A colorful start to the Detour Festival

[Follow along as I meander through an autumn Saturday in a four-block region

conveniently located just across the street from The Times' offices ...]

As festivals go, this promises to be a pretty good block party. And as Bloc Partys go

... well, we'll leave that for later.

The LA Weekly Detour Festival in

downtown Los Angeles is a good idea -- a "mini-Coachella" in an area of the Southland whose

renaissance cannot be understated. Four stages of music, exhibitors and vendors, wacky

art installations, hipsters lounging on the resplendent lawn at City Hall: Detour seems

to have it all. And you could even take the subway to get there. Try that in

Indio in April.

We lurched off to a noisy start at 2 p.m. when L.A.'s the Pity Party (playing the first of its

two gigs today; the two-piece were also scheduled to play in the evening at the Eagle

Rock Music Festival) served up a mid-afternoon spazz attack on the East stage. Yelpy,

hyperkinetic, dissonant: OK in small doses.

When the color-coordinated bands kicked in, though, it got fun. The crowd was colorful

enough -- there were a lot of horizontal stripes, lively headbands, frilly dresses and

glow-in-the-dark footwear. Then Scissors for Lefty came out on the

South state wearing only shorts and gold body paint. Nico Vega went for all black, always safe,

Aja Volkman in a leotard.

Then the

Aggrolites, head-to-toe in red Dickies, riled up a West stage crowd with their

relentlessly tight dirty reggae, delivering the best set I saw during the daylight.

Jesse Wagner and crew are serious: Get with their program. Or they might send some

workers over to your house.

Photos: Top, the Aggrolites' Wagner; left,

Scissors for Lefty; right, Nico Vega (by Kevin Bronson / LAT)