick on the bill: Brother Reade.) It's a $40 ticket and will be held in Exposition Park. And if you look art-damaged enough you're liable to get your photograph up on one of those spiffy web galleries.

The post-rave traditionalists will convene in downtown L.A. for Nocturnal Wonderland, with Chemical Brothers, Paul Van Dyk and Carl Cox, among a host of others. It's a $55 ticket. And if you stay until the event ends at 4 a.m., you won't want anybody taking photographs of you, let alone posting them on the web.

Are you tired yet? Because there's the Grand Avenue Festival on Sunday. At least it's not the same day as the LA Weekly Detour Festival, like it was last year. The free, daytime event will feature chamber music, the L.A. Philharmonic and some interesting pop flavors, including East L.A.'s Upground, the sultry trip-hop of Bitter:Sweet and the cool dudes from Dublab DJing.

Take the ensuing week off, because Detour and Tarfest follow the first weekend in October.

Photo of DeVotchka by Paul Schroder