Downtown Long Beach’s art district shut down its streets to vehicles and opened it up to some music craving residents and neighbors last weekend for Buskerfest, a miniature musical festival with a number of bands participating in hopes to open for the headlining Cold War Kids.
Each person that attends gets 9 wooden nickels, each nickel is worth one vote and the band that recieves the most wooden nickels opens for the headlining band.
I put my wooden nickles on “Matt Death and the New Intellectuals.” They are amazing musicians and Matt Wignall (lead singer) is one of my favorite people in the world. Unfortunately, they didn’t have enough votes and a band called “Pawn Shop Kings” ended up opening for the Cold War Kids for a great show. Here are some images from the whole night.
Matt Wignall of “Matt Death and the New Intellectuals”- Long Beach Residents Kesley Block and Bek Conley blowing the cazoo’s at Buskerfest
Nathan Willet snaps an iPhone picture of the youngest Matt Death member
The montage set: The Willetts, a pair of legs, crowd shot from the roof, Colin Dobrin and friend.
Nicoel Stark and Tim Noyes drove down from Santa Monica; Wooden nickels each counted as a vote
Cold War Kids from the roof and on stage shot of Drummer Matt Aveiro
Free shows mean great crowds. Standing room only.
Crowd shot (I think I might blow it up huge, since I can see some famliar faces). Nathan Willett in action, pedals from the show.
Cold War Kids Guitarist and Backup vocalist Jonnie Russell during the show.
The faces of Long Beach (clockwise): Desiree Giatan, David Maust & son, Danny Simon, and Scott Henning all attended the festival.
Crowd shots (clockwise): After the show (I just liked the style of this image), Nathan Huesmann raises his hands with double peace signs, Alex Minjares enjoys a cocktail, Sam and Crystal Morgan interact after the show.
Follow the lbpost.com on our Facebook, YouTube and Twitter pages