Remembering Twilight On the Santa Monica Pier (PHOTOS – Lots of PHOTOS!)

November 19, 2018

Adjacent to the picnic area and main stage were concession stands where they gave away snacks and beverages provided by the many sponsors of the Twilight on the Pier Festival that included water, chips, and coconut water. Photo by Troy Tieuel.

*It is important that we support and acknowledge the local artists who are working hard towards becoming successful. Before any mainstream artist hit it big, they put in time as a new artist performing at local venues and sponsored festivals.

These venues and festivals become the go-between for the artist and their community. Smaller venues limit the artist’s exposure and sometimes have limited audience demographics. These smaller venues can be more intimate giving the listener a more personal experience with the artist’s music.

However, large festivals oftentimes attract a wide variety of people and have promotional budgets that the smaller venues just don’t have. This allows the artist’s music to be heard and appreciated by those who would not normally consume their product.

These two types of ‘go-betweens’ for an artist can sometimes be a critical step in an artist’s evolution from being a street corner performer, to them rocking a huge stadium.

As the sun set, the neon lights illuminate the Santa Monica Pier for the Twilight on the Pier Festival. Click here for more information about Santa Monica, California.

One of the greatest examples of a large festival performance changing an artist’s career was Live Aid 1985, where a group named Queen performed. The venue provided Queen with a wide variety of people, some who had never listened to their music and catapulted them into a new arena of popularity.

Twighlight on the Pier showcased several of these up and coming artists in a six-week long festival that ended this past October. Sponsored by the City of Santa Monica, the crowd that gathered consisted of the residents of Santa Monica, as well as visitors from all around Los Angeles.

Twilight on the Pier took festival-goers around the globe with stops in West Africa, Latin America, and South Asia exposing both the casual beach visitor and the music enthusiast with a wide variety of sounds to choose from.

Twilight on the Pier boasted of three stages that changed the pier’s public spaces into a picnic area, another area had a club-dancehall vibe and an informal drum circle that overlooked the waves of the Pacific Ocean.

Following this story is a pictorial essay that described the spaces and showed the talented artist in their element.