At 3 p.m. yesterday, my daughter, Madeleine, was officially fit for the public (3 being the 24-hour mark since her diagnosis of step throat and the time at which she was no longer considered contagious). She didn't even look sick, was bouncing off the walls. So I took her to an all-ages country rock, urban-country-rockabilly-cow-punk extravaganza, called Roots Roadhouse, I'd been hoping to attend at the Echoplex in Echo Park, near our house. And what a treat that was! Not to mention a graceful confectionary fusion of cultural...stuff, both intentional and not.

Since we don't have plazas in Los Angeles or much that is similar, we have to create/commercialize our public milling spaces. Which is what the Echoplex provided on Saturday afternoon/early evening (with shows scheduled to continue till around midnight). A self-selected public of country types a la Nashville glamour -- lots of cowboy hats and fancy shirts, women with urban boots, sheepskin vests, peroxide hair, glowing skin, plus lower-key country styles, punk country styles, and indie-grunge-hipsters who didn't realize they were going to a costume ball, even after they got there. Once past the ticket tables that blocked the alleyway entrance, there were two food trucks, a band playing, and many vendors. The outside vendors sold guitars, hats, t-shirts, beer, lots of other stuff. Lots of energy as dozens of musicians arrived, carrying their own guitars, threading their way through the crowd, the alleyway also being the musicians entrance to the club. It seemed to be a fairly big day, at the sub-festival level. It was an insiders' scene that felt genuinely friendly to outsiders.

Inside the club another band played, plus more vendors, selling vintage clothing, mostly. My favorite overlay was a woman from a company called Easy Acres (the vendor is a resident of Cypress Park); she was set up next to one of the two downstairs bars, and she sold succulents and cactus. It seemed perfectly in keeping that you could buy your tequila at the bar, and while you were waiting for change, pick up a baby agave for the yard you can no longer afford to water. The two vendors -- liquor and plants -- looked perfectly paired because of their incongruence -- it was that kind of event.

Outside again, Madeleine and I tapped our feet, she dancing from time to time, to a tight band called Last Round Down, who played their hearts out. Madeleine's later comment about Last Round Down, "All their songs are about the same thing, a baby." Then we sat on a bench and ate potato salad and a bbq chicken sandwich. (Madeleine's recent pronouncement on eating chicken: "I am sorry dead chicken that someone had to shoot you" -- then she tucks in.) On the roof of a building that is filled with hipster gallery-boutiques stood a couple of men who got a free view/listen. The building next door to their houses the community organization El Centro Del Pueblo.

It was after 7 by this time. A band that started out fabulously -- Old Bull -- had to be left behind as it was time to get Madeleine back home. You don't want to push it when it comes to strep. Fortuitously we found a clean staircase shortcut through a building on Glendale to Sunset Boulevard, above us, where my car was parked. (The public staircase we had walked down to get to the Echoplex had been a horror of piss, garbage, and feces. I had been hoping the club masters would allow us to enter at the Sunset Blvd. entrance, which has a staircase directly to the lower-level "plex" part of The Echo.) Behind us, among the bands the growing crowd would enjoy, were Old Californio, Dave Alvin and the Guilty Men, I See Hawks in L.A. (from Echo Park), Red Simpson, and maybe 10 or 12 others.

On Sunset a rockabilly-looking guy was preparing to be taped for a show. He sat on a chair on the sidewalk in front of the Echo. A few feet away there was a small crowd in front of the record shop Origami Vinyl. I asked a man in front, who turned out to be the proprietor, what it was about, and he said O.G. was having a show as well -- experimental music involving broken glass an an instrument. We went into the shop to see for a minute -- they were setting up, and it looked as if the star act was going to perform while sitting on the spiral staircase at the back of the storefront. Back at the Echo, most of the children were gone, and the second phase was just getting started.

One thing I like about country music in general is that you don't have to be young or pretty to play it convincingly;that and, despite some of the language, a six-year-old could enjoy it live on Saturday.

Photos: On front: Last Round Down performs; on jump: East Acres in the Echo Plex; Sunset Boulevard, 7-something p.m.

*Edited post.