San Pedro — Soundscapes 2021

For people who live outside of Southern California, the only way to fully comprehend the spindly quality. of City of Los Angeles’s cartography of coast-line appropriations is to focus on Venice and San Pedro. Did the City of Los Angeles want a beach within its political control? Annex Venice. Did the City of Los Angeles want a port? Annex San Pedro. It’s more complicated than that, of course, but for San Pedro the result has been a peculiar isolation. There are only two ways into San Pedro: the appropriately named Harbor Freeway. (the 710), or going through Long Beach and over the Vincent Thomas Bridge, which is the route I use.

The corner-pocket isolation has led to various local music scenes over the years. The best book I know that documents the punk music scene in San Pedro is “A WAILING OF A TOWN: An Oral History of Early San Pedro Punk and More 1977-1985” by Craig Ibarra. On the back cover, Gary Jacobelly is quoted in a mini-manifesto of a defiant paragraph: “There’s no legend to punk rock, we were all just doing it. … Pedro punk was practical punk. It wasn’t ‘legendary’ punk. We worked and paid our bills. …. We made noise, had fun, tried to live loud, but we kept our jobs. Pedro punk was workingman’s noise.”

In the years since, San Pedro has become known for an annual event of experimental sound. For those who couldn’t attend this past weekend’s performances and presentations, here are the links to the past and the present. “Underground” art continues to have its own cultural subterfuges, even as the internet would claim to make everything “available” to mass audiences. If you have a chance to attend next year, I would urge you to do so and hear the differences.

https://soundpedro.org/archives

http://www.soundpedro.org/audioscapes-2021

First half: soundpedro Artists’ Audioscapes
Andrew Mandinach, Andre Perim, BlackSunHighDesert,
Brandon Bollinger, Black Silk, Jeff Jacoby, Karena Massengill,
joshua elza breen-tucci, Martin Espino, Miser, Ricardo Tomasz,
Vedran Mehinovic, Ystalost, Andre Perim, Lucinda Trask & Sasha Mandel,
D A Ayer, Alexia Benson, Jose Trejo-Maya, Margo Harms, Michael Mersereau, FNORD!, Ashton S. Phillips, Ching Ching Cheng

Second half: SynthLab Audio+Video concert
Christina Wilson, Alex Miller, Jesse Nason, Cannibalistic Caterpillar,
Putney Swope, Loren Nerell, Qrux, Neo Kobe, univac,
Rychard Cooper, Cameron Johnston, Faraday Cage

soundpedro2021 Mascot of Ceremonies: wabi’sloppy

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