In 2024, rock icons L7 threw their inaugural hometown “Fast and Frightening Takeover” of the Belasco Theater, a menacing night of music and art, to much acclaim from the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Magazine, Brooklyn Vegan, FLOOD Magazine, 95.5 KLOS, KCRW and more. They have now announced they will bring their bombastic vision to L.A. audiences again this fall as “L7’s 40th Anniversary Bash” on Friday, October 3. The band is thrilled to celebrate this career milestone with fellow headliners LUNACHICKS, along with CSS. Additional performers will be revealed soon.
Presented by L7 and curated by L7 frontwoman Donita Sparks, the event will again be held at the historic Belasco Theater in downtown Los Angeles. Similar to last year, the evening will have five bars, two stages, and be all ages. General on-sale begins Friday, July 18 at 10 a.m. PST / 1 p.m. EST.
Sparks comments: “This will mark the second year of our annual takeover of The Belasco Theater in Los Angeles which coincides with L7‘s 40th anniversary, so we are making it a big party!
“Suzi [Gardner, guitar] and I started the band way back in 1985 withstanding many trials and tribulations, band members, and misogynist rock dinosaurs. Gratefully, we survived, even thrived at times, and we want to celebrate with some of our very special friends who joined us along the way.
“Enter our sisters-in-arms LUNACHICKS, whom we haven’t played a show with since 1990, at CBGBs in New York City. This will truly be a momentous event of insanity and rock and roll.
“Adding to this rowdiness are our pals CSS, who will get the electro-fun party going. We go back with those maniacs as well.
“I think all three of our bands share a certain sense of humor, political right-on-ness and bombastic energy so look out mellow ones… you will be rocking! Come on out and join our celebration.”
In a December 2024 interview with Australia’s Heavy, Sparks was asked how she would categorize L7‘s sound, in light of the fact that the band often got lumped in with their ’90s grunge contemporaries, but whose music bore more similarities to the unhinged punk-metal of MOTÖRHEAD. She responded: “I think we’ve always been an island. I think we’ve been grouped in those different things. And I think it’s really cool that we’re invited to participate in all of those tribes [like punk and metal and alternative], but we’ve always been kind of an outlier, oddball kind of band. I mean, some people said we were Riot grrrls; we weren’t. We never called ourselves grunge, but now I don’t care if they call us either a metal band or punk or anything. Whatever — just hashtag us, for crying out loud. Please.”
Sparks went on to say that L7 has “always been embraced” by fans of alternative, punk and metal music. “We’re an anomaly,” she said. “For a chick band, it’s rare. To be our age… And back then we were embraced by that crowd. Now we’re embraced… Who else is…? I mean, I guess Joan Jett maybe. So, I don’t know. It’s cool. And metal bands and hard rock bands have always been pretty much kind to us and supportive of us.”
Formed in 1985, L7 went on indefinite hiatus in 2001. A 2015 reunion tour was followed by the documentary “L7: Pretend We’re Dead” in 2016.
L7‘s first album in 20 years, “Scatter The Rats”, was released in May 2019 via Joan Jett‘s Blackheart Records. At the time, Sparks told the Asbury Park Press that new music was never part of the reunion strategy. “New music was not in the plan at all,” she said. “We just got together to do reunion shows, and that just really kind of took off and we wanted to keep playing shows, we really enjoyed connecting with our fans again.
“Playing rock is fun and we hadn’t done it in a long time and we realized, ‘Wow, this is really fun again,’ so we thought, ‘If we want to keep doing this, we should put out new music.’ And we felt we still had stuff to say and still wanted to express ourselves with new stuff.”
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