This Ain’t No Picnic Festival Blurs Genres and Generations at the Rose Bowl: Concert Review
Lily Moayeri The Brookside Golf Club at the Rose Bowl has seen a lot of foot traffic over the last few months, much of it unrelated to the sport. The expansive course has become a convenient setting for several music festivals and cultural events, including This Ain’t No Picnic, which touched down in Pasadena this past weekend. The all-ages, family-friendly, two-day festival — named after the Minutemen song — boasted a bill that read like an NPR playlist. A clear replacement for Los Angeles’ defunct, and sorely missed FYF Fest, This Ain’t No Picnic had a musical something for everyone — pop, hip-hop, dance, punk and rock were well-represented genres — and featured the sort of left-of-center artists who’ve become darlings of the indie scene, like Phoebe Bridgers, Wet Leg, Beach House, Courtney Barnett (pictured above), and of the last 20 years, as represented by Le Tigre, Caroline Polachek, and headliners the Strokes and LCD Soundsystem.