Thirty Years on Figueroa, Peanut Butter Wolf Brings Stones Throw 30 Home to Highland Park
The label’s founder throws a three-day outdoor festival beside its headquarters, with Aloe Blacc, Eric Andre and Sudan Archives as special guests.
Stones Throw is turning 30, and the label is throwing its party at home. Stones Throw 30, a three-day outdoor festival, will take over a spot right next to the label’s longtime headquarters in Highland Park on Friday, October 16, Saturday, October 17, and Sunday, October 18, the label announced.
Chris Manak, the DJ and producer known as Peanut Butter Wolf, founded Stones Throw in 1996. The Los Angeles Times reported that the label’s offices take up half a block on Figueroa Avenue, with Manak’s bar, Gold Line, on the ground floor. Records like Madvillain’s Madvillainy influenced Tyler, the Creator and Ye, and the label won a Grammy for the NxWorries album with Anderson .Paak.
The lineup mixes the current roster with the label’s early names. Automatic, Los Retros, DâM-FunK, Egyptian Lover, J Rocc, John Carroll Kirby, Karriem Riggins and Mndsgn are on the bill, along with Peanut Butter Wolf himself. Mild High Club will play its first Los Angeles show in more than five years, and Tuxedo, the duo of Mayer Hawthorne and Jake One, will play a DJ set. Wildchild and DJ Romes will perform Lootpack’s Soundpieces album. The very special guests are Sudan Archives, Aloe Blacc, Eric Andre and Kyle Mooney.
Manak told the Times he went back to the beginning when he booked it. “But then as I started looking at it, I did want to have Rasco and Planet Asia, because those are the first rappers that I worked with on the label,” he said. He also measured the run against the Motown anniversary special he watched on TV as a kid. “So it is weird to think that this label has lasted longer than Motown had at that anniversary.”
The festival is all ages and presented with Lodge Room and KCRW, where Manak is a new DJ. One dollar from every ticket will go to local charities, and weekend passes and single-day tickets are on sale through the label.
It is a good fall for Los Angeles music crews marking milestones. Velvet also followed Kaytranada and Soulection’s fifteenth anniversary in Atwater Village.
