[Jeff Weiss boned up on his French and surveyed the scene at the South stage on

Saturday night:]

Justice’s Coachella

performance and subsequent Echoplex set have already passed into the stuff of legend.

Those who were there described it with a level of hyperbole akin to a Moses parting the

Red Sea armed with nothing but a pair of turntables and a crate full of old Daft Punk

LPs. Truth be told, conventional logic suggested that by mid-May, at least four Silver

Lake hipsters had perfected lustrous Gaspard Auge mustaches, purchased plane tickets to

France and sought employment at various Parisian boulangeries to support their

aspirations in the emerging Gallic techno scene.

So, perhaps it was these nearly insurmountable expectations that caused me to be

unimpressed with the red-hot Parisian techno duo’s Detour Festival performance.

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here’s my final take …]

Bloc Party made me wish I’d chosen the

Turbonegro set to end my Detour.

Oh, the Englishmen were charming enough, and their dancier material fairly rattled

the buildings at Main and Temple streets. But it ended up providing a little too pat a

finish to the long day. You add this one up, and it equals a day’s worth of small

tent-caliber material at Coachella.

Do I wish I’d spent my Saturday on the

couch watching college football? No.

Do I wish Detour had at least one band

that was trying to save rock ‘n’ roll? Yes.

Photo: Bloc Party on the East

state (by Kevin Bronson / LAT)

With a throng of very young fans ready to shake their bodies to every note,

Moving Units nearly crashed and burned on the

South stage. Blame the gremlins. "Sorry," front man Blake Miller told the

crowd after having to restart a song not once but twice, "you’re not supposed to

see the smoke and mirrors."

Yes, for all the Units’ swagger, much of the electronic underpinning of their new

songs — "Hexes for Exes" will be released on Tuesday — comes courtesy of a

laptop. And something was not in sync on this night, so the crowd that filled 1st Street

was left with warts and frustration. It made you nostalgic for a three-piece dance-punk

band that married in-your-face attitude with riffs so sharp you could shave with

them.

There’s little of that on the Units’ new album. Maybe the band’s swagger remains, but

the danger is gone.

I will say one thing: "Kids From Orange

County" could probably fill the dancefloor at Cinespace.

Photo: Blake

Miller beckons as the Moving Units start their set (by Kevin Bronson / LAT).

Ssh, people are trying to work in that building (by Kevin Bronson / LAT)

"For years, everybody in Los Angeles has been rooting for this band."

"They must be awfully tired."

As the sun set, things started to get topsy-turvy.

The Shout Out Louds channeled the Cure,

and too well. They’re nice, they’re Swedish, they figure to gain ground now that they

are no longer on a major label (Capitol) and are aligned with a hip indie (Merge). But

some of the tasty stuff in their set Saturday, and on their album "Our Ill

Wills," veers awfully close to the bittersweet flavors dispensed by Robert Smith

(although I’m not sure I ever saw him in red horizontal stripes) back in The Decade That Nobody at the Detour Festival

Was Old Enough to Remember.

And it occurred to me while Adan Olenius

warbled through the band’s nice set that this Detour — lacking anything resembling a

groundbreaking headliner — represented little more than a window to what you can get

away with calling hip, as long as it’s danceable and illuminated by enough Glo Sticks

and neon bracelets. At least the Shout Out Louds were playing; the myriad DJs dispensing

their various strains of disco were just recycling. Whether they are collagists or mere

selectors, their music acts as little more than an aural cattle prod, and possesses

about as much longevity.

The herds moved obediently.

Photo: Shout

Out Louds (by Kevin Bronson / LAT)

Even better, it’s the wall of City Hall (by Kevin Bronson / LAT)

The Deadly Syndrome’s

music is sweet, then paranoid, then nervous, then chaotic. But there’s something

that holds it together, as the young quartet showed on the South stage. Overcoming a few

first-festival hiccups, the Syndrome fared pretty well — much better than the

cardboard-cutout ghosts that the band stations onstage during their performances. Most

of the ghosts succumbed to the breeze and blew over. The convulsive pop, with its

tinkling keyboards and explosive guitars, held up.

Only when guitarist Will Etling tried to join the set-ending drum circle (the quartet

huddles around Jesse Hoy’s kit in kind of a percussive exclamation point on the song

"Eucalyptus") did the Deadly Syndrome run into trouble. Etling unplugged

himself — his guitar cord was too short to reach over to the drum kit. They simply

weren’t used to playing on stages this big. Get used to it, guys.

Photo: Chris Richard of the Deadly Syndrome (by Kevin Bronson / LAT)

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)