The LA Beatnik

When I stepped through the doors of the Echoplex, I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. As always, the room was shaking with bass that could be heard from blocks away. But what stood out was not the music’s volume or even the music itself; it was the packed crowed of twenty-somethings going ape-shit as Salva played his remix of Kayne West’s Mercy. The show’s headliner was the LA-native beat producer Shlomo, but it was hard to imagine how he would follow the set by Salva, also an Angelino, which relentlessly brought the house down for a solid hour. Still, Shlomo held his own, offering his spin on the hip-hop and dubstep influenced genre that is known simply as “beats.” This was easily the best of the three beats shows I had been to that week, and a standout show of the entire summer; moreover, it was a show that defined the “L.A. Beats” scene in many ways, from the crowd, the intensity, and, of course, the music; and ironically, it was in anticipation for this show that my brother and I were comparing the L.A. Beats scene to Seattle’s 90’s grunge scene.

As a lifelong music fan, I was excited to get a taste of LA’s music scene when I moved here for school in 2009. I instantly fell in love and, with nightly shows for less than ten dollars, began to dedicate much of my free time to seeing live music. I quickly found, however, that the styles of music I was most interested in and knowledgeable about, indie or alternative rock, were becoming less and less prevalent, quickly being replaced by electronic music which was rapidly gaining mainstream (if only “college mainstream”) popularity. While I was skeptical to adopt techno, dubstep, and house music into my musical lexicon, I didn’t have much of a choice: not only were DJ shows taking over the best local venues, they stood out as much more energetic and fun shows. At a rock show, I would be one of the few crowd members head-bopping and dancing to the music. At an electronic show, however, most of the crowd was there to dance. Thus, slowly but surely, electronic music shows became, if not the norm, a more than viable alternative to rock shows.

When I first heard dubstep, I made a prediction: the way to make this style of music popular for the mainstream audience, I hypothesized, was to put the ridiculously bass-heavy beats under rap verses. I am proud to consider myself prophetic, as this is the basic concept behind the “beats” style of music which has burgeoned in popularity over the past two years, with weekly beats clubs and nightly shows springing up all over LA. What’s more, the scene is getting national attention, reputation, and praise. When I made my predicition, however, I didn’t know that clubs like Low End Theory, a weekly dubstep and beats club founded by five resident DJ/producers including the now-famous Flying Lotus, had been already throwing rap verses on top of dubstep beats for years.

But it’s not simply the music I intend to discuss and analyze in this blog; rather, it’s the culture surrounding this scene that I am interested in. Why is LA the particular hotbed for this genre and this scene? How does it interact with and relate to other music scenes in LA? Who are the leaders of the scene, what are their influences, and what are they influencing? How does this music scene compare to historical musical movements like the 90’s grunge, and what will help it reach or prevent it from reaching mainstream success? As someone who attends multiple live shows per week, these are questions that are always on my mind and that I hope to hash
out in this blog.

I have decided to name my blog The LA Beatnik. It serves three meanings: establishing myself as someone who will be able to deliver the latest “beats” (news) about the LA music scene, telling the subject of my blog, and suggesting an importance of the LA Beat scene by relating it to the Beat generation of the 50’s.