A look into UCLA’s student bands

For a school that contains thousands of talented musicians yearning for a space to perform, UCLA nightlife is characterized by Greek shindigs and apartment parties colored by Top 40 radio singles and electronic remixes from an iPod-connected speaker.

From time to time, however, nights at UCLA are much different.

Beginning with early jam sessions between music students, the underground music scene at UCLA grew to host live music concerts that lasted deep into the night. Bands rounded up their friends and followers and played to crowds of more than a hundred people.

Amplified by PA systems, drum sets and guitars, student bands developed their sounds and followings through numerous open-mics and performances in apartments and courtyards on the weekends.

But as quickly as the scene began to attract students in large numbers, the music fizzled and the amps and drums were packed away.

Bands began to move out of Westwood to perform in larger Los Angeles venues.

Still, they remember the noise and energy of their Westwood performances.

Most of these bands, including Alto, The Ten Thousand and Free Food, are graduating the last of their members this year and will be pursuing music careers, leaving behind only traces and memories of their Westwood concerts and the UCLA music scene, which is documented in the compilation record, “DO U C L A!? Vol. 1.”

 

Midvale Sessions

The beginnings of a UCLA music scene took place in the fall of 2010, when members of the student a cappella group Scattertones decided that student musicians needed a place to showcase their talents to the UCLA audience.

By January of 2011, Midvale Sessions, the brainchild of alumni Taylor Fugit and Aaron Rabkin, was presented at 447 1/2 Midvale Avenue.

“The call that Midvale Sessions was attempting to answer was related to the fact that there wasn’t an intuitive and socially engaging music scene (at UCLA),” said alumnus Russell Angelico, a former member of Scattertones. “It was about supporting original and new music, but in a way that takes it really seriously.”

Midvale Sessions was scheduled every other Friday night from the end of January to October 2011. Each night began with a short magic show by Rabkin, followed by a 45-minute set from a student band, and closed with another student band or covers by the Haus Band, a group composed of the apartment’s residents, Angelico said.

Many of the 11 concerts held at Midvale Sessions featured new bands at the time. These bands are still active today, recording music and playing shows all over Los Angeles.

“We inspired (the bands) to perform well, but not necessarily become super-polished,” Angelico said. “People were paying attention to the music. They were raving over the music. It was like a moment of being a celebrity for the bands.”

One of the bands that got its start at Midvale Sessions is the indie-rock band Manzanita, who played under the name The Internship. The band was one of many that formed that year and began performing for energetic and packed crowds in the Midvale apartment.

“Being in (Midvale Sessions) … it really felt like it captured that quintessential youthfulness of being in a college band and playing a college apartment,” said alumnus Moses Sumney, formerly a copy editor at the Daily Bruin. “We were still learning what it was to play music, what it was to interact with a crowd, but it was done in the most relaxed, fun environment possible.”

Like many that played at the venue, The Ten Thousand, a rock ‘n’ roll band that began by playing shows at Midvale Sessions, said their performances at the small Westwood apartment pushed them to become serious about performing in a band.

The intimate and approachable atmosphere of Midvale Sessions fostered the birth of many UCLA student bands, along with an appreciation for live music from the audience, said alumnus Matthew Flesock, who helped found Midvale Sessions.

For the first time, student bands were able to organically perform in front of engaged audiences, he said.

By October of 2011, however, Midvale Sessions had seen the end of its reign. Ceilings had been cracked, PA systems broken and police-attracting noise levels had shaken the music of the Westwood nightlife.

“It gave me a lot of faith in disorganized, young, inexperienced people,” Angelico said.

 

Westwood Music

Soon after Midvale Sessions began holding live music, the Westwood music scene began to spread to other venues.

The first of these was The Treehouse, an apartment complex on Strathmore Avenue that began holding open-mic concerts in April 2011.

The indie-folk group Alto – then a duo made up of now-fourth-year ethnomusicology student Nicolette Yarbrough and fourth-year music performance and education student Jessica Jones – first played at The Treehouse in 2011.

“We had a really good experience,” Yarbrough said about Alto’s performance at The Treehouse. “It was the end of the night, and all these people were on the floor sitting around. It was the only time that’s ever happened in there. People responded well, and it was the first validation of what we were doing.”

The artist community of The Treehouse welcomed a range of genres and styles that promoted live music, said Oliver Brown, lead vocalist of the funk-rap group Free Food. With the addition of The Treehouse and other venues in Westwood, music adopted its communal roots and spread through the formation of numerous student bands at UCLA.

“People really wanted it,” Jones said. “They wanted something to go to. For us, it built a community. We’re all in very different bands with different types of music, but we’re all buddies. And I think that is a result of that type of thing.”

By May 2011, UCLA Radio had begun hosting concerts at the University Cooperative Housing Association apartment building, packing the outdoor courtyard with amplified guitars, roaring drums and plenty of screams from the bands as well as the audience.

With the variety of venues surrounding Westwood growing, bands sharpened their skills and used the shows as launching pads for shows in West Los Angeles and further out into Los Angeles.

“We grew up in front of crowds,” said Braeden Henderson, fourth-year ethnomusicology student and frontman for the garage-rock band Owl Fly South. “We had a lot of shows at the beginning where we went up and sucked, but it benefited us in terms of the larger L.A. scene and the Echo Park scene, because we played so many shows by all the opportunities at UCLA that by the time we were good, we were ready to tackle the bigger scene.”

 

Branching Out

By 2012, Midvale Sessions had closed and shows at The Treehouse and the Co-op had become irregular. The bands that had sprouted up around Midvale needed new territories to explore and began to move toward playing shows in Silver Lake, Echo Park and central Los Angeles.

After winning Spring Sing in 2012, Alto took to touring in the fall, taking the sounds of Westwood to new audiences. The Ten Thousand also began performing outside Westwood, playing in Santa Barbara in May 2012 and securing a residency at the Los Globos club in Silver Lake in January.

In May, Owl Fly South played at The Echo, and Moses Sumney, a former Daily Bruin copy editor, of Manzanita will be performing a residency at Bootleg Theater this month.

As bands branch out to play larger venues, record their music and expand their fan bases, the years they played in Westwood remain some of the fondest memories of their music careers, said Dylan Robin, fourth-year psychology student and lead guitarist for The Ten Thousand.

For Robin, the differences between playing at a formal venue such as Bootleg Theater in East Los Angeles and a makeshift venue in the North Village are noticeable.

“It’s really fun to play a show at the Bootleg,” Robin said. “Even if you have a bunch of people come and it’s a great show at a real venue, but even that doesn’t compare to blowing the Co-op open and just having it be a crazy rager.”

In order to document the sound of the Westwood music scene of the past years, The Ten Thousand recently assembled a compilation album, “DO U C L A!? Vol. 1,” that featured Free Food, Owl Fly South and Alto, among many others.

By cementing their place in the minds of students who saw them perform and new students who hear their music, the bands of the UCLA music scene graduate with countless memories, from The Internship performing in a parking lot to The Ten Thousand playing in front of police.

 

Volume 2

As the underground music scene that began with Midvale Sessions enters its third year and more student musicians graduate, moving into the greater L.A. music scene, band members said they are proud of the sounds and shows they leave behind.

Kevin Daye of The Ten Thousand said he hopes that the torch will be picked up by future students. Within a school of talented musicians, the nightlife at UCLA yearns for live music.

“There is an audience for what we’re doing,” Robin said. “The thing is, before some of these venues popped up, there just wasn’t a place for us to go. It’s a really obvious thing that these places popped up and they’re full all the time. … We appreciate all different kinds of music, and that’s why I think this scene is really positive.”

With the graduating musicians leave behind a strong legacy in Westwood, the future of the music scene at UCLA remains up in the air, waiting for a new group of student musicians to take the reigns.

The audience is present and the space is there. The possibility of a second volume of UCLA student-produced music will be in the drum sticks and picks of a new generation.