The 704

Little Red Lung, Seasons, Robotanists, Paulie Pesh - The Echo - Monday, January 30, 2012

2012-02-01T02:14:00.000-08:00

It's 7:30 and I'm standing at the corner waiting for the bus. A portly man in an electric wheelchair buzzes toward me. Moments before, he had been parked a few yards away, underneath the 704 sign. I assume he's moving in my direction to put some distance between himself and the gibbering, shadowboxing homeless man who has just walked past--the one whom I'd given a cigarette to a few blocks back, figuring that it couldn't hurt him in his ongoing battle with invisible demons. It made him squeal in celebration.

But, no, I am mistaken. The wheelchair man turns around and faces me. "Excuse me," he grumbles with a thick, unplaceable accent. "Can you..." he trails off. "I don't know how to say." He gestures to the white bucket in his lap, which is encrusted all over with wispy bluish-black tar. "My ... my tub. Can you put in my trunk?" He points behind him.

I cock my head like a puzzled dog and consider the man. He is clearly in need of some assistance, and I want to provide it for him. As though an immigrant without the use of his legs doesn't have it hard enough, this man's life, for obscure reasons, involves toting a heavy bucket around with him on the bus. And here I am at the bus stop, awash in leisure, humming under my breath a song about how I need time to stay useless, on my way to a club where I'll spend way too much money on overpriced cocktails, where I'll mingle and dance and sing and laugh. Even the least literal reading of Matthew 25:45 would suggest that I have an obligation to provide this man with whatever he needs. And I'd like to. But I believe he just asked me to put his tub in his trunk.

"I'm sorry?"

He sighs. "This," he says, lightly lifting the bucket. "In there," he says, jabbing his thumb toward the basket attached to the back of his wheelchair.

"You want me to put the bucket in the basket?"

"Yes! Yes."

This I can do. And what a relief it is. All I have to do is pick up a heavy bucket and wedge it securely into a basket and I can feel like a good person who has earned his imminent evening of music and self-indulgence. It's a bargain, really. All it costs me is a few brief seconds of awkwardness, and I'm used to that. Most seconds are awkward.

I lift the bucket and, scrunching aside a weathered McDonald's bag that--while I'm no expert--appears to be several redesigns old, I attempt to fit it into the basket. It is considerably too large.

"No, no," the man says. "Use the ... use the ... I don't know the word ... use the wire. You tie?"

"The wire?" I ask.

"Yes, yes, the wire."

I look down. There are, I suppose, what could be called wires jutting this way and that, but they're thick--thicker than hanger wires--and they don't appear to be detachable. I pull at them anyway, just to make sure I'm doing my due diligence, figuring that I must be missing something. I cut my finger.

"No," the man says. "The ... the wire, you know?"

"I'm sorry. I don't understand what you're asking me to do."

"The wire, see," he says. "In the trunk. What is it in the trunk?"

The only thing in the basket besides the McDonald's bag is a mound of thin rope bunched together in a Christmas light tangle. I pull it out and show it to him.

"Yes, yes, this wire," he says, taking it into his lap and beginning to untangle it. This process takes longer than I'd prefer. I stare longingly to the west. No bus approaches.

With the rope finally untangled, he holds one end low and stretches the other end tight across his torso like a seatbelt. "Yes," he says. "You see? Tight."

Does he want me to tie him up? If that's what he wants, I guess I'm willing to do it, but I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea. Is he not securely fastened into his wheelchair already? Will the 704 be making a detour past the land of the Sirens? Or are we just getting plain old kinky? And what does any of this have to do with his bucket?

I take the rope from him in order to commence tying him up. But I stop, realizing that moving forward would be a pretty bold move without further confirmation of his intentions. "I'm not sure I understand what I'm doing," I say.

"Tight," he cryptically responds.

"I ... I'm sorry, I don't understand."

He takes the rope back from me. "Here, yes, hand me tub," he says. I hand him the bucket. He proceeds to tie a knot around the handle. "There," says, handing it back to me. He juts his thumb backwards again. "You tie please. Tight."

Apparently, I finally realize, he wants me to tie the bucket to the back of his wheelchair. This seems simple enough, though honestly I'm not confident in my ability to perform this task competently, and furthermore I'm still confused about what that business was with him using the rope to straddle his upper body a few seconds ago.

I search in vain for someplace on the back of his chair to tie the bucket. There's nothing. No loops, no hooks. I could use the mesh of the basket, but it's so low to the ground that there's no way the bucket wouldn't end up dragging along behind him.

"I ... I'm sorry," I say. "I don't understand how you want me to do this."

He sighs. "Tie," he says. "Tie tight!"

"I'm sorry. I don't understand." I'm getting a bit frantic at this point. My desire to help and be a useful member of a community is in a dire competition with my sudden desire to flee. My finger is bleeding and there will be no opportunity to sterilize the wound for at least an hour. I can already feel my jaw tightening with hypochondria. "I don't see anyplace to tie it. I'm sorry. I want to help you. I want to be good. I don't understand. I'm sorry. I don't understand. I'm sorry. I'm sorry." I look up and see the bus approaching. "I'm sorry. The bus is coming."

Taking his bucket back, he waves me off without a word. The bus pulls over and he rides the ramp through the entrance. He exchanges a few brief words with the bus driver, who effortlessly ties the bucket to the back of the wheelchair.

The rest of the evening is a bit of a blur.

BREAKING: I Like a Buzzband

2012-01-30T15:19:00.000-08:00

Can I tell you a secret? Even if it makes me look a little ridiculous, suggesting as it does that I take the blog that you hold in your hands a bit more seriously than I should?

Yes?

You see, the thing is, whenever I write something that both friends and anonymous internet strangers respond positively to, I have a great deal of trouble writing a follow-up. I assume that whatever I write next will prove once and for all, to anyone who cares, that I'm an enormous fraud, and that any decent writing I produce is purely accidental.

This is no way to go through life, of course, but it does explain the recent three-day silence on the allegedly revitalized 704 Los Angeles Local Music Weblog. Rather than risk your disapproval, I spent the weekend working on my St. Francis Dam Disaster novel.

So, anyway, just to push past this little roadblock, just to get this blog active again, I am--at this very moment--writing something undeniably pointless: telling you that I like an album that you've already heard. (As opposed to the yeoman's work I usually do: telling you stories about the debatably funny thing that happened to me when I saw my friends play at the Satellite.) This sort of thing is better suited to a Facebook status update, but studies show that I contain too many multitudes for Facebook status updates. Apparently. (There are dissenting opinions on this matter.)

But hey, you know what? I really like this Cloud Nothings album Attack on Memory. It takes something pretty intriguing to penetrate this weird L.A.-centric bubble I've built around myself over the past couple years, wherein I have minimal interest in liking any band that I can't see play live once a month. But the Pitchfork review of this record dropped the J(awbreaker)-word, and that was enough for me to give it a listen. And next thing I know I'm buying advanced tickets for a show at the Echo for the first time in God knows how long. (Want to go to the show with me? I'll be very uptight and claustrophobic because of how crowded it will be, but after a couple drinks I'll loosen up and start making fun of all the cattle and pretending that I'm not one of them.)

Of course, my devotion to this record is not without reservations. Perhaps I'm just a bitter old failure (in fact, I almost certainly am), but there's something that rubs me the wrong way about a circa-21-year-old singer from a critically acclaimed band--or any 21-year-old, really--ranting, "I thought I would be more than this!" over and over. But I shouldn't judge. We're all fighting our own battles, even 21-year-old singers from critically acclaimed bands. Plus, emo's emo. Dylan Baldi didn't make the rules.

And, speaking of which, there's something disheartening about the fact that this record is basically everything I was looking for in 1996, whenever I'd blindly order CDs through the mail from Headhunter Records based on ads I saw in MRR. Is the wall that rock and roll has run into insurmountable? Or is the fault not in the stars but in ourselves? Have I reached the age when I mainly want to listen to artists who can duplicate what I liked when I was fourteen?

In any event, Attack on Memory is pretty dope. Here's a nine-minute song that you've already heard:

There, that wasn't so hard. And we're back in business. Come back tomorrow for my definitive take on Lana Del Rey.

'Drunk as Fuck.' by Matthew Teardrop

2012-01-26T22:54:00.000-08:00

Last Spring, Manhattan Murder Mystery sat down for an interview on the MorMusic Radio Pod. As will happen whenever you try to have nice things, the moment soon arrived when Karen Centerfold made her entrance, took control of the show, and started asking all the questions. (For those of you keeping score at home, this is the second consecutive 704 post containing a reference to Karen Centerfold. My life is obviously on the right track.) Speaking out over the growing boozy chaos of Skidrow Studios, Ms. Centerfold insistently asked the band's singer Matthew Teardrop--who grew up in Virginia--how he decided that he wanted to be a rock and roller, and what made him turn against his roots and follow the path of badasses like the Rolling Stones instead of country-fried losers like Willie Nelson.

The question was, of course, absurd. To anyone who has paid more than a cursory glance below MMM's raucous noise, the band's kinship with and allegiance to traditional American music--sorrowful, simple, strange--should be obvious. While they can break out a mean "Get Off of My Cloud" cover when they're so inclined, the foppish Brit bluster of the Rolling Stones remains alien to their vision.

Teardrop--a tough interview under the best of circumstances, who was reportedly in the midst of a blackout at the time--was lucid enough to laconically shrug off the premise of Ms. Centerfold's question, simply stating that, actually, he likes Willie Nelson a lot more than the Rolling Stones.

(I'm going off of memory here. Feel free to listen to the podcast yourself--if it's the type of thing that sounds appealing to you, then you'll no doubt be entertained--and inform me that I'm completely misremembering the interview and that everything I've written above is invalid and potentially libelous. I'd re-listen to it myself, but ... I'm a busy man. I have cigarettes to smoke and blocks to walk around. But, at any rate, I'm fairly certain that's how it went down. If it's not then it should have been.)

(And then there's the fact that the gulf separating Willie Nelson from the Rolling Stones is not as vast as the question would imply, but for our purposes, let's pretend not to know that. I think we all understand what she was getting at.)

And now, lo these many months later, Teardrop has released a solo EP called Drunk as Fuck., which answers Ms. Centerfold's question at the type of length, with the distinctiveness of voice, and with the clarity of vision that's hard to muster when you're blackout drunk on internet radio.

This collection of five songs boasts the same grim worldview of MMM's finest work, the same directness, the same blunt wit. And while it eschews the supercharged moshability of that band's oeuvre, these songs relish their room to breathe and expand. Freed from the tensions of drums and bass and frenzied guitars, they aim straight for the brain and the heart, bypassing your ungyrating hips and unpumping fists. Whereas a song like MMM's "Smoky Mountain" works both as a high-octane, full-band throw-down and as a stripped down, acoustic lament (the finest performance I've ever seen of it was solo, drunk, in the parking lot behind the Central), the songs on Drunk as Fuck. are hard to imagine in any other forms than the ones they take here.

And what we have here is, indeed, a country-folk album, much closer in anyone's eyes to the Red-Headed Stranger than to the Glimmer Twins. This is clear from the opening strains of "Bury Me in the Salton Sea." I'd call it outlaw country, but it's driven more by sadness than rebellion--or, if you must, a rebellion against the convention of pretending that everything's okay. Over a lilting piano, Teardrop sings a love song to faraway death and its promise of peace. Its an old theme--perhaps the oldest theme--made fresh with its bitter geographical specificity. Teardrop's narrator doesn't long for an old Kentucky home or a rolling Shenandoah; instead, he can imagine no place more appropriate to spend eternity than the surreal desert wasteland of the Salton Sea, once a tourist resort, now a Mad Max cauldron of salt-thick water, botulized fish, bird carcasses--the type of place that could only feel like "home" to someone who's never believed in the word.

The next song, "Illinois," is one of those songs Teardrop breaks out now and then that's almost confrontationally blunt and confessional, naked enough to make your worst anxiety dreams look like kids' stuff: line after line of self-loathing, narcissism, resentment, frustration, more self-loathing--all the terrible things that make us human--laid out in such an honest way that it transcends ranting and approaches poetry. And the only relent is the non-sequitur refrain, "Oh oh, Illinois"--one mellifluous word striving to counterbalance the ugly feelings.

Which leads into "Can't Take It No More," which will have to qualify as the most light-hearted entry in this collection, a folk song whose campfire singalong cadences don't do much to disguise its core of exasperation. It's a song about your out of control drunkenness getting you kicked out of Mike Mueller's house; your poverty prompting your girlfriend to hightail it out of town; your desperation and your trusting nature leaving you without your backpack, without your wallet, incarcerated in Encino of all places. Yet, when Teardrop concludes his tale of misfortune with the reasonable proclamation, "All I want is what's coming to me," for just a flash, you hear his suspicion that that's exactly what he's getting.

Teardrop then focuses his gaze outward, with his heartbreaking "Artie Lange," which I wrote about at some length here.

And, inexorably, the EP ends with "Drunk as Fuck." The pain, the despair, the misfortune, and the rage that burned through the previous four songs have grown heavy with booze, dissolute, fuzzy. The moment has arrived when not being able to take it no more is no longer cute, no longer remotely funny. There's nothing left to be but a drunken nuisance. And so Teardrop sings, in the most expressive voice I know, a voice big enough to make you think that his beanie is the only thing keeping the words from exploding through his skull:

Now I'm tired as hell, and I'm still drinkin',

Got nobody to talk to, so I'm just thinkin'.

Got kicked out of the bar 'cause I got no money,

Now I just want to say, "I love you," to somebody.

This world according to Teardrop is a bleak place. But there still remains that glimmering hope for love, which--along with some booze, and pretty songs like these--will just have to be enough.

<a href="http://matthewteardrop.bandcamp.com/track/drunk-as-fuck-2">Drunk as Fuck by Matthew Teardrop</a>

You can download Drunk as Fuck. for free here. And you probably should.

Manhattan Murder Mystery, Seasons, The Health Club, Downtown/Union - The Echo - Monday, January 23, 2012

2012-01-25T00:33:00.000-08:00

You know that feeling you get, the one where it's the day after your blog presented a Seasons residency show at the Echo? And everything just seems dingier? The light burns a little dimmer? And it could have much to do with your various intakes the night before, this being a bill that boasted the presence of Seasons and Manhattan Murder Mystery, two bands whose music and presence in a room are conducive to overindulgence. Plus, the hot water in your shower wasn't working this morning, and you only lasted a few seconds under its unforgiving stream, long enough to wet your hair and provide the illusion of cleanliness, but you couldn't withstand the cold water nearly long enough to scrub the morning's torpor out of your pores or eradicate the stubborn remnants of Karen Centerfold's glitter. And, judging by the wide berth your coworkers were giving you all morning, you probably stank of liquor and filth, at least until you returned from your lunch break, at which point you resumed your usual odor of cigarettes and resentment. But, beyond the greasy hangover, you're hounded by the sense that the previous night was just too nice, the music was executed a bit too perfectly, the vibes were too positive, so much so that there had to be some dark undercurrent there, something sinister you weren't seeing. You're feeling good, is the problem, and you don't know how to reconcile this with ... anything, really. It stands athwart your entire worldview. And you know you're going to have to write about the show, because that's apparently what you're doing these days, but you really, really don't want to, because you don't want to let on that it left you feeling so ... good. A friend recently commented--and he meant it as a compliment--that whenever your writing flirts with "hippy-dippy optimism," it always manages to make a sharp turn back into skepticism and cynicism. And you agree with him that this is a wise course of action for a writer to take, as hippy-dippy optimism--as nice as it feels--should be at least slightly outweighed by the stern, soggy corrective of skepticism and cynicism. If nothing else, things are funnier that way. People laugh with you. But you find that you have nothing skeptical or cynical to say about this show. Everything you wrote leading up to it already had enough skepticism and cynicism lingering about it. You were privileged enough to be asked by Seasons to present the show--and, at this spiritually bereft moment in your life, getting asked to have a hand in an evening of music that you love is as close as you get to being called up the the bimah, or taking Holy Communion, or whatever it is people do. And still, every step of the way you treated the whole thing like a hilarious joke, lest anyone suspect the truth, which was that you were eager, excited, flattered, honored that artists you respect would wish to associate themselves with you and your writing. You're kind of a jerk sometimes. You want to act bashful and embarrassed and so-above-it-all that, when Ray from Seasons discovered you smoking outside the venue before the doors opened, he told the door guy that you were presenting, so you were allowed in to see the end of Downtown/Union's soundcheck. You want to act indifferent to the fact that the finest set you've yet seen from D/U occurred at "your" show (you want to remove those quotes, but you just ... can't ... do it), and that the show where Gerard from the Health Club nailed every song even though he made no secret of the fact that he felt like barfing was a very special 704 evening at the Echo. You'd like to pretend that having your name anywhere near Manhattan Murder Mystery's ongoing wildfire artistry is just one of those things--nice, you guess, but not really worth taking too seriously. You even want to feign nonchalance about Seasons dedicating the song "She Was Bob Dylan" to you--knowing as they do about your Bob Dylan problem (in fact, just this past Saturday night, John Seasons witnessed you performing a riveting, caterwauling rendition of "Day of the Locusts," unless he was already asleep in the backseat at that point)--even though you grinned like a much happier person than you are through the whole song, and you immediately wanted to tell everyone about it, even though, yeah, they were there, they saw it too. You want to play it cool in all these respects, but you don't think you can. And the only alternative is being absolutely sincere about what kind of night this was, and you don't think you can do that either.

You know that feeling? Well, yeah, I've got it pretty bad tonight. So I don't think I'm going to post anything on my blog. Hope you understand.

Pishtols at dawn:

Pistols at dawn by The Health Club

How About That: minor me

2012-01-23T19:40:00.000-08:00

A curious thing happens when you sign up for your free Blogger account and start spewing a bunch of tangentially music-related thoughts into the heartless ether: people start sending you music. (I feel like I've written those exact words before. If I have, I apologize. But cut me some slack, okay? You big bully. I'm still trying to regain my footing here.) There's nothing like finding yourself deputized as "press" to tickle your ego and your sense of the absurd, especially when you're just some loser whose expertise consists of going to a lot of shows and being a bit too in love with the sound of your own voice.

It takes a lot to make these music submissions stand out. They seem to fall into three categories: unapologetic press releases; apologetic press releases (which may open with, "Hi 704! I really like your blog! I hope you are doing well..." before proceeding with the promotional boilerplate); and actual letters from real human beings who want you to hear their music. Entries in the latter category generally stand out the most, if only because I feel compelled to reply to them out of politeness. (What a swell guy I am, right? I know. I know. Really, it's nothing.) There's some variation within those categories, though, the type of thing that can make a standard press release stand out. For example, I have a great deal of respect for a band called Funeral Club even though I've never heard their music. I just love the fact that they've sent me their album four times. I'm afraid to listen to it, lest I discover that their talent doesn't match their tenacity.

These submissions have tapered off of late. I guess publicists and artists alike have finally figured out that I'm probably not going to write about their bands and, even if I do, and even if I like their music very much, I probably won't come up with anything they can use. Any positive words I write will be undermined by the rest of the text, which will no doubt deal with how I'm frequently drunk and generally not too astute.

But I very much want to keep receiving free music. Not because I need it, or enjoy it, but because who wouldn't like to feel like an influential tastemaker for a few seconds every day? Plus, if I'm going to maintain this current writing schedule, I need stuff to write about. Seasons and Manhattan Murder Mystery can only get a guy so far. Pretty far, but still....

So, to demonstrate that sending me free music isn't as futile as most of life's endeavors, I'll turn you on to minor me. Sure, Edgar from minor me first sent me his music about seven months ago, but this just goes to show that you should never give up, and one day, you too--yes, you--might be featured in this very space. (Also, for the record, Edgar's email was the only one I've yet received that explicitly acknowledged that I might not like his music, and that that would okay with him.)

minor me plays a low-key, lo-fi brand of pop that's weirdly intimate, yet it remains melodic and almost sunny, assuming you don't listen to the lyrics too closely. There aren't many songs out there like the one below, where a sentiment like, "When you wrote that letter / It ripped me to three / It ripped me completely," sounds almost like a celebration, or at the very least an exercise in buoyant acceptance. It's that thick streak of irony (their song "surfin' usa," for example, is most decidedly not about surfin' in the USA), when coupled with a delicate and sincere voice, that makes minor me such a promising project. That tension between toe-tapping form and heartrending content suggests a wise, formidable talent at work.

&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://minorme.bandcamp.com/track/more-than-a-million"&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;more than a million by minor me&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

You can download all of minor me's stuff for free here. Why not, right?

'Autumn' by Seasons

2012-01-22T22:07:00.000-08:00

Ugh.

(Oops. It's probably best not to open a positive review of an EP with the word "ugh." Such a choice can be misinterpreted by people who only read the first word of album reviews, and there are more people like that out there than you might think. That's basically how I read Pitchfork. But, in any event, I think it's necessary, and I assure you that the "ugh" in question is directed toward the reviewer and not the album under consideration. It's true. Read on.)

So. How are you enjoying the revitalized 704? It's going okay, I guess. In less than a week, we've been able to strike a nice balance between decent work, writing-for-the-sake-of-writing, and general silliness, which is all that any blog needs. (Did I just accidentally refer to myself as "we"? Jeez. I don't want to make a habit of that. As much as we'd like to, we're not tricking anyone into believing that The 704 is the responsibility of anyone but me. But sometimes even I get sick of using the word "I.")

But, even so, I had sort of planned on expanding the scope with the current post. Just to prove that I'm capable of it, I wanted to do a regular album review. You know? The type of thing Seasons could link to on their Facebook page without confusing and/or infuriating half the people who click on it. Something dribbling over with blurbable quotes. Something compact, incisive, and digression-free, something relentlessly to the point, something that would gracefully squeeze Seasons' vision into the clumsy vehicle of language, and leave my own vision (such as it is) stranded drunk on the side of the road, jumping up and down, waving its arms, desperate for attention, unheeded.

Alas, as you can see, I couldn't do it. And the clock is ticking, and I need to write something, because if I don't I may never write again. (Perhaps believing that is paranoid, but if paranoia can be used as a motivation to write every day, then hooray for paranoia.) But I didn't know where to start. A run-down of Seasons' ongoing musical evolution? An inquiry into the thematic role the seasons have played in Seasons' four EPs? An attempt to capture the remotely joyous strains of the opening track "Monday Night" in words?

Fine options, all of them, and I opted for none of the above. Instead, here I am trying to figure out why it is I can't get down to the business of reviewing this album. Which is okay, I guess. It would be dishonest to pretend that I'm not hounded by the above considerations. Posting a straightforward album review free of neuroses and self-obsession would be a pathetic attempt to play it cool. You're smart. You'd see right through it.

But then again, if this were a rare peek behind the scenes of my writing process, a once-in-a-lifetime pulling back of the curtain, then it might be interesting. But my curtain folded itself up into a hobo's bindle and hit the rails a long time ago. You can only pull a curtain back so many times before it grows restive and deserts you.

Ugh.

At this point in the cycle, it's probably foolish to read too much into the conceptual aspect of Seasons' output. When they wrote their first EP, they had all four seasons to choose from, and they opted to call it Spring. When their next EP was complete, of the three remaining seasons, Summer apparently seemed most apropos. The icebound songs of Winter made its title inevitable. Which leaves us with Autumn. And which seems more likely: That--in order to reach a good-faith fulfillment of a project that sounded like a great idea four years ago--Seasons wrote five songs with the intent of representing the season of autumn? Or that they wrote whatever songs they were inspired to write and, whatever the result, they were boxed in and had to call it Autumn?

Probably the latter. But still, viewing the songs through the prism of autumn can be fun, and I like to have fun.

If you think of autumn solely as the time of year when things die, you won't find Autumn to be particularly autumnal. But there's a falling action to the season--September and October's optimism giving way to November's cold despair, awaiting winter's chilly resolution--which is reflected in Autumn's rhythm.

The opening tracks--particularly "Monday Night," but also "These United States"--are glittery slices of psych-pop, which impose a sort of synesthesia on the listener: sounds that make you see colors. They're the type of songs that you're tempted to reach out and grab, if only your arm could penetrate the thick layer of THC that surrounds them.

The dream-fogged trip of "You Are" serves as a bridge between the EP's sunnier first half and the second half's impending storm: the desperate, aggrieved rumble of "Number of the Beat," a complex number animated by an ominously piercing violin; and the swaying epic closer "Lazy Bones," death-haunted and dour, featuring one the bravest and most affecting vocal performances you'll encounter anytime soon. It's a booming voice, pushed to its gravelly limit, beautiful and heartbreaking at once, like autumn leaves, knowing as we do that their vivid colors just mean that they're dying.

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://sseasons.bandcamp.com/track/number-of-the-beat"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Number Of The Beat by Seasons&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

The Last Show The 704 Will Ever Present (Until The Next One)

2012-01-20T13:58:00.000-08:00

It's Friday, which of course means you're starting to think about what you will be doing on Monday night (right?), and might I suggest that you consider this:

I'm not sure what I can tell you beyond that. I've written about all these bands at some length. Manhattan Murder Mystery has taken out a restraining order to prevent me from ever writing about them again and, if word on the street is to be believed, Seasons is about to do the same.

But, for novelty's sake (is there any other sake?), I'll make some stuff up.

You'll be sure to enjoy Monday night's performance by Downtown/Union. This degenerate band of furries first came together through their day jobs at the Ontario Mills Build-A-Bear Workshop, and ever since then--when they're not scritching and yiffing at their Fontana compound/meth-lab/LaRouchePAC headquarters--they've been blowing minds and eardrums with their technicolor, art-damaged Nintendocore epics about love, persecution, Johannes Kepler, and the importance of taking your vitamins.

One of the most inspiring developments I've witnessed since I started observing the local music scene has been the Provo-bred septet Manhattan Murder Mystery--which formed while its members were Mormon missionaries in Bosnia and Herzegovina--evolving from the most beloved LDS Wham! cover band in Los Angeles County into the most innovative LDS Duran Duran cover band west of the Mississippi. They'll be "Hungry Like the Wolf" to see you "Come Undone" when you behold their "Notorious" renditions of all your old favorites. There truly will be a "New Moon on Monday."

The Health Club does not exist. There is no The Health Club.

And finally, the stars of the evening, playing the third night of their 450-night residency, will be Seasons. These Detroit-bred multi-instrumentalists first came to national prominence with their classic indie pop album Michigan, which was said to be the first entry in the somewhat tongue-in-cheek "The Fifty States" project. This project stalled out after the release of their universally acclaimed Illinois, but fans have had nothing to complain about, as 2010 alone saw the release of an hour-long EP and a full-length experimental electronic pop album, both of which have been keeping their rabid fan-base busy ever since. I can't wait to see what curveball they'll throw at us next. I guess we'll find out on Monday!

Be there! If it's anything like what I've described above, I will be very, very surprised.

(Actual details here and here.)

Auditorium, The Beautiful View, College Kids - Silverlake Lounge - Wednesday, January 18, 2012

2012-01-20T01:54:00.000-08:00

After College Kids' early set--a set that I quite enjoyed, even though, after talking to the band afterwards, I don't think they were too thrilled about it, marred as it was by a key-change fuck-up and an audience comprised primarily of the other bands, but then again I always enjoy College Kids' sets, because even their more light-hearted songs are so pretty and soulful, and plus (and I mean this in the least patronizing and weird way possible) they're just kind of adorable, even though seemingly happy couples who do things like make music together usually make me bitter--I walked outside for a smoke and I almost bumped into a muscular, heavily tattooed Asian man who was by the entrance enjoying a cigarette, so I nodded an awkward hello and started moving toward the other side of the door, but, before I knew it, the man had struck up a conversation with me, pointing down the street to Los Globos and asking what it was, to which I replied, "It's a club. It's called Los Globos," and he asked, "Oh yeah? You probably have to pay to get in there too, huh?" and I said, indeed, you probably do, and then he asked, "Is it like a club-club? Or like a strip club?" which struck me as kind of a funny question, and yet, upon further consideration, if I didn't know better I'd probably assume it was a strip club too, and that there probably is a strip club out there somewhere called Los Globos, but, anyway, I told him, "Yeah, no, just a regular club. They have music and stuff," and, after a few silent cigarette puffs, the man--who went by the name G--expressed how good it felt to finally be free, explaining that he'd just been released from prison that very day after serving over two years at San Luis Obispo--which he pronounced "San Luis Obisco," which struck me as odd, given that he had spent over two years there, but who am I to judge, since it's not like he was voting in municipal elections or serving on the Chamber of Commerce or anything--and that he was out celebrating his freedom, just walking around, smelling the cool air, flipping off cop cars, knowing that if he played his cards right he'd never have to be locked up again, and he happened to pass by the Silverlake Lounge and he heard live music coming out the door, which is apparently not the sort of thing they have in prison these days, and he couldn't resist sticking around to hear what was going on, even though he didn't have enough money to get in, because, man, he just loved music, all sorts of music, and while back in the day he would just listen to hip hop, in recent years he'd been getting more and more into rock music--Staind, he said, and 3 Doors Down, Guns N' Roses, stuff like that--and he went on to tell me that he was still riding high from visiting his 11-year-old son earlier in the day, and that his son was the most important thing in the world to him and he was going to focus in the coming years on making sure that his child would always be his first priority, making sure he grows up to be respectable--a police officer, maybe, or a lawyer--but at the moment he was just going to enjoy his freedom--our conversation kept going back to this, his understandable and yet completely unrelatable zest for freedom, something that a white boy from the Westside can't really understand, since I've never had to fear being locked up, and my last run-in with the cops happened in Golden Gate Park in 2002, when a police car slowly cruised up the path to where my friends and I were standing and an officer politely informed us that this wasn't the best place to be smoking pot, that a lot of people had been mugged there recently, and could we please do it somewhere else--but anyway, G laughed and said that, actually, his first priority right then was to get some new shoes, some Vans or some Converse, he said, pointing down at his plain navy blue prison-issue slip-on sneakers, and I laughed and agreed that such a purchase would probably make him feel better, and all the while, of course, I was thinking, well, this is a really nice guy and I'd like to think that I'm talking to him because he's a fellow human being who is as deserving as anyone else of attention and camaraderie and, plus, it's good and instructive to meet people from different backgrounds, and with different life experiences, and from different walks of life, and all those sad cliches, but--I was also thinking, and maybe this is what I was mainly thinking--gee whiz, isn't this lucky, I can totally write about this guy on my blog, and I won't have to do another stupid post about how I have nothing to write about, and I won't have to resort to actually reviewing music, and it'll be a nice change of pace, to write about someone else, and I can show off to my readers how empathetic and nonjudgmental I am, which will make all of them have a great deal of respect for me, since I clearly look for the best in all people and, underneath my mopey facade, I'm really just interested in spreading unconditional love to all God's children, regardless of what mistakes they might have made in the past, because, after all, peoples is peoples, and, upon reading it, you would all find this very appealing and want to be my best friends, but, then again, I knew that when I did write about it, there would sneak in some ill-considered and almost contemptuous aspects of humor, because I wouldn't be able to help trying to make it funny, because it was kind of a funny situation--like, haha, look at that, he's hanging out with an ex-con instead of the usual characters he hangs out with, haha, L.G. is totally slumming--and I didn't want that to happen, I wanted to just be a buddy, to enjoy his company, and not to worry about how I'd exploit him in writing the next day, and I decided then and there that I would not write about him on my stupid blog, knowing all the while that, in the end, I totally would, but anyway, back to G, he eventually talked his way into the bar and managed to procure a beer, and I asked him if it was his first beer since getting out and he said that it was and I said that, boy, it must taste good, and he said it sure did, but then he mentioned that, no, actually, he'd had quite a few beers in his motel room before coming out, and I said I certainly couldn't blame him for that, and we laughed, and the other bands played, and they weren't doing much for me, which certainly wasn't their fault, it's not their job to do much for me, so I spent an inordinate portion of the evening outside smoking, where I kept meeting up with G, who'd tell me about prison, and, again and again, about how exhilarating it was to be free, and, rather than asking him so mysteriously, "Are birds free from the chains of the skyway?" I took his words seriously, and I tried to deeply feel how good I have it, that through all the inherent suffering of being alive, I'm blessed to live in a beautiful city where I can go out and drink with my friends and see gifted souls sing their hearts out to me night after night, I tried to be grateful, and at the same time I was so angry at the world, at a society that deals with people who make poor decisions--in my new friend's case, poor decisions like getting heavily into crystal meth and stealing cars--by locking them up in cages where they rot, where they see their friends get stabbed, where they get maced into agonizing oblivion, where they watch men shot dead before their eyes with a bullet from a faraway guard tower, and, admittedly a little tipsy, I was outraged at what humanity tolerates in itself, and by this point the bands were done and I wanted another drink for the long ride home, so G and I went inside and sat at the bar and drank, at which time he said, "Hey, you said you work for a lawyer?" and I said yes, and he asked what kind of law we practiced, and I told him mostly car accidents, and he said, "Let me ask you something, if you're like fully insured and someone without insurance hits you, can you still get paid?" and I said, "Well, that depends," and I explained to him the ins and outs of uninsured motorist coverage, and he basically repeated himself, saying, "So if my friend's totally covered and someone hits him who isn't, he still gets money?" and I said, "Yeah, if he's injured," and he looked at me and he smiled and said, "So if something like that happens to a friend of mine, you're the person I should call? And you'd get a piece of it right?" and I said, "Well wait, no, I mean, we only take legitimate cases. Insurance companies look at these really hard. They can tell when an accident is set up," and G smiled at me knowingly and said, "Ohhh, sure, I got you," and he winked, and all I could do was nod heavily and look deep into my drink, and I guess in the end what I'm getting at with all this, what the moral of the story is, is this: if you're a having a good day and you feel like going out to Silver Lake to have a few drinks and watch your friends sing some songs, and you open your heart to new people and new experiences and you take things as they come and you don't judge your fellow human beings and you assume the best about everyone you meet and you allow yourself to feel gratitude, nine times out of ten you're going to end up inadvertently conspiring to commit insurance fraud with an ex-convict.

Hey, remember this? Those were the days.

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://collegekidsonthedopeslope.bandcamp.com/track/the-704-demo-version"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;The 704 (demo version) by College Kids&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

El Elle, Ida Maria, Tenlons Fort, The Health Club - The Satellite - Tuesday, January 17, 2012

2012-01-18T19:05:00.000-08:00

"Do you know how many times I've thought about writing about the paper I'm writing on?"

-cLOUDDEAD

Well, I thought I had kicked my epigraph addiction, but it appears I was mistaken. So much for new year's resolutions.

Don't allow yourselves to be brought low by hubris, folks. It ain't pretty.

I'm just trying to be a good person, you know? Not in any tangible way, of course. I'm not being the change I wish to see in the world, or taking in the tempest-tost homeless, or beating swords into plowshares, or loving my enemies. But, when I can, I like to buy my more impoverished friends drinks. And I try to write, an act which seems like an abstract good, even if it's just a stupid blog. Yes, as we've been told, writers are always selling somebody out, but I like to think that--with a glaring exception here and there--I mainly just sell out myself.

So here I am typing away with nothing on my mind but acting dumb. Fair warning to any unsuspecting readers. While I'm re-committed to maintaining this blog and writing whether the spirit moves me or not, be aware that, like yesterday, I still have nothing to say--certainly not about Ida Maria, except that she apparently eats boys like me for breakfast. If you're looking for relevant Ida Maria content, as most of us on this crazy blue marble are, look elsewhere.

I resorted to this recently:

Yeah. I know. Times are tough all over.

As much as I try to avoid it, it's hard for me to walk up Silver Lake Boulevard without thinking of one of the first times I made that trek, on New Year's Eve, 2009. The Henry Clay People were doing their debauched extravaganza thing at Spaceland and, even though I wouldn't know anybody there, and I'd never seen any of the bands that were playing, and getting wasted by yourself at a club on New Year's Eve is an odd thing to do, I went. Why the hell not? Maybe I'd get lucky.

As I walked past a house party down the street from the club, I heard Tom Petty singing from their speakers, "Even the losers get lucky sometimes," which I, in spite of myself, took to be a positive omen.

High on the unassailable contention that, yes, even the losers do indeed get lucky sometimes, I asked a girl if I could buy her a drink, which ... haha, yeah, I don't know. Weird. She declined.

After the show I got on the bus. The guy sitting in front of me tried to strike up a conversation. As it dawned on me that he was trying to get me to go home with him, I also realized that I was on the wrong bus. I needed the 4, and I was clearly on the 2.

He probably misinterpreted my sudden frantic pulling of the cord and bee-line to the exit. I hope I didn't hurt his feelings.

After taking a year off, the Henry Clay People did their New Year's Eve show again a few weeks ago. It was fun. I probably bought lots of people drinks. I don't know how I got home. My friend says he drove me, which seems like as good an explanation as any. He said I passed out in his passenger seat, which sounds like something I'd do.

You know this whole thing I wrote yesterday about reactivating this blog so that the Echo and Seasons won't be embarrassed to be associated with me? I don't think it's working.

Be sure to be at the Echo next Monday night, as it will be the last show that The 704 is ever allowed to present, probably.

Oh yeah, hey, I went to a show last night. It was fun.

The Health Club brought the pain and the grooves and the moves to a rather exclusive audience. It was as solid a set as I've seen from them, and it's a shame that there weren't more people there, but I know for a fact that they won over some dude from Fullerton and, in the end, isn't that what it's all about?

For more thoughts on the Health Club, read this amphetamine-addled nonsense. If you want. You might like it. I'm not just trying to drive up that post's pageviews for my own amusement. Swear.

After the Health Club, Tenlons Fort (which last night was Jack Gibson, John Seasons, and Sheridan Riley) played "thirty-five minutes of heartfelt jams," in Jack's words. And I can't give you a much better description than that, though I will continue typing words for a little while longer just to flesh out this paragraph. Even with the low-key nature of much of his work, Gibson's bands' live shows have the intensity and dynamism.... You know, I'm just going to cut off that hacky sentence right there because it's not doing anyone any justice.

Your last chance to catch Tenlons Fort during Jack's current sojourn in Los Angeles is this Saturday, and I'd like it if you'd stop being so difficult and just attend.

Yeah, I don't know either.

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://tenlonsfortdisasterspeaks.bandcamp.com/track/1-disaster-speaks-a-thousand-words"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;1. disaster speaks a thousand words by Tenlons Fort&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

Death to Anders, Seasons, The Lonely Wild, George Glass - The Echo - Monday, January 16, 2012

2012-01-17T18:38:00.000-08:00

Okay, it's time to dust off this weird little blog.

Why? Have I discovered a hot new band that I'm eager to define and advertise and ingratiate myself with so that some day, when they become massive, they'll remember the humble blogger who championed their cause when no one else would, and as a gesture of gratitude they'll invite me to their orgies where I'll snort mountains of cocaine and make love to their less desirable groupies? Or am I merely inspired, eager to write, electrified by the touch of whichever Muse is responsible for local music blogging (Melpomene, probably)? Or do I have a story about something funny that happened to me when I was drunk? Or have I been betrayed by a former friend whom I'm eager to sell out in a somewhat public forum?

No, it's none of the usual reasons that lead me to write. You see, the thing is, The 704 is presenting Seasons' show at the Echo next Monday. And it's not one of those "presenting" deals where the band just lets me put the blog's name on the flyer and asks me to do a promotional post and, in the end, the venue probably never knows that they have been affiliated with a shoddy operation like this one and the unsavory character who occasionally runs it when he's not too hungover. But, in this case, the Echo is very much aware of The 704's capacity as presenter. It's on the website and everything. And last time I presented a show at the Echo, The 704 was even listed in the venue's ad in the LA Weekly, which lent this venture a glow of newsprint respectability that would probably impress my grandparents, were I deranged enough to notify my grandparents that I maintain a blog that's theoretically about local music but is primarily about my drinking habits.

Anyway. So. For the time being, lest Seasons' and the Echo's reputations be tarnished by their mutual association with a sad, generally inactive blog that never even worked up the energy to buy its own domain name or switch to Tumblr, I'm going to try to be respectable and review the hell out of some shows this week. I'm going to write and write and write until I throw up. And I will not be deterred by the fact that I have nothing to say about anything. You'd have to be an amateur to let that sort of thing trip you up. I mean, come on, I've already written almost 500 words here, and I haven't said a thing. It's what I'm good at. Let's keep it going.

For Seasons! For the Echo! For all of our reputations! Excelsior!

Um.

Hm.

Let's see here.

Oh, okay, slightly off-topic (LOL), but can anyone tell me why this post is fast becoming the most popular post, page-view-wise, in 704 history? I really don't get it. It doesn't appear to be happening through some inadvertent SEO situation. And, yeah, whatever, it's a fine post, okay, but it's not anything special. It seems to follow a fairly standard 704 trajectory: narrator starts out anxious and depressed and alone, then through the power of music and alcohol he feels slightly less anxious and less depressed and less alone for like a couple hours before the cycle begins again. Nothing new there. So why are several people still reading it every day?

As far as I can tell, the one aspect that sets that review apart from any other is that it's the only one I've ever posted that I wrote while completely bug-eyed on Adderall. This is a troubling realization.

A quick poll:

If I were to do a poll where I asked if you think I should take Adderall before writing any and all future 704 posts, would you consider participating in such a poll?

Please submit your answer to me in person, since I'm pretty sure everyone who's reading this knows me personally. (Just kidding, the Echo! Everyone in Los Angeles reads The 704! I have been featured in both the LA Weekly's L.A. People issue and on the Jewish Journal's Mensch List. Take it from me. You don't have to look it up or anything. I wouldn't lie.)

Would you like to hear about how each band sounded last night, how their sets compared to the thousands of other times I saw them, which songs they played, and which notorious internet prankster was in attendance?

I didn't think so.

Would you like to hear what your evening would be like if you were to take a time machine back to last night in order to attend this show?

The answer to that is probably no as well, but I'm going to tell you anyway since, frankly--while I respect your opinion and I don't wish to cause you any trouble and when you get right down to it I just hope that we can be friends forever--you're not the boss of me.

If you do go back in time and attend this show, you'll get there a little before nine, and you'll hit the bar because, unlike most forms of gratification, an eight dollar somewhat off-tasting gin and tonic should not be delayed. You'll think about trying to track down some friends but, realizing that you're a couple drinks away from having the energy to form words with your vocal cords and mouth--time travel is exhausting--you'll decide to hit the patio for a solitary smoke. A couple of guys will promptly walk out and sit unnecessarily close to where you will be standing. One will make a comment to you about the sparse turnout, even though the place will be fairly crowded for nine p.m. on a Monday night, but you'll be pretty sure he doesn't know that. "Oh, they'll come around," you'll say, or something equally not-quite-but-almost apropos. He and his friend will proceed to discuss the ins and outs of Middle English, a conversation to which you will have nothing to contribute, given that even your relationship with Modern English is in an ongoing state of decay, but they'll still be sitting very close to you, even though the patio will be otherwise empty, and since you'll have already exchanged words with them, you won't be too sure if you're supposed to be a willing participant in their conversation, and clearly you won't want to be, but it will be weird and rude if you move away from them and let them continue with their linguistic discussion, so instead you'll just turn your head slightly and stare at a metal pole while you finish your cigarette, which won't be weird or rude at all.

You will return inside and, feeling a bit steadier, you will venture to speak with some of your fellow humans. You will watch George Glass play their set, and you will enjoy it, because the set will be very much in the mold of previous George Glass sets, which you also enjoyed. Except shorter, maybe? You won't be sure.

A friend will ask you why you look so sad.

You'll go back outside. Your blog's biggest fan will tell you that you should write a novel. Little will he know that you're already hard at work on an epic love story set against the backdrop of the St. Francis Dam Disaster, and that the only thing that's keeping you from getting to page two of this long-gestating project is that you don't know anything about love or the St. Francis Dam Disaster.

While you will already be several drinks in, someone will challenge you to take your drinking to "the next level." You will very much want to take your drinking to "the next level," but the fact that you are being challenged to do so makes you less inclined to oblige, since you are perfectly capable of getting famously wasted without challenges to your masculinity. But you will proceed to drink a bunch of whiskey anyway, because of course you will. Once you have reached the next level (which no longer requires scare quotes after you've achieved it), you will discuss one of your favorite topics: what it must have been like to get drunk with Buzz Aldrin before he quit drinking. ("Yeah, man, cool story, you've led a real interesting life. Guess what? I've been to the fucking moon.")

The Lonely Wild will play. At this point you will start to lose the evening's plot.

Next thing you know Seasons will be playing their Spring EP, and they will do so beautifully, making you wonder why you don't listen to that album all the time and, more pertinently, why they don't play those songs at every show. Then you'll remember that they've written dozens of songs since then--gem after gem of bold, gritty psychedelia--so, yeah, it makes sense. They will close the set with a couple of these newer songs. You'll resist the urge to fist-pump and make a scene until the band's final song, "Monday Night," at which point you will begin fist-pumping and making a scene.

You will drink more and talk more until Death to Anders begins their midnight set. Whatever threads kept the night together will have frayed long ago. People will rush the stage at some point during the band's set, but you will resist, not quite uninhibited enough to participate in that sort of spectacle. That is until someone will reach down to pull you up on the stage and, not wanting to be an enemy of fun, you accept your fate. Not knowing what to do, you will start to dance--that dance you do that's free-spirited enough to be fun but knowingly goofy enough that anyone who wishes to see irony in it will. Three seconds later, the security guard will tap you on the shoulder and silently instruct you to get the fuck off the stage. This will be unpleasant but merciful. Dignity will be restored

Your friend will drive you home. You will smoke cigarettes and listen to Nirvana. You will stop at 7-Eleven where a surly gentleman buying a three-tall-boy pack of Budweiser will try to pick a fight with your friend, for reasons that will become immediately obscure.

Arriving home--violence having been averted--you will lie in bed and drink beer and listen to Jawbreaker. You will then turn off the music, turn out the light, roll over and, as you fall asleep, you will think about how you started out anxious and depressed and alone, and through the power of music and alcohol, you now feel slightly less anxious and less depressed and less alone, and how this is a very familiar feeling, and so is the vivid sense that, upon waking up the next day, it will be gone.

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://sseasons.bandcamp.com/track/lazy-bones"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Lazy Bones by Seasons&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

"Paint a Rocket" by Pisces

2012-01-04T23:19:00.000-08:00

Hey, remember that time not long ago--it couldn't have been that long ago, maybe a few weeks--but, actually, thinking on it now, it must have been longer than that, and in fact, you don't really want to speculate on the date because you know how far off you'd be, since time has been moving really quickly lately, probably because you're getting old, or maybe it's your hobbies taking their toll on your brain chemistry, but in any event it was in the latter half of 2011--anyway....

Hey, remember that time not long ago when you spent two consecutive evenings at pehrspace? And the first night, Friday, you took it kind of easy, tried to be disciplined, sipped your canteen of wine at a moderate pace? But then, because you're really quite foolish--some might say an idiot--you solicited some weed from that dude--you won't say who, but he may or may not play in a band called Death to Anders--and, as usual with you and weed, chaos ensued, darkness encroached, the wickedness latent underneath every parking lot debauch clawed at your throat? And next thing you knew you were at a friend's apartment in Eagle Rock at three in the morning, listening to Blood on the Tracks and drinking Modelo, a beer you only ever buy when you're already severely intoxicated, something about the blandness of the can meshing with the blandness of your mind? And you woke up the next morning on the couch and, even though breakfast beers aren't generally your style, you polished off the remaining Modelo while waiting for your friends to finish sleeping or boning or whatever it was they were doing in the other room? And then you all went out for breakfast, which was lovely, but as you were walking down Colorado, smoking your cigarette and digesting your corned beef hash, an old man--unsteady on his feet like he was unaccustomed to this planet's gravitational pull--made his crooked way toward you, and as he narrowly evaded ramming into you, he looked up to mumble an apology, and you noticed that he had no nose? No sign of any nose? On his face? Like the letter-writer in the first chapter of Miss Lonelyhearts, or Philip J. Fry in the "Spanish Fry" episode of Futurama? No nose? And, in your weakened and cockeyed condition, this was a particularly distressing sight, this reminder that blameless humans, sweet and decent people who want nothing more than a normal life, are forced to spend every second of their existences stumbling around Eagle Rock without noses? What kind of world is this? So--taking any excuse you could get--you hit the 7-Eleven and started drinking wine again? And, a couple bottles later, you and your friends took the bus to Hollywood, where you watched Seasons play an afternoon set at Space 15 Twenty, and you drank more wine and ate hamburgers and drank beer until it was time to go back to your other friend's place there in Hollywood to take a nap? And the nap--with your head on the kitchen floor of a studio apartment--was necessary, but not exactly refreshing, waking up as you did all headachey and nauseated with your mouth tasting like literal shit? But you were happy to see that you all still had plenty of time to make it to pehrspace and catch that night's set by Pisces, Sarah Negahdari's new solo project? So you took the bus there? And while walking down Glendale your friends were chugging Rolling Rocks, based on the theory that--if recent American history has taught us anything--if you break the law brazenly enough you won't get in trouble for it? But you yourself weren't drinking beer? Because, from your perspective, these friends of yours were apparently some kind of superhuman or cyborg alcoholics? Because you knew that there was no way that your abused, deranged tummy would allow even one more drop of alcohol to settle in unmolested? And, upon arriving at pehr, you discovered that all you wanted to do was sit on the roachy steps and smoke cigarettes and pretend to nurse a cup of the box-wine that was so prevalent that evening? And, it became clear as the minutes ticked past, you were so deep in the throes of breathless, vibrato-teethed nausea that there was no way you were going to be able to drag yourself into the venue and stand up unaided without retching all over packed house? So you sat outside for Pisces' entire set, loathing yourself and what remains of your shoddy decision-making capacities, straining to hear whatever sweet bits of sound poured out of the rarely-opened door?

Remember that?

Well, here's a taste of what you missed....

....except next to the sea instead of inside pehrspace.

I am excited about Pisces. There's a wafty ambiance to it that's far removed from Negahdari's beloved Happy Hollows, but it maintains that quivering intensity throughout that's very much in keeping with what we've grown to expect from her work, ensuring that a song like "Paint a Rocket" won't be something anyone just puts on in the background.

You have a chance to atone for past sins by catching Pisces--along with the enchanting Little Red Lung--at the Hotel Cafe on Tuesday. Details here. Try to keep it together this time.

The 704 Presents: The Last Show Ever

2011-12-23T14:32:00.000-08:00

"If the Good Lord made a mistake in us people it was in making us want to live when we've go the least excuse for it."

-Jim Thompson

Perhaps this won't be the last show ever. In fact, there will most certainly be more shows. It won't even be the last show of the year. Pehrspace has some good-spirited fun in store. Mama's Joy still has a Casey's residency to finish. The Henry Clay People are playing their sometimes-annual Hipsters In Sportcoats Night at the Satellite on New Year's Eve.

But for our purposes, let's just say that this is the last show ever:

This is it. The end. Your last chance to hear live music.

I know that, come Monday, you will probably still be visiting your folks in Midwestville, Nebraska, solemnly commemorating the birth of your Lord instead of drunkenly boogieing to "Parking Lot" in front of the sparkly curtain. But you know what? That's not my problem. If your judgment is so debased that you've opted for interminable days on the rugged, snowy plains of your birth; revisiting scenes of childhood torment; freezing from both the cold and your parents' icy, judgmental stares as they consider the aimless life you've carved out for yourself here in Gomorrah; sitting at the dining room table wanting nothing more than a third, fourth, fifth glass of wine to make this dinner tolerable, but unwilling to reach for the bottle lest you face your family's clucking disappointment and concern; your only moment of respite coming when your cousin shares his shitty weed with you before the whole clan heads out to the mall to see We Bought a Zoo....

If this is what you will be doing on Monday instead of partying at the Satellite with all the good, smart people, then ... well, I was going to say I have no sympathy for you, but that's not true. Your family sounds pretty awful. I mean, heck, I'm really sorry that you won't be at this show. I'll be sure to have a drink or twelve in your honor.

But if you are in town, then you know what to do.

It is, after all, the last show ever. Or maybe not. But it feels like the end of something.

A couple more details here.

The Socialistics, Manhattan Murder Mystery, Jonny Corndawg, Judson McKinney - The Satellite - Monday, December 19, 2011

2011-12-20T23:46:00.000-08:00

"Sometimes when you're drunk it hurts to fall asleep."
-Matthew Teardrop

Something special has been happening at the Satellite every Monday this month. Unfortunately, no one is going to remember it.

I don't mean that in my usual whiny, despairing way. I'm not lamenting that there's vital and important music being created and spewed out into an oblivion of apathetic or contemptuous ears. Or that if you were to take a poll of Los Angeles residents asking them if they care about what Manhattan Murder Mystery is doing with their Monday night Satellite residency, the number answering yes would be considerably less than the margin of error. Or that even the people who do care about what Manhattan Murder Mystery is doing with their Monday night Satellite residency will all be dead before you know it, with the brains that once held their precious memories turned to dust, the memories themselves becoming less than dust, becoming a literal nothing.

No, what I mean is, no one is going to remember it because we're all a bunch of drunken idiots.

It's been another one of those months here in the mindspace that is The 704. It started out promising and productive before ebbing away into misery and indifference. The fact is I've had nothing to say about anything. I suppose this is a fairly standard form of writer's block, but I prefer to think of it as a healthy respect for the reader's time. Your days on this ridiculous planet are limited, so you shouldn't piss away five precious minutes reading something I threw together just for the sake of hearing my own voice. Of course, this position relies on the false premise that, if you weren't reading this, you would be doing something more worthwhile, when in fact research has shown that the average reader of The 704 spends most of his leisure time sniffing glue and torturing local fauna. So I guess I shouldn't worry so much about wasting your time. So I won't. Which is why I am writing this.

Discussing Monday's Manhattan Murder Mystery show would be a reasonable course of action since, if I'm reading the title of this post correctly, that's ostensibly what I'm doing. But I think I'll pass (while reserving the right to change my mind in perpetuity, et cetera). If you care to know my current thoughts about that particular band, you can read my review of their Women House EP. Several people have said very nice things to me about that review, which makes me feel good (well, it's a lot more complicated than that, but for brevity's sake let's just say it makes me feel good) (I mean, it does make me feel very, very good, but writers never feel good for very long, and in this one respect at least, I am very much a writer). And I've informed them all that I too am rather fond of that review--in that I don't yet hate it in the same way that I end up hating everything I write--but, between you and me, I'm kind of scared to re-read, lest I discover that I've been lying this whole time.

Anyway, so MMM is out. Let's find out what I actually will write about.

Today I officially commenced my campaign to become a full-fledged member of the band Bright Beast.

You might find such a campaign quixotic (if you're the type of person who finds things quixotic, which I hope you're not), given that I possess neither a musical instrument nor musical talent. But such mundane matters are irrelevant to my concerns. You see, I want to be Bright Beast's spiritual adviser. Remember Baba Oje, the old guy from the delightfully positive '90s hip hop group Arrested Development? All he did was sit on stage in a rocking chair and, when the spirit moved him, he'd get up and bust out some sweet dance moves. I think Bright Beast needs someone like that, except younger and with less sweet dance moves. And I think that person can be me.

This is obviously the best idea I've ever had, and likely the best idea I ever will have. And, having gotten drunk on wine at several Bright Beast recording sessions, I figure I'm pretty much halfway there already. So, please, write to your local Bright Beast representative and let them know that you support making me a member of their band, even if you don't. It'll mean a lot to me.

Let's see. What else?

Oh, here's something.

About three weeks ago I was at work in Santa Monica. On my lunch break, I wandered over to the Third Street Promenade, where I planned to eagerly shovel a burrito into my fat stupid face.

As I approached 4th Street, I saw in the distance a young woman holding up a sign that said, "FREE HUGS". A man with a camera appeared to be filming her attempts to distribute these.

In that part of town, there's always someone trying to interrupt your precious train of thought, though they're usually panhandlers or the dreaded clipboard-jockeys asking you impossible questions ("Do you have a minute for gay rights?" to which the only honest reply is, "Well, yes, but unfortunately it's not this one." Or, "Do you have a minute to save the environment?" to which one may only respond, "I reject the suggestion that such a thing can be accomplished in such a limited amount of time."). A pretty lady offering a free embrace was definitely a step up from the norm, but I still wanted no part of it. I'm not crazy about ending up on YouTube. And there's also that part of me that assumed that, deep down, she'd really prefer not to hug me. I began to plot an alternate route.

Getting closer, though, I noticed that the man filming her was local character of note, musician, and photographer Simon Cardoza. Since I was close enough to know that Simon had already seen and recognized me (even though, until fairly recently, he thought my name was Gary), I scrapped my detour plans and walked headlong into my free hug.

As it turned out, I had indeed been recognized. The woman ran right toward me. "My friend says he knows you," she said.

"He sure does," I replied.

"Would you like a free hug?" she asked.

"Very much," I said, which wasn't entirely true. I'm not much of a hugger when sober. (When drunk, all bets are off.) But I figured that, whether I accepted the hug or not, I'd end up in the video, since, after all, I'm Gary. And I'd rather look to posterity like a happy-go-lucky fellow who relishes nothing more than free hugs, instead of appearing like an uptight prick who recoils from unvetted human contact.

I got my hug. It was a very nice hug. She didn't shrink back from my rancid cigarette odor. She didn't comment on my constipated chakras.

That night at the Satellite I happened to run into Simon. I asked him what the heck that was all about. He explained that it was exactly what it looked like: a well-known yoga practitioner named Dashama was giving out free hugs, and he was filming people both accepting and declining her kind offer. It would, of course, be going on YouTube. I politely requested that he cut me out of the finished product. He respectfully assured me that he would do no such thing.

Here's the video:

All you Lord Growing super-fans can skip ahead to my part at 3:17, though I recommend watching the whole thing, because can't we just stop being miserable for four minutes and watch a video about free hugs? Sheesh. You're so exhausting sometimes.

You'll notice the look I give to the camera, a forced Garry-Shandling-eating-a-lemon smile that's universally known to mean, "That was a lovely hug, but, come on, what the fuck, Cardoza?"

If you're allergic to Jason Mraz, turn the sound off and play the music of your choice. Put on some Judson McKinney or something. That guy's great.

I remember the first time I witnessed the audience taking over the stage during Manhattan Murder Mystery's closing number, "Parking Lot."

Actually, strike that. I don't remember it. I was very, very drunk. But footage of it exists, and I am in it, and I have no reason to believe that it was doctored. There I am getting pulled on stage, and standing there not really knowing what to do with myself besides let fly some tightly constricted fist pumps and some drunken swaying dance moves. (Even when I'm wasted I can't get uninhibited enough to really let loose. This is in some ways a blessing. In other ways it defeats the whole purpose.)

Since that night, stage-rushing "Parking Lot" has become de regueur. But--like all the other inexplicable rites that have developed through so many Manhattan Murder Mystery shows--it's lost none of its allure. The band's egalitarian aversion to standing above and away from their audience has led to this ritual exorcism. It's stupid and embarrassing and I can't bear to watch the next day's footage--whether I'm destroying a plastic maraca by bashing it on a cymbal like I was at the second residency show, or merely bouncing around like a half-wit like I was at the first and the third--but it's glorious and fun and I regret nothing. It's like a free hug from the universe.

Do you like how I tied things together there at the end? Pretty neat, huh?

The 704 Is Presenting This Show On Sunday And Is Writing About This Show Right Now

2011-12-02T13:42:00.000-08:00

Hey, want to hear a profoundly uninteresting story? Sure you do.

The first time I met Judson McKinney was at the Echo during the first Manhattan Murder Mystery show I ever saw. Judson and his wife and collaborator Mary were on the patio handing out demo CDs wrapped in newspaper. Fort King had just finished an unexpectedly low-key (I thought I was going to a punk show) yet brilliant set.

And now, it appears, everything has come full circle. In a way. Or something like that. Full rhombus. And you know what that means, don't you? The end must be near.

But, until the end comes, let's drink and listen to music.

As far as I know, there don't exist any flyers for this show. So, to do my part as presenter, I decided to design one myself. And by design I mean "design." By which I mean I took two minutes out of my busy day to make this silly looking thing on my office computer:

If you're wondering, that bird is a bustard, and that stylish typeface is whatever the default font is on MS-Paint.

So please do me and yourself a personal favor and come out and celebrate the physical release of Judson's masterful album, Drink the Wine. From what I hear, his band will be playing every song on the record, so you can listen before you buy or whatever.

Sharing the bill will be Fort King, The Lonely Wild, and Count Fleet, each of whom I love dearly.

More details here.

'Women House' by Manhattan Murder Mystery

2011-12-02T02:06:00.000-08:00

"Tell me something. Tell me something wise!" I screamed.

"There is no wisdom, Johnny Reb," the old man said. "There's only tomorrow if you're lucky."

-Barry Hannah, "Dragged Fighting from His Tomb"

I had such high hopes for this review. While I sincerely love many artists in this schizoid town, Manhattan Murder Mystery seems to inspire me most. Their attitude, their forceful simplicity, and their lyrical obsessions provide much territory to mine--this in spite of their tendency to say exactly what they mean with a slyly limited amount of artifice. Plus, this record has only six songs. Even the laziest, most distracted blogger could give each song its due. And each song is due quite a bit.

There are "Stadium Way" and "City Hall," which ease frontman and lyricist Matthew Teardrop's inclination toward full-throated protest away from his usual subject of the human condition, and toward his sensitive everyman's vision of social justice. And yet there's nothing preachy or drably journalistic about his approach. His macro view of a ravaged society with little hope or will for reconstruction soon focuses in on a micro view of an entire generation hanging around basements and parking lots with nothing to do, not even sure if they've ever been promised anything more than this, a world where a 30k-per-year job is as distant a fantasy as paradise.

There are "Sancho" and "Women House," both heartbreaking yawps of loneliness and loss and recrimination directed both outward and inward, evocatively capturing the wanderings of a solitary mind dwelling on better times while lying in an empty bed or standing drunk at a deserted bus stop at 3 a.m.

There's "I've Got A Hole In My Head," a compact cri de coeur, a loss of control, an impassioned ebb and flow of pain. To an almost unfair degree, it's designed to get drunk people to jump around and act stupid and harm themselves and others.

And--atop the guitar and the voices and Laura Velez's muscular drumming and Katya Arce's loping basslines--there's the addition of Teardrop's harmonica and Todd McLaughlin's lead guitar, which isn't nearly as blasphemous as it sounds.

But, as much as I'd like to dwell on all of that at length, I can't get the song "Arlington Cemetary" out of my head. (I'm operating under the assumption that the misspelling of cemetery is deliberate, but I'm not going to read anything into that for the moment just in case I'm wrong.)

Teardrop comes from Northern Virginia, though, from what I gather, it's not the hoity-toity, upscale, voting-en-masse-for-Obama part of Northern Virginia. He is, truly, from the South, and his voice is essentially Southern. Not his accent--his accent is Teardropian and shared by no one else. It's his voice: embedded in his language and his perspective. It's that laconic, shoulder-shrugged vernacular, a thematic slow drawl, tied to concerns of family and patriotism and violence and God and neverending loss. But it's not a voice of Faulkner's South, haunted by Pickett's Charge and all that Lost Cause bullshit. It's akin to the voices that followed Faulkner--Larry Brown, say, or Breece D'J Pancake, or Barry Hannah--and their stories of rural dissolution and despair, characters haunted by something but--being as divorced from history and tradition as the rest of the amnesiac nation they so reluctantly rejoined--they're damned if they know what it is. Even when MMM transfers these concerns to the decidedly urban setting of their current home, the whispers of their origin remain.

This attitude comes through most clearly in "Arlington Cemetary," the only song on the EP that I've never heard MMM play live. (Unless I have. I don't often black out at shows, but when I do, it's usually at MMM shows.) It's the simplest song on the album, almost brutally stripped down: just Teardrop's voice and his twitchy, choppy guitar, supplemented by occasional ahh ahh harmonies and percussion. Its breathless melody and the unexpected elegance of its story are equally invasive.

In the second-person, the song relates the story of you and your grandparents. With economical characterization, Teardrop reveals your grandfather to be a patriot, a man who fought for his country, who sees in his grandson the makings of a West Point officer. Your grandmother is a godly woman who wants nothing more than for you to follow the path of the Lord.

"'I regret to inform you," Teardrop sings, in the voice of his protagonist, "'that both of you were way off.'"

Of course the realities of our ill-designed minds and bodies, and their capacity to feel and impose pain, soon overwhelm the promises of both God and country. Succumbing to dementia at 82 ("He started to lose his shit"), your grandfather--under the delusion that he's still fighting in World War II--pulls a gun on your grandma. He dies not long after, and is buried in the cemetery of the song's title. Before you know it, your grandma has lost her shit as well. She doesn't even remember you.

Belief in anything, it seems, is futile. Believing in your country enough to serve it in battle only sets you up for future violent madness. Believing in God won't save you from deteriorating into a vegetative husk that looks nothing like the image of any god that any sane person ever imagined.

Teardrop ends his story with a verse that could easily end every story ever told:

"And eventually everything that you see

Will deteriorate and evaporate,

Everyone that you met will turn into dust,

You won't remember them, they won't remember you."

Perhaps the existential despair of "Arlington Cemetary" isn't as far away from the economic despair of "Stadium Way" and "City Hall" as I'd initially thought. They are the same picture from two angles: a generation--or perhaps a nation--or maybe even a species--desperate and suffocating, trapped several generations removed from anything to believe in, from anything resembling hope.

Summer Darling, Vanaprasta, Voxhaul Broadcast, Chasing Kings - The Satellite - Monday, November 28, 2011

2011-11-30T23:51:00.000-08:00

"Ape in cage with wire cutters,

I'm in the tiny car, with the big-shoed feet."

-WHY?

I only have one good story, and I told it on this blog almost a year ago. This is long enough for it to be depressing, but not so long that I can get away with telling it again.

What did that even mean?

It was Sunday, the end of a very long weekend. I was still hungover from Friday night, and probably from Thursday night too. Two options presented themselves to me: another day in bed, studiously observing the ceiling and the light bulbs and the fan while my thoughts devolved into an ever inkier blight as I played a stone-still game of fetch with the yipping dogs of despair; or a trip to the bookstore. I went to the bookstore.

I'm tired of occupying my brain. I wish the cops would evict me.

With Manhattan Murder Mystery playing a residency in December and Seasons playing one in January, I shouldn't be dipping too deeply into my overpriced booze fund to buy books, given that I have a magic card that I can use to borrow books for free if I don't mind the shit-cheese odor of the Santa Monica Public Library. But, as I've informed most people at one time or another when they've gently inquired into my rather dim prospects for a future as a stable and self-sufficient human male, I'm kind of banking on that whole Mayan-calendar-2012-end-of-the-world business being true. And if that doesn't pan out, and we do make it to 2013, I'm assuming that our whole financial system and the broken society that props it up will collapse once and for all soon enough, and we'll all find ourselves on equal--though quite terrible--footing, and any debts I run up buying books will be confined to vague, laughably quaint memories of the days of First World leisure. Or, if that doesn't happen, maybe I'm going to die soon. In any event, it's totally okay for me to spend money on a book now and then, as long as it's from and independent bookstore and it's one that I really, really want.

I have a sense about these things. For the past twenty-nine years, I've been haunted by a premonition that I'm going to die. Just because it hasn't happened yet doesn't mean that I'm wrong. Someday. You'll see.

After a few stops, I tracked down a copy of Dana Spiotta's Stone Arabia. I kind of wish I hadn't, because, while the book is dazzling on its own terms--and a good read too; much like in her previous book Eat the Document, Spiotta's facility with language and detail made the story hard not to devour in a single evening--I liked my idea of the book better than the book itself. In reality, it's a story of family and sacrifice and decline. But what I had expected more of--in my cloistered, parochial fashion--was information about the protagonist's brother, a man named Nik: a musician who almost achieved minor commercial success twenty-five years before the book takes place, and who, since then, has continued to record music under various band names several times a year; he records and designs these releases himself, puts them out on fictional record labels, and, year after year, he shares them with about a dozen people; and, concurrent with this recording, he has written an entire Chronicle--a scrapbook of fictional press clippings, fake album reviews, fabricated fanzine interviews--documenting his imaginary career as a world-famous rock star and mercurial visionary. And he's more or less okay with this. I mean, he's a drunk, and he's poor, and possibly suicidal, and he works a shitty job at a bar, and his foot is swollen with gout. But beneath the accoutrements of despair, he's fundamentally okay. He doesn't care if more than a small handful of people--limited to close family and ex-girlfriends--ever hears the music he's toiled at for decades. He does not appear to long for fame, or recognition, or any part of the life he's invented for himself in his Chronicle. The acts of imagination and creation are enough.

Here is a video of Dana Spiotta being interviewed in France about her last book, Eat the Document. It's completely irrelevant to our current discussion, but I like seeing fiction writers treated to fawning celebrity-style interviews. I like when the guy calls it a "must-read."

I guess my partiality to the portions of Stone Arabia that deal directly with Nik stems from my affection for a certain type of classic existential hero: those who create their own meaning, divorced from any divine or societal demand and approval; those who stand before the void, create something beautiful, and throw it right down into that abyss. Although, if I'm being honest, I must admit that my affection for this type of existential hero has flagged a bit since I was fifteen. The void becomes less romantic and more unforgiving as you age. But I maintain an affection for my long-lost affection.

Many of my friends play music. Many of them will never be heard beyond a handful of close family and friends and ex-girlfriends. I wonder how this affects their lives, their outlooks, their creative processes. I could ask them, I suppose, and on certain drunken occasions I have. And in their answers, underneath the dissembling and the odd delusion and the desire for easy access to intercourse, there always lies that compulsion, an unquittable artistic drive that may begin with a desire to be loved but ends somewhere far more peculiar, and scary. It's not about acclaim or sex or record sales or packed houses or 8.4 album reviews. It's not even about rocking out and having fun with your friends. It's about seeing the buzzards constantly circling overhead, and doing anything one can as an artist and human--taking every risk, making every mistake, stumbling into every success--to keep them at bay. The buzzards occasionally fly away, but they're never gone for long. And they don't care how many people like your band.

I'm not sure what any of this has to do with Vanaprasta. Judging by the turnout at Monday night's final residency show, and the enthusiasm of all the gorgeous people in attendance, whatever obscurity the band maintains isn't long for this world. They're running from the same buzzards as everyone else, of course, but they appear to be getting the masses running right alongside them.

It had been far too long since I'd caught one of their sets. Back in the day I used to push up close and pump my fist, but this time around I hung back. The crowd was too dense and young and glamorous, and I was feeling too old and ugly and fat and drunk. But even from a distance with my fist unpumped, the exhilaration was palpable. They make me want to spout cliches about the power of good old rock and roll, but this is something I'm lately trying to resist.

But....

Maybe, some nights, it is about rocking out and having fun with your friends.

"You here for Vanaprasta?" a man next to me at the bar asked.

"Yeah," I said. "Haven't seen 'em in a long time."

"Oh, you've seen them before?"

"Many times."

"Yeah, they're really good ... for an L.A. band. Most L.A. bands suck. Which L.A. bands do you like?" he asked.

I didn't answer. It was an odd question.

Words About A Show That Is Going To Happen

2011-11-23T20:39:00.000-08:00

Jesum Crow, I can't write a word to save my life. While this is certainly no one's problem but my own, it nonetheless seems worth mentioning. Do you have any advice? I could use some advice.

November started with so much promise, too--two-posts-in-two-days promise!--but here we are, the night before Thanksgiving, and my dustbowl brain has produced nothing more. To be honest, I can't even bear to read anything I've ever written; doing so makes me feel the way Bob Mould must feel when he hears "Too Far Down."

But somehow, even without my gimpy contributions, the shows have gone on. Why, just the other night I saw Sketch Monster, The Health Club, Stab City, and Bastidas at Los Globos. It was a lovely evening. One of those classic Los Globos nights, the kind we all live for. Textbook Los Globos magic.

Furthermore, the show-presenting game continues apace, even for a temporarily inactive blog. Like, for example, The 704 and a whole wagonload of other creatures are presenting this:

Looks like a good time to me. You're going to be drunk for the next four days anyway, right? Might as well hear some good tunes to justify your holiday debauchery.

I'm sure you know and love Walking Sleep by now. And I recently discovered that even people who hate music seem to like Shirley Rolls. Plus there's a super secret special guest--so secret that I don't know who it is. It might be Radiohead for all I know. It's not, of course. But it might be! (It's not.) (But it might be!) (Can you imagine how stupid you'd feel if you passed up this show only to discover on Saturday morning that the super secret special guest was Radiohead? Pretty stupid, I'd say.) (I mean, that's not going to happen. Let's be realistic here. But still ... why risk it?)

Every detail you could possibly want here ... except for the identity of the super secret special guest. It could be anybody! Literally! Anybody! I wish someone would tell me!

Going To This Show Won't Prevent Your Inevitable Demise, But It Might Help You Forget About It For A Little While

2011-11-03T20:05:00.000-07:00

Do you ever wonder how you're going to die? We're all going to, of course--quickly or slowly, peacefully or painfully, invariably alone. They say that, while we all acknowledge our mortality, none of us really believes in it until our last moments are upon us. I'm not sure if that's true. I believe in my mortality. I believe in it with every headache. I believe in it with every sore throat, every fleeting chest pain, every unexplained cough. I believe in it every night.

Or maybe I don't. Who knows?

Imagining how it might happen helps to make it real if, for some reason, you want to make it real. You might get hit by a car while drunkenly running across the street to say hi to a friend. You might get shot in the face while foraging for food in the war-torn wasteland that this exhausted country will become any day now.

Or maybe it will be after a full life, which leaves you lying in a comfortable bed, hooked up to graceful machines, surrounded by those closest to you, those who, you now realize, have given you so much love during your brief stay on this planet, and you can only pray that you returned it, even though you are certain that you did not. You slip in and out of consciousness as the cancer eats away at what little remains of your shriveled up body--a body that used to be so small and smooth and new, and then so virile and sturdy, and which now resembles nothing so much as a raggedy burlap sack full of rot and odor. You try to keep your eyes open--your eyes which were once innocent and fresh, which on a long-forgotten day saw the color blue for the first time, which are now dim and jaded and gray and buried in cataracts--because you know that if you close them they may never open again. And you're finally faced with it, what can and will come any second: darkness; or, perhaps, the life to come, the end of your ego and your self, a transcendence that dwarfs a lifetime full of longings, crushing disappointments, venal jealousies, joyous loves.

It's going to happen.

That being the case, there's really no excuse to waste a Friday night by not going to this awesome show:

I've gone on at some length about Mama's Joy, George Glass, and One Trick Pony in the past, so, in light of our common predicament, I dare not do so again. I don't think I've mentioned Little Red Lung before, and I should have by now. Within their music exists something both eerily ethereal and undeniably tough. It's something rare to be savored.

Plus, Missouri's Special Passenger Records will be filming the evening for a documentary, which gives you a special opportunity to prove to the ages that you were once alive.

Details here.

To San Diego and Back: On the road with Seasons and Manhattan Murder Mystery

2011-11-02T23:17:00.000-07:00

"Let's throw up!"

-John Seasons

San Diego is shit. The sun always shines yet the landscape is never more than a sickly brownish gray. It claims well over a million inhabitants yet contains no sign of life outside of Sea World and the zoo. It abuts Tijuana yet the best Mexican food in town is at Jack in the Box. It's the eighth-largest city in the United States yet it remains little more than a suburb of Legoland.

Still, we managed to have a pretty good time.

My distaste for San Diego was rather pronounced before this trip, but given that such opinions were based solely on childhood impressions, I was prepared to change my mind. Growing up, I had a great-aunt and -uncle--truly sweet, good-hearted people--who lived in San Diego. We would visit them once or twice a year. They had a big house with stone tile floors that my brothers and I were incessantly forbidden to run on. My aunt had a doll collection that she was quite proud of, one which I'm sure was quite impressive, but it didn't hold much allure for a pre-pubescent, latently heterosexual boy who'd rather be sliding around on the slippery tiles in his socks than examining a cabinet of dead-eyed porcelain children. What I associate most with these visits are vivid memories of having to pretend to like Charlie Chaplin movies and the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

We would, of course, leave the house on occasion. I recall several outings to the yacht club, where we would eat bland food and admire the America's Cup--yachting's highest prize--which was on display there, having been won several times by the American Dennis Conner in his legendary vessel Stars and Stripes. I didn't know what the America's Cup was--I must admit that, unlike most six-year-olds, I wasn't a big yachting aficionado, which is one reason why I felt so alienated as a child--and I wasn't sure why anyone would want to look at it in a display case surrounded by leathery people in blue blazers. I assumed it was just an old people thing.

Now I realize, from my perspective here in the future, that it's more likely just a San Diego thing. There's nothing to do in San Diego that's more exciting than staring at a boating trophy.

As much as I'd like to stand behind a bold denunciation for once, I must admit that perhaps I'm not being entirely fair. On our second day in San Diego we visited Balboa Park, parts of which were very nice. There were trees and flowers and a drum circle that was particularly arrhythmic, even by drum circle standards (unless the drummers were operating on an abstract plane far beyond the concept of rhythm as my puny brain understands it, but I'm pretty sure they were just old and stoned). Within Balboa Park we passed by the Museum of Man. We didn't feel like paying to get in, but it's conceivable that it would have been quite interesting if we had. But then again, I already know all about man. I'm a man, and frankly, I'm not all that impressive.

We spent a mere forty-four hours in San Diego. I'm willing to believe that, had we stayed longer, the city's charms would have become apparent. But there was no fucking way I was going to stay any longer.

It starts, as these things generally do, the night before at a Judson McKinney residency show. This was last Friday night at Casey's, the final night of his band's residency there. I was planning a laid back evening of moderation and cool tunes. I had a long weekend ahead of me, after all, which would see me driving to San Diego, where Seasons and Manhattan Murder Mystery had shows scheduled for Saturday and Sunday nights.

My original plan was to take it easy, anyway. But you know how that goes. I'm pretty sure the Yiddish proverb "Man plans; God laughs" originally referred to someone who was planning a laid back Friday night of moderation and cool tunes because he had a long weekend ahead of him but he ended up getting wasted instead. Because that's what happened to me. Before I knew it I was a gallon of Guinness deep and I was standing in a parking garage with a certain musician and a certain filmmaker and we were smoking weed and doing considerable damage to a bottle of vodka. I believe I also had a fairly extensive conversation with Groucho Marx, but I might have dreamed that up later that night.

But Judson's set was solid as always, if a bit sleepy compared to the previous week's. This had little to do with the music. The Friday before--in one of those inexplicable occurrences that makes you appreciate the relative diversity of Casey's--a bunch of frat-boy types and their lady friends crowded the front of the stage during Judson's set and they danced like mid-terms were finally over. They were all wasted, and I doubt any of them bothered to buy merch or to like Judson on Facebook or to tell their bros about the killer band they just discovered. But still, it was glorious and ridiculous in equal measures, which is always a good combination.

This past Friday, on the other hand, it was all about the music with minimal audience spectacle. And there's nothing wrong with that when the music's that real. Buy the new album, why not?

I'm going to try not to dwell on unpleasantness, so the rest of this post might be a bit choppy.

We pulled into San Diego the next day at around four--me, my friend Ian, John Seasons, and his girlfriend, all crammed into my borrowed car with John's gear.

This is the part where I would provide local color, but San Diego has no local color.

We got rooms at a motel around the corner from that night's venue, which was the Tin Can Alehouse; or, as Hater X would probably call it, the Flarn Can Flarnhouse; or, if you really want a reference point, I could call it the Silverlake Lounge South (Except Even Worse).

We hung around the rooms. The rest of Seasons and Manhattan Murder Mystery eventually trickled in. Pizza was eaten. VH1 was watched. We drank beer, we drank whiskey. MMM's Matthew Teardrop uttered the surprising words, "I'm gonna have to pace myself." I don't think he followed through on this pledge.

We walked to the venue. The first band that played that night played awfully and they played forever. John thought they were a far-too-devoted Pixies rip-off band, but I thought they sounded more like Pezz, the shitty band I played in when I was in eighth grade. And there are few bands you want to sound like less than Pezz. Believe me.

Seasons were up next, and they played a solid half-a-set to a barely cognizant audience before the sound person cut them off with a charming, "If you want your friends to play you have to end this song now."

This tempered our caravan's enthusiasm.

The third band was from L.A. also. I guess they play the Viper Room a lot? Yeah.

Then, against the staff's wishes, MMM played and, strangely, they weren't very good. The weight of San Diego and its small town ethos and its contempt and its complexes seemed to get between their strings. Or maybe they just didn't care very much that night. I don't know.

The last thing I remember is someone spilling beer on me, which I normally accept as part of the lifestyle. But I guess San Diego's law-and-order sensibility had infected me, and I took it as a personal affront. I punched the perpetrator in the face.

Not really. I just felt like the world was imploding. At some point thereafter I walked back to the motel.

Each band got paid twenty bucks.

The next day was long. I woke up with various characters on my floor. Even more arrived later on to watch football. I was hungover and hungry and I hate football. The very idea of San Diego felt oppressive to me.

I walked to the liquor store for cigarettes. As I stood near the counter, a gibbering maniac walked in, ranting and raving. Uh oh, I thought, we've got a situation. The clerk laughed and said, "Hey Bill! Looks like someone hasn't had his medicine today." He pulled out a small bottle of vodka.

Okay, it was kind of funny. But horribly depressing too.

Walking around Balboa Park got me feeling a bit human again. Going into that night's show at the Ruby Room, I was prepared for redemption.

And so it happened. The Ruby Room had a distinctly Echo-esque odor, but other than that it was a pretty nice place. It was done up all spooky-like for Halloween which--if such is your idea of fun--was fun. They had pool tables and decent drink specials.

Of course, it wasn't all fun and games. Members of both Seasons and MMM almost got barred from re-entering the club after they were caught drinking Canadian Mist around the corner. But after everyone calmed down , they were allowed back in. And ... everyone learned a lesson, I guess? I don't know. What's there to say?

The first and third bands of the night painted a very dreary picture of the San Diego music scene, but they wore neat costumes, so.... That is my attempt to be positive. Did you like it?

Seasons played second to an audience made up almost entirely of the people they traveled from L.A. with. Such a situation can be demoralizing, but, on a night like last Sunday, it seemed to be liberating. No one who hadn't seen them a dozen times before was bothering to listen, so they could do what they wanted, play whatever moved them, take risks. They opened with two songs whose combined length would constitute the entire set of a lesser band, and they were spellbinding. They jammed. The new stuff sounds sharper every time, the old stuff takes on new textures. They had nothing to lose, and, if I'm not mistaken, I think they had fun.

However, MMM, as is their wont, took it up a notch. After playing some new songs in as tight a formation as I've yet heard, to an audience made up entirely of their travelling companions plus one bemused local sitting on a stool, the band abandoned any pretense of putting on a show and demanded that all of their friends get on stage. What started as an on-stage dance party quickly devolved into a joyous, messy catharsis, as Teardrop's amp cut out and any pretense of playing songs was abandoned as well. The set ended with drums and bass and rowdy chanting and banging on whatever was at hand with drumsticks. "The hound dog has a bulldog," they chanted, "and the bulldog has a hound dog," which, I assure you, made perfect sense in context.

They had traveled over a hundred miles to be met with nothing but indifference and contempt and scraps. And they responded with chaos and celebration. For a band that sings such sad songs, it was a uniquely life-affirming display.

"Let's go back to L.A.!" the crowd on stage chanted. "Let's go back to L.A.!"

GUEST POST: The Lonely Wild, The Ross Sea Party, Wires in the Walls - Bootleg Bar - Thursday, October 27, 2011 - Reviewed by Hater X

2011-10-29T10:58:00.000-07:00

[Well, it's been about fourteen months since the last time Hater X covered a show for The 704, which I guess means it's time for him to do another? Apparently he thinks so, because he sent me this one, totally unsolicited. At first I was going to ignore it, but I'll give Hater X one thing: he brings in the page-views. He's like catnip to you freaks. So here it is. Of course, I endorse none of the opinions, insults, or sexual proclivities contained herein. -L.G.]

Dear Hippies,

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Jesus, isn't this old man on the wrong blog?" You're either thinking that or you're thinking, "Jesus, if I wanted to be sprayed in the face with vitriolic putrescence I would just go here and tap into the source," or maybe I'm wrong again and you're thinking, "I know who Hater X is!!! It's__________!!!!!"

Let me start by answering all of your hypotheticals one by one:

1. I have access to any blog I want because I'm the hippest artificially hipped old Codger on the blog-beat block!! Don't ask me to say that again. Its a tongue-twister.

2. If you're not reading my blog with regularity, then you should be ashamed of yourselves and you deserve to be struck deaf and riddled with anus herpes. Hint hint.....go here every day or else.

3. I know all you little Zygote jerks have your suspicions about my identity. You don't think Lordy comes to me and reports all your silly little drunken misfires?? Let me ease your mind right now by saying that none of you actually have guessed right. And you never will, because I've never introduced myself to any of you. You're a bunch of smelly hipster turd-humpers! I'm an old and wise Sage who sees right through you. I am among you. I am not of you.

I'm not really sure what any of that has to do with anything at all. But I figured that since I'm guest blogging on Lordy's little site, the best thing to do would be to replicate his formula of Henry Miller-esque tangential tirades as much as possible so as not to confuse the apathetic docile masses (that's you). Am I doing a good job? I can literally feel the drool of boredom falling from your mongoloidish lower lip. WIPE YOUR GODDAMN FACE!!!

So I guess I should do what Lordy does and, you know, cover some sort of live show. So last night I was over at the Ukranian Cultural Center. Just me, my hip flask full of hooch, my silver-tipped cane, and my red carnation squirty-flower. What's that you ask?? Was I there to see MAN MAN??? HAH!! Why the FLaRN would I wanna go see those trashcan-banging Blue-Man-Group reject motherhumpers??? Oh no, I go to the UCC for the dames. Oh boy you've never lived unless you've had a Ukrainian dame cook you a meal. I'm usually pretty successful, especially on a weeknight. Those ladies are always down to cook dinner for a lonely old man pacing back and forth between the dining hall and the handicap bathroom. It's a strange phenomenon that's worked for me for the past several years now.

Anyhow, I was over at the UCC trying to score some dinner when I started to realize how my efforts for the evening were doomed. Why, you ask?? BECAUSE MAN MAN AKA POO POO ARE THE BIGGEST C.B.'s TO EVER EXIST!!!!!! Ehhh.....what's a man to do when faced with such a road block? Why, go with his backup plan, of course!

I hopped in a cab and headed over to the Amanda Jo Williams show at the Bootleg. Usually I steer clear of any venue associated with THE FOLD, but on this night I was willing to make an exception on the off chance that I might be able to convince Miz Jo Williams to take me back to her hovel and cook me my goddamn meal that I woulda been eating at that point in time if not for stupid MAN MAN!!! So I got to the venue and shelled out 8 bucks to the catatonic door dame who seems to be the door girl for all the FOLD venues. I want to simultaneously punch her and hump her. My old man brain gets confused. I'd probably stick to the former out of sheer principle. Then the latter after executing the former.

Upon walking through the doors I immediately became confused and scared. The lineup of bands for the night was absent of Amanda Jo Williams!!! WHAT THE FLARN WAS GOING ON!!!!!! Unfortunately for me I got my nights mixed up. Amanda Jo Williams was playing on Friday night, not Thursday. So I was resigned to the fact that the night was a total failure.......no Ukrainian women to cook me dinner at gunpoint. No Amanda Jo to stare at longingly and drunkenly from the first row.

And then it happened.

I looked up on stage to see a band dressed up in Wizard Of Oz costumes!!!! Halloween is upon us! And like a bright beacon of hope inside a cavernous void..... there she was!!! DOROTHY!!!! She was banging on a drum and singing passionately into the microphone. I took this as a sign that maybe all was not lost!!! I made a beeline straight to the bar because my hip flask was empty at that point. The bar only had over-priced beer and wine. So when in doubt, go for the rot-gut. I bought seven PBR's at $4 a pop (sonsabitches), opened two and pocketed the rest. Then I went, double-fisted, to the front of the stage and watched my Dorothy. Pigtails do wonders, ladies and turds!! What beauty! What style! Was this some dirty trick?? Or was it providence? Was it fate??? Sure, the entirety of the venue were dressed in costumes honoring Halloween (that wretched holiday), so it could have just been chance that I walked into the room to find my precious Dorothy!! But I prefer to believe that it was The Ghost of Arlen smiling down upon this old man!!! I wasn't sure who the FLaRN Dorothy was playing with. Could have been Sly Stallone for all I cared. I was captivated. Tonight was going to be the night that Miz Dorothy Gale would be mine. So I wobbled over to the side of the stage to wait. And I waited. And waited. And the band kept playing. And playing. Next thing I knew, I woke up slumped against the wall...asleep on my feet. I was being shaken violently by some troll of a man dressed like the Wicked Witch of the West.

"WHAH....what the FLaRN do you want??"

"We're closing up, old man. You need to get the hell out of here. Go piss yourself someplace else."

"Who the hell are you??" I asked him.

"I'm the booker," he said, "Get out"

It was him. The Wicked Witch of The Fold. Scott Sterling. I made my way across the floor and toward the door. Upon reaching the door, I turned to face the Witch. He looked at me with his little beady eyes and said, "Well??"

I raised a pointed finger to declare my hatred of everything he and his establishment stood for.....when I suddenly threw up my PBR and Hooch stomach mulch all over his face. He then began to melt slowly at my feet, screaming all the way down. When he was nothing more than a black puddle, I unzipped my fly and urinated on the puddle.

The end.

Seasons - The Echo - Monday, October 24, 2011

2011-10-28T00:08:00.000-07:00

"The only thing we knew for sure about Henry Porter

is that his name wasn't Henry Porter."

-Brownsville Girl

I may or may not have anything to say about this show. You'll have to keep reading to find out, I guess. (How's that for an instant cliffhanger? Have I roped you in yet?) It hadn't even occurred to me to write about it until Kaitlin from Seasons asked me if I was going to, and I believe I mumbled a vague affirmative. Or maybe I didn't commit either way. I don't know. I was stoned.

It's rare for me to venture into a show review--whatever that means these days--without some sort of game-plan or unwritten outline as to what I'm going to say, how I'm going to say it, the ratio of music-content to me-content, and various other sexy concerns. But tonight I've got nothing--no plans, no outlines, nothing in particular to say. Generally, when you have nothing to say, it's wise to keep your mouth shut, or your blog unupdated, or whatever. But when I'm not writing I'm just some jerk who hangs out at shows too much. And who wants to be just some jerk who hangs out at shows too much? Not me, apparently. It's okay if you do.

So let's write. Let's find a point of view. Let's find an angle....

Angles used to be much easier to come by. Back in the glory days of The 704--a golden age that may only exist in my imagination, since I can't bear to re-read any posts predating this year's Silver Lake Jubilee--I'd keep my mind wide open for the entire evening of a show, taking note of every observation, every stray thought that could potentially be extrapolated upon for five hundred words or so. Once I'd seized upon one of these threads, I was free to pay attention to the music which, with some padding, could account for the next five hundred words. And, like magic, the hard part of a thousand-word show review was done.

A major problem with this routine always arose when the first angle I came up with was lousy. Since I'm nothing if not a lazy writer/thinker/human, even if the angle was lousy, I'd run with it. I'd be so relieved that I had something to write about, I'd assume that no better idea was possible, so I'd write about the first one, most likely to the blog's detriment. But, in spite of all those shoddy posts, even I have to admit that my productivity back then was inspiring. If I'm not mistaken, there was a period there where I consistently reviewed four shows a week, always within twenty-four hours of leaving the venue. Even when I knew the output was subpar, I didn't flag. Such was my desire to prove my existence.

Nowadays when I go to shows--even those rare ones that I tentatively plan to write about--I don't seek out angles. Ever since the Silver Lake Jubilee post, this search for angles has seemed phony, like a cheap trick, a way for me to wear a mask and be a clown and put on a show. If I were a more entertaining clown, this would be entirely defensible, but I don't think that's the case. (Correct me if I'm wrong. I'd love to be a great clown. Clowning is a noble calling.) (That's "clowning" as in "acting a fool for the benign amusement of others," not "clowning" as in "wearing clown make-up and a wig and weird clothes and scaring children," because there's nothing noble about that.) (Once at a carnival, in a touching though misguided attempt to allay my knock-down, screaming-tantrum, pants-pissing fear of clowns, my father had his face painted in a traditional clown-like manner. His intention was to show me that clowns were nothing to be scared of, just regular folks with junk on their faces. And, oh, how I screamed and cried, petrified that all it took was a little face-paint to turn my father into one of those deranged freaks who had tormented me all me life. Also, clowns with beards are extra creepy.)

Anyway, as I was saying, ever since that Silver Lake Jubilee post, rather than contriving a semi-legitimate point of view to approach my memories of a concert, I just ... write. I take what's in my head and I write it down. Which is scary, since I'm not all that crazy about much of what's in my head. It can be weird and personal and boring and indefensibly self-indulgent. But sometimes it seems to work. In that Jubilee post, I was mortified to find myself telling the internet about my dead grandfather and my oddly conflicted feelings upon his recent passing (very recent--I wrote the thing in a weird, sleep-deprived frenzy after arriving home from his funeral well after midnight). But people seemed to like it. Geoff Geis linked to it in his column on Sean Carnage's website, so Sean Carnage's readers got to know about my dead grandfather and my oddly conflicted feelings upon his recent passing. After some initial anxiety, I was okay with this. When you come from a place of honesty, it seemed, people would respond kindly.

But the potential self-indulgence of it all still nags at me. The increasingly diaristic nature of this venture and the growing imbalance between the music-content and the me-content have left me feeling, at times, a bit absurd. And the proliferation of more, um, traditional music blogs would suggest that the majority of music fans want to know about music, how the band sounded, what songs they played, et cetera. This sounds horrendously boring to me, but I don't judge. It's just that when I want to know about music, I will listen to music. If I care about a show, I will go to it. But when I read words, I do so to learn about life, and people, and ... I don't know ... love? Pain? Neuroses? Drunkenness? Whatever the hell it is I write about.

And, let's be honest, there are so many people saying so much about so many different things, especially in terms of music. It's a big internet. Any topic I can think of has been exhausted by a million other voices before I can churn out even a paragraph. This is one reason why I chose to focus so resolutely on local music when I started this thing. Plenty of other people were writing about it, sure, but not so many that I couldn't successfully compete for your attention. I have no desire to take on thousands of other people to see who can write the best St. Vincent review. But I'll gladly take on a dozen other people to see who can write the best Seasons review. I might not come out on top, but I'll make a respectable showing.

Then again, I've already written many Seasons reviews. Everything's been done, every subject burnt out. The only thing that no one else is writing about is me.

You do what you have to do to be original.

So here we are.

What now? I guess I'll write about the show. Or, you know ... not about the show. Maybe a little bit. I'll write about me in and around the show.

I got to the Echo way early for Seasons' set. The president was in town, so I adjusted my schedule to allow for increased traffic. (I don't think about the president much, but when he's in town and he makes me leave early for a show, I get very upset about his corporatist agenda and his war crimes.) Strangely, by the time I hit the streets they were empty.

So I walked along Sunset to kill time. I ran into my friend Ian, whom I almost didn't see. I'd like to pretend that I didn't see him walking straight towards me because, as a very deep thinker, I was lost in thought. But I think it had more to do with the fact that I don't look at people because I'm scared that they might be looking back at me.

We smoked outside the Echo. I'd describe our conversation but I wasn't planning on writing about it at the time so I didn't make an effort to remember the details. Plus, I don't know if he'd want me telling you about what he may or may not have done last Saturday.

The Echo opened. We made our way inside. John Seasons promptly met us at the bar and escorted us to the green room. Someone passed me a pipe. I don't smoke weed much these days--I generally don't enjoy it, and I have a history of enjoying it too much--but drinking at the Echo has become prohibitively expensive, so I opted for the organic (and free) alternative.

It felt good. Two hits wrecked me. It was much better than the last time I smoked weed which was way back ... last Friday. Nik from Seasons and I were leaving Casey's after Judson McKinney's show to go to Randy from One Trick Pony's apartment to drink with him and Nick from George Glass and Matt and Katya from Manhattan Murder Mystery and Christian from Bright Beast and some other kind folks. (Isn't this all so sickeningly insidery? What happened to me? I used to be uncool. This is another reason why I've abandoned most of my pretenses towards music writing: the majority of the shows I see these days involve people I'm friends with. And I really have no desire to tell the internet that last night my friend's band sucked/was awesome/was okay. Not because of any conflict of interest. It just feels dumb.) (That sounds like the lamest brag ever, but I don't mean it that way. Believe me, being friends with Randy is no picnic. But that's where I've arrived. There's no getting around it.)

Anyway, on the way out of Casey's, John Seasons talked me into taking a couple hits. After we made it to the car, I proceeded to talk Nik's ear off about God-knows-what all the way to Randy's place. Once we arrived my well-being dissipated. I zoned out. I recall fantasizing aloud to several people about how nice it would be if I could just flip a switch and make it so my life had never happened. I'd be gone, and no one would miss me, because I had never been there in the first place.

In spite of my generally bleak outlook, my thoughts generally don't run that dark, particularly when I'm drinking with friends. And I'd had a lovely, promising night.

Perhaps I was feeling too good. I knew it couldn't last. I wanted to shut it down before the hopelessness returned.

Or maybe my brain just doesn't react well to weed. I decided that I probably shouldn't smoke any again for a while.

And that resolution lasted until Monday.

But, like I said, it was nice. My thoughts weren't making any sense, and I was perhaps a bit too eager to share them, but that's okay.

I saw my friend Deseret. I said something to her that didn't make any sense.

"That didn't make any sense," she said.

"Sorry," I said. "I'm really stoned. Anything I say for the next hour or so probably won't make any sense."

"How will that be any different than usual?" she asked.

Then Seasons played. Would you like to know about Seasons' set? How they sounded? What songs they played?

They sounded ... good. They sounded like ... a, uh ... thunderstorm ... when you're on ... mushrooms....

I can't do this. Were you there? If not, why not? Why would you miss a Seasons show, dummy?

Hey internet, my friends' band was awesome.

Songs I Recently Heard

2011-10-24T01:59:00.000-07:00

Part I

It's a couple weeks ago on a Sunday afternoon and my brain is fogged and my eyelids are sagging and my balance is askew and I'm covered in a thin residue of sweat from the heat and from last night's beer forcing its way out through my pores and from earlier in the day when I helped push a friend's broken down car from the street into a gas station and there are gaping holes in the soles of my sneakers where the duct tape has worn away and my socks are torn up and the bottoms of my feet are street-blackened and probably diseased and I'm trying to drink a PBR but my tongue and stomach are rejecting it for reasons both physical and aesthetic and I'm sitting on Christian Biel's couch observing a recording session for his band Bright Beast.

"Observing" is a charitable characterization of what was happening.

There was probably a point earlier in the day when I could have willed myself into something resembling well-being. Unlike most physical ailments, when it comes to hangovers, you can decide whether or not you want to feel better, assuming you're an artist who's experienced with the form. With the assistance of hydration, caffeine, greasy food, a long shower, positive thinking, and the prayers of a qualified Christian Science practitioner, the day after an evening of dissolute liver abuse can be up to ninety-nine percent as active and productive as any other day. You just have to make the choice.

On the Sunday in question, I have not made the choice. The odds were against me anyway. Moving backwards in time through the previous evening, I had: sipped American whiskey and German mineral water while watching British television at Christian's apartment; enjoyed a cup of the mystery beer at that Thai karaoke place that serves after hours; guzzled Budweiser at a birthday party for someone I still haven't met at a big house in Echo Park; nursed craft brews at Lot 1 for Brad Roberts' Saturday night rock and roll extravaganza; and, over the twenty-five hours prior to the show, fasted for Yom Kippur.

Don't ask why. Fasting on Yom Kippur makes about as much sense for me as fasting for Ramadan, or fasting on Arbor Day. Aside from funerals and B'nai Mitzvah ceremonies, I haven't set foot in a synagogue in almost twenty years. But years ago, for reasons that have become obscure, I decided that observing one day per year without food, liquid, smoke, toothpaste, soap, or leather shoes would be good for my soul. Or my karma. Or my perspective. Or my self-esteem. Or my waistline. Or something. I don't know.

If I force myself to remember why I decided to start fasting--and I really do have to force myself to remember anything, given my natural inclinations to say, "Fuck it, I was stoned at the time," or, "Why would I want to remember something so unpleasant? To what end?"--I realize it was the result of a confluence of impulses. Two impulses, mostly--a modest confluence, but a confluence nonetheless.

First, I wanted to assert some degree of discipline and self-control, both virtues that I valued but never indulged. Three-hundred-sixty-four days of limp-brained pot-headery would be redeemed by one holy day of withheld pleasures and quiet contemplation. Or so I hoped.

Second, there was the whole Jewish aspect. You know, that whole thing. It's a strange, unlikely heritage, and one that I was growing to appreciate. And even though I'll never be a full-fledged member of the club, I figured that I'd suffered through enough Sunday school classes at Beth Shir Shalom to give me a legitimate claim on the customs of the faith--at least the more unpleasant ones, like Crohn's Disease and Yom Kippur fasting. In retrospect, it seems that some part of me hungered for ritual and tradition. But the only religious tradition ever observed in my home was my dad staying home from work and fasting on Yom Kippur. So I figured I'd give it a shot too. Why not? You don't get to choose your own traditions.

Believe it or not, my discipline and self-control have improved over subsequent years. And my fascination with the Jewish faith has leveled off. But still I fast. Why? Well, it would be kind of scary to stop, you know? Unless God gives you a really good reason to stop--letting your family die, allowing your livestock to be plundered, covering you with festering sores and parasites--once you start observing a penitent tradition, it seems like you should see it through every year until you die. Getting inscribed in the Book of Life ain't no joke.

Plus, the act of fasting is satisfying in its own way. It thrusts you into a semi-meditative state, one that features not a paucity of thought but, rather, a hyper-awareness of every thought that enters your head. Until you've been there at 3:30 in the afternoon, with twenty-one hours of deprivation behind you and four hours to go, you'll never truly realize the degree to which your thought process revolves around shoveling food and water and smoke into your stupid, greedy facehole. I recommend it.

But after breaking your fast with a leisurely evening meal, I would not recommend high-tailing it out to Echo Park to swill beer and watch George Glass play. Because you'll end up unsteadily wasted, at some point you'll break into a spirited rendition of Tindersticks' "Drunk Tank" (unless that was a dream), and you'll end the night passing out on Christian's dog-gnawed couch. And the next day you'll be borderline comatose and unable to appreciate the circuitous path your life has taken that's resulted in you observing--or, at the very least, being present--while vocal tracks are laid down for a Bright Beast song.

Have you heard about Bright Beast? You might consider it a super-group, if you're part of the exclusive club (the chosen people, if you will) that cares about bands like the Transmissions and One Trick Pony and George Glass and Manhattan Murder Mystery. I guess Christian's been lying low (music-wise, not troublemaking-wise) since the demise of the Transmissions, contributing to other people's albums and selling pet food to rich people. But it would appear that projects like Washed Out and their super-chill cohort have inspired him to throw one of his stylish hats back into the ring.

Of course, the summer of 2009 is long gone, so I dare not venture to call Bright Beast chillwave. Doing so would cause more muddiness than clarity anyway, since the term doesn't mean much of anything. I suppose Bright Beast has some of the semi-agreed-upon hallmarks of the genre, with its faded synth-heaviness and ethereal vocals and melted poppiness. But it also has Matthew Teardrop's drunken, improvised wails of romantic longing, so ... let's not pigeonhole anything.

Will Bright Beast be something special?

Yes, I'd venture to assume so. Their three song demo sampler is delightful, and their Franzia-fueled live debut promises to be a good time. If I were you--and I really, really wish I were--I wouldn't miss it.

So by watching them record, did I witness something important?

No, not under the circumstances. All I got to see was Nick Ceglio from George Glass sing, "The glass it breaks," in a girlish falsetto over and over again. Once it was layered over the track--"Broken Window"--it was quite lovely. But we all know what they say about watching sausage being made. It's especially true when you're hungover.

And let's not even get into the anxiety and neuroses that arise in the presence of serious, skilled artists at work, toiling in a medium whose inner-workings you've long since given up on understanding, as they discuss the relative merits of an extra measure at the end of a verse, and all you can do is sit there, dopey and hungover, idly fingering an unlit cigarette, your only insight being that it sounded like a pretty song to you.

Part II

It's almost a week later on an early Saturday morning and I stink of Guinness and my shirt finally seems to have dried after being drenched with sweat and snot and beer and all the other viscous accompaniments to Manhattan Murder Mystery's recently completed set at Casey's down the street which started with a few new songs and then started to deteriorate when "Ambulance" kicked in and "Owen Hart" and "Parking Lot" were just violent messes but that's okay with me because a good time was definitely had by most and now I'm drinking a PBR and this time it goes down very smooth and I'm sitting on the steps of Los Angeles City Hall surrounded by the tent city of Occupy L.A.

The Occupy movement is one of those things--like Bob Dylan or Jesus--that I'd prefer not to comment on in writing, since so many people have written so much already. The compulsion to say something original will only lead me to say something stupid.

But I certainly support it. Support it enough to join it? No, not in any meaningful way. By which I mean any way beyond stumbling drunk to Occupy L.A. at three in the morning with Matt and Katya from MMM and assorted other characters to smoke cigarettes, drink beer, and contribute to low-level mischief.

Of course, this wasn't in the proper spirit of the thing. By popping up in the manner that we did, we more or less contributed to the Fox News stereotype of the movement: that it's made up entirely of smelly young hopheads with nothing better to do than bang on drums and get intoxicated on municipal property. But you know what? You can't live your life worried about what Fox News is going to think. That's no way to live.

I wasn't always so blithely indifferent to taking part in causes. For one curious afternoon in 2001, I was a radical campus activist. I was going to school at Berkeley at the time, and, given my distaste for violence, I felt compelled to participate in a march against the impending war in Afghanistan. In the rest of America, such a march may not have gone over well. But in Berkeley, well, car horns honked in solidarity, office drones gave us thumbs up from their windows, the mass of marchers seemed to expand with every passing block. They loved us. Our righteousness should have been triumphant, yet all I felt was nausea.

I've tried to figure out why. There's the pious explanation, which is not necessarily the correct explanation, but it's the most noble-sounding one, and I really, really want you to love me, so let's say that it's true: Bombs were about to fall in our name, a brutal, indefinite occupation was about to commence, and we were dancing through the streets with bullshit placards and inane chants, laughing and grinning and trying to get detoured drivers to honk their horns. I remember people were passing out these big poles with papier mache birds atop them for some reason, and one of these got handed to me, and I briefly held it with pride, until I noticed that my bird was kind of wonky, and it kept shuffling its way down the pole, jostling my fellow protesters in the head. I ditched it at a bus bench.

This hysteria and exhibitionism and foolishness seemed far removed from the war that would begin some two weeks later and continue to this day.

And, of course, this being Berkeley, the march ended with a rally outside the offices of the school newspaper, The Daily Californian, which had recently printed a cartoon that hurt people's feelings. A march to stop a disastrous war had ended in a crusade to get a school newspaper to print a retraction of a cartoon.

As Norman Mailer once pointed out, we expect the totalitarian impulse from the Right, and we even embrace the opportunity to resist it; but there's something especially disheartening when that same impulse manifests itself on the Left, as it so often does.

I resolved never to give myself over to such a crowd again.

But that doesn't mean I'm not glad that other people do. I don't pretend that my detached position is morally tenable, but, that being sad, I'm very glad that so many are marching and occupying on my behalf. If not now, when?

What I liked most about the tent city was its reckless demonstration of facts as they exist. The freedom to assemble is endowed to us by our Creator, after all, not granted to us by the state. This has been easy to forget. Even in today's America--in the hapless police state that it has become--if you want to live in a tent on the lawn outside of City Hall, if enough people have your back, no one will stop you. At least in Los Angeles. For the time being. After years of Free Speech Zones, this is instructive.

But in the end, I didn't belong there. I was in it for the good times. At that early hour, most were sleeping, but that didn't stop a small drum triangle from forming on the steps. Teardrop joined in, using the top of a plastic recycling bin. Many protest classics were sung--from "Blowin' In The Wind" to the five dollar foot-long song. Eventually someone passed Matt a guitar, on which he played "Drunk as Fuck," a song about love and pain and other matters much loftier than mean politics. He played another song that I wish I remembered. And he closed with "Honda Prius."

It didn't do much to close the gap between rich and poor or to topple the parasite class. But there are worse things to believe in than songs.

"Where'd this guitar come from?" Teardrop asked.

Part III

It's the following Sunday night and I'm feeling a bit cockeyed but sober after spending Saturday sleeping off the long night at City Hall and the better part of Sunday trying to sleep off some demons and I managed to do so with some degree of success because I somehow was able to get myself all the way across town and I'm standing in Judson and Mary's backyard watching people sing.

Do you ever get so deep into your own head, so absorbed in your own anxieties, so buried in your insecurities about your worth as a creative person, or, really, as a person in general, that you can't even bring yourself to wholly enjoy a backyard hootenanny?

I never had before, but I kind of have now.

It was a delightful party that Judson and Mary threw, though, I will not deny. Copious foodstuffs, old friends, some kind new folks, Judson's parents.

But after the booze and food had flowed for a few hours, instruments began to make the rounds, and the party got a whole lot better and a whole lot worse.

Because, you see, I wanted to contribute. Everyone was so talented, the songs so real, and all I could do was watch. It was a foolish feeling, this flourishing inferiority complex, and a dead-end, but a hearty percentage of my feelings are foolish dead-ends, so what can you do?

It's not even something I feel entirely comfortable telling you, and God knows I feel comfortable telling you way too much. But the anxiety of being a talent-less fan can be overwhelming, especially in such an intimate, communal setting. I suppose this is one of the obvious subtexts of everything I've ever written here (along with "please love me"), but oh, how I wish I could play music.

It wasn't always so hopeless. I had a guitar once, I believe, somewhere in the dimly suppressed memories of my adolescence. I took lessons, but their futility soon became apparent to both me and my teacher. I seemed to lack certain synapses that would have allowed me the necessary control over my fingers. (Ladies?) Or perhaps I was just too lazy to practice enough. (I'm sticking with the synapse theory.) But after a while, my teacher gave up and just taught me whichever power chords I had to use to clumsily replicate whatever stupid punk rock song I wanted to learn how to play that week. While satisfying in its way, this was ultimately discouraging.

Of course, none of this stopped me from starting my legendary two-piece punk rock band--a formation which so many have ripped off in subsequent years. We played one live show--the drummer's birthday party. I wore a J Church t-shirt and looked down the whole time. Shortly thereafter, bursting with eighth-grade ambition, we even recorded a demo at the drummer's uncle's studio in Glendale. The fact that this tape still might exist buried somewhere at my mother's house causes me persistent nightmares.

As high school commenced, the band broke up. I drifted away from music, toward more literary pursuits. Then I drifted into a cloud of pot smoke. And then I drifted into blogging.

And then last Sunday I drifted into Judson and Mary's backyard, and as gorgeous songs were piled one atop another, I drifted into a sea of peculiarly narcissistic self-loathing. Who was I? What was I doing there? How dare I eat their food and take advantage of their hospitality and contribute nothing but cigarette smoke?

I'm sure your thoughts are equally as absurd and self-absorbed and embarrassing sometimes. (Right? Please reassure me. I'm fragile. I'm a pacifist.)

But, I'm less embarrassed to report, the beauty of the songs eventually talked me down. Or, perhaps more so, it was their mystery. As much as I'd love to be able to make sounds more sonorous than mumbling, I can't. And sometimes I can believe that this infuses songs with more magic than is accessible to those who are cursed with musical talent. I'll never understand how someone who's never heard a song before can improvise the perfect violin part in seconds, how someone who's never touched a marxophone before can harness its old-timey power so precisely, how one can so casually layer one guitar atop another to such stirring effect. Do I want to understand? I don't know. Discovering the secret to a card trick is always a let-down.

But then again, music isn't exactly a card trick....

"Hey Greg," Rob from Death to Anders said after a lovely acoustic performance of "Anne Marie," "you were supposed to sing. I didn't hear any singing."

It's true, I hadn't been singing. Maybe I should have. But probably not.

'Baby Hawk: Part II of III' - Rademacher

2011-09-29T23:13:00.000-07:00

"Come on. Come on, Merced. Really? Really, like that? It's gonna be like that tonight? Then we'll just make noise."

-Baby Hawk: Part I of III

It's one of those days--or one those weeks, really--well, gee, to be honest it's been when of those months--well, hey, why mess around?--it's been one of those lifetimes....

Focus.

It's one of those days when being awake and being asleep feel equally debilitating. You sit at work, or you sit around the coffeehouse idly looking for work, or you lie on the beach fretting about how you should be looking for work, and all your body and mind want to do is shut down for a few sweet hours.

Sleep is one of only two sources of peace that you have a modicum of control over. But, it seems, the joys of unconsciousness have become as elusive as the joys of being awake. You can fall asleep easily enough, but rest is an illusion. Dozing off feels like a concentrated loss of control, as though you're perpetually at the wheel of a speeding car. Waking up is a slick orgy of sweat and saliva and despair. And everything in between: the self-evident horror of nightmares; the ephemeral joy of those rare good dreams, those vague moments of hope and fulfillment whose dissolution upon waking is nothing short of violent, contrasted as they are with the torpid emptiness of your days.

So what's there to do?

You could go out. Go to a show. Sometimes that makes you feel better. Sometimes it makes you feel worse. It hardly ever leaves you feeling the same.

But the sadness is too heavy. Its burden wouldn't even let you get as far as the bus stop, much less to whatever far-flung venue you have in mind.

So? What'll it be? How will you spend your evening?

Well, hey, remember up there where I wrote that sleep was one of two sources of peace that you can control? In case you were wondering, the other one is writing. So why don't you write?

Easy for me to say. Writing is hard, and the seconds of peace it provides are difficult to justify. And there's only one thing you really want to write about, and that's Rademacher's new album, which is Part II of their Baby Hawk trilogy, because, first of all, it's a fine piece of work, displaying nothing of the sag or lack of focus that often afflicts the second parts of trilogies. Furthermore, Part I was an equally pleasing and affecting listen, but you neglected to write about it because you were ... who knows, that was like months ago. You also didn't bother to write about the band's record release show at the Bootleg, even though it was one of the best shows you'd seen all year, one that left you drunk on Manifesto beer and gleefully shouting along to "If U Got Some Magic" and "Arkansas." So maybe you feel like you owe it to yourself, to Rademacher, to the world to help spread the good news about this ongoing musical project.

So what's stopping you?

Well, the idiosyncratic difficulties of music writing no longer intrigue you. There's that satisfying tingle you get when you succeed in translating sounds into words, but that happens, what, five percent of the time? This feeling holds minimal allure, particularly in light of the jiveass failures you come up with the other ninety-five percent of the time.

And, in the end, who really cares? Sure, maybe there's someone out there reading this. Whoever that may be is probably tearing his or her hair out right now, exclaiming at the computer monitor, "For the love of God, Jesus Christ almighty, can't this asshole just review a fucking album without making everything about himself? For fuck's sake!" But that's the extent of the response you expect from your writing. Reviewing the latest Rademacher release on your blog is the literary equivalent of playing midnight slots in Eastside clubs on weekday nights. And that's being generous.

So maybe you decide not to review Rademacher's Baby Hawk: Part II of III after all. Maybe you resolve to spend the evening staring at the ceiling and listening to Rademacher's Baby Hawk: Part II of III instead, until miserable sleep descends.

But then you drink a bunch of wine and start writing about it anyway.

Why not? You won't be hurting anyone. You'll just make some noise.

From this point onward, I will stop referring to myself as "you." I apologize if I insulted you, or cast any aspersions.

So let's touch upon the narrative framework that Rademacher is working with on this latest project, even though, if you've read this far, you're probably already aware of it. On Baby Hawk, they tell the tale (somewhat directly on Part I, more obliquely on Part II) of an Echo Park band called Baby Hawk, their rather pathetic taste of indie success, and their swift decline.

That's the story, at least. You can choose to accept it or not. If you do, I think it adds cohesion and textures that you might not grasp if you were listening without the aid of press releases and Buzz Bands interviews. But, even without that narrative context, the albums' themes are just as apparent and compelling: hope, failure, detachment, weariness, resignation. It's an elegy for something lost and--whether you're hip to Baby Hawk's mythology or not--it's hard to pinpoint just what it is. But it's very real.

About a year ago, I went to a couple of Rademacher shows where I was the only non-musician, non-venue employee in attendance. (I exaggerate. A little bit.) This troubled me.

Sure, there were extenuating circumstances. The shows were both somewhat last-minute, with all the promotional disadvantages that would suggest. But Rademacher was one of the first local bands I'd seen, and they seemed so solid, and established, and legit. They'd played residencies, released a record beloved by all who heard it. Everyone I knew thought they were the tops. So where was everybody?

I don't know. The band didn't know.

I went home and wrote blog posts about it. Presumably, the band went home and wrote Baby Hawk.

While it has its lighter moments, Part II largely embraces an encroaching darkness. Underneath its acerbic pessimism, Part I indulged in moments of hope. You could perhaps hear it most in Malcolm Sosa's voice, which exhibited a playfulness that's ominously absent on the new record: the joy he took in the crackle of the words "Radio Shack" on the song "Baby Hawk"; the naive pleading he put into the word "money" on the same song; the stylishly clipped delivery of the line "easy, come and go" on the song "They Are Always Into That."

One is hard pressed to find similar moments on Part II. The vocals--while gruffly dynamic, and always inimitable--match the evolving subject matter. Sosa's singing is understated in a way it has seldom been before, weighed down by frustration, succumbing to harsh reality.

Look at it this way: On Part I, a song called "Pessimist" bounced atop a perky jangle. On Part II, a song called "Up In The Air" has little to do with soaring freedom, and much to do with fatigue and a desperate desire for escape.

You might be suspecting that Part II is a less immediately enjoyable album than its predecessor, and you might be right. It's murkier, and sadder, and seems to hold within it a rage barely contained by good humor and, perhaps more pertinently, exhaustion. But, with the proper attention, its rewards become clear. Its vision is exceptionally realized.

This vision may be most apparent in the standout track "Magic Words," a gently surreal lament of nostalgia and loss--both having lost a nameless something, and finding yourself lost, the wrong turn having occurred just now, or long ago, or maybe somewhere in a dream. Or it could reside somewhere in the strident bitterness of "Honestly." But it's probably in the gently lovely, heartbreakingly resigned, and bitterly ironic "Success."

When my mind turns to subjects Rademacher-related, I often wonder what return the band expects from these records. By relating the sad story of Baby Hawk--and either implicitly or explicitly acknowledging all the bullshit inherent in the strive for indie rock "success"--it would seem that they expect nothing to come of it. Or very little--maybe make a few people happy, play some good shows, impress some bloggers.

But maybe not. It's hard to imagine artists undertaking a project this ambitious, and succeeding to such an impressive degree, without expecting some serious acclaim to arrive, whether this expectation is conscious or not. Maybe they thought of Baby Hawk's creation as a necessary renunciation--a sort of penance--before that long-awaited success arrives.

I don't know what success means. But I hope it's forthcoming.

One would be wise not to ignore how the Baby Hawk trilogy begins. It's with a brief live recording: Sosa opening a show in Merced with some characteristically witty banter, and being greeted with stony silence. The band is out there, they're warming up, ready to rock, ready to have a good time, ready to spew their cockeyed dreams at a roomful of people staring straight at them. They're in one of the most vulnerable situations any human being would ever volunteer for. And, before they can even play a proper note, the audience's indifference is apparent.

After some joshing pleas for the crowd to loosen up, get on board, act a bit human, Sosa comes to the only meaningful conclusion a person can arrive at in the face of such an absurd scenario: "Then we'll just make noise," he says. Which is all any of us can do.

&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://rademacher.bandcamp.com/track/magic-words"&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Magic Words by Rademacher&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

To Portland and Back: A personal account - Part Four

2011-09-19T01:12:00.000-07:00

"Are you coming to the waterfall?" they ask.

"No," I say. "I don't think so."

"Want to come to the outlets?" he asks.

I laugh.

It's early Sunday afternoon, September 4th. The previous night, after the show at the Black Rose (which was over by ten o'clock--anarchists like to be in bed early, to prove that they can get plenty of rest even without the assistance of centralized authority) (also, they probably prefer not to get shut down by the cops), we checked back in at the house.

After dropping off their things, the rest of the gang went over to a friend's place to drink and look at some pet chickens. (In Portland, you have to have either a vegetable garden or some hens in your backyard, or else you're exiled to Seattle.) As for me, I needed some alone time, so I stayed behind. K. was spending the night at her boyfriend's, and her roommates were all lurking in mysterious corners of the house, so I effectively had the place to myself. I took advantage of this freedom by drinking far too much whiskey from a coffee mug and blasting the saddest Tom Waits songs I could find. It was wonderful.

But I felt it the next day. I'm too old. I've lost the ability to get wasted two nights in a row and maintain the strength to be physically active on the third day. (If you want to get pedantic, you can point out that Katya and Matt are both a bit older than me, and they were drinking comparable amounts, and they were energetic enough on Sunday to go, respectively, hiking to a waterfall and to the Salem outlet mall. But I'll remind you that Katya and Matt are musicians. Musicians metabolize alcohol differently.)

It's later that afternoon, and I'm sitting with K. in a Thai restaurant on Belmont. We're the only ones there, save for the waitress who wears shiny gold MC Hammer pants. (I'm sure such pants have a more dignified pedigree in Thailand, but, alas, in America, they're MC Hammer pants. It's just one of those things.) I'm eating some sort of spicy chilled pork belly dish and drinking Thai iced coffee while K. tells me about the previous night. She was out at the bar with all her friends, and all of her friends decided that they would very much like to go see Manhattan Murder Mystery play at the Tonic Lounge tonight.

This would seem to be unambiguously good news. It's hard to draw a crowd on Sunday nights, and while I'm sure that MMM would be happy to play for an audience of the two people they drove up with, plus Jack Gibson, they'd probably prefer to have a few locals checking them out.

But, on the other hand, I'm also terrified, because I know a lot of her friends. Some I met back on my first trip to Portland in 2005. One I met in high school, thirteen years ago. As much as I like these people--and I do, they're lovely--I'm not confident that I can bear the sight my worlds colliding even more than they already have.

Up until this current trip, I've been able to keep my old and new lives strictly separate. In my old life I was a bookish pothead homebody, devoted to K. and her well-being even through absence and betrayal. In my new life I'm ... oh, I don't know, let's say I'm a whiskey-swigging blogger-poet, lone wolf, minor character in a minor portion of a major metropolis's music scene, and at long last over K. and all that we went through together. (Close enough, right?)

Neither my old nor my new lives contain much to recommend them. But at least now I'm writing more. Of course, I wasn't going to tell K. or any of her friends about that. Obviously. So what would I tell them? What could we possibly discuss?

Oh well.

"That's great!" I say to K., chewing on a hunk of pig flesh. "I can't wait to see them!"

In 1999, I saw a Japanese film called After Life. It told the story of a hereafter where the dead can take only one memory from their life on Earth with them into heaven.

While I was a pretentious little putz in 1999, and quite amenable to the languid pacing of Japanese art cinema, the movie still managed to bore the shit out of me. But this boredom gave me a lot of time to ruminate--as I believe it intended to do--on what memory I'd take with me into eternity.

It didn't require all that much rumination. The answer was fairly obvious.

It had happened some months earlier, in the living room of the apartment where I lived with my dad during high school. K. and I had just become friends, after kind of knowing each other for many years. She had come over to my house alone for the first time, outside the context of a group outing. We may have cooked dinner together, or baked cookies, or both. I don't remember.

But we ended up on the couch watching my VHS copy of Duck Soup. She had never seen a Marx Brothers movie before. As one of those shy, born-too-late, old-timey nerds

--you know the kind--I had all their films memorized. I insisted that she watch them in their finest hour, quietly terrified that she would think it was boring, or stupid, or ridiculous in the wrong way. In my mind, I knew that if she didn't like it, well, then that was her problem. Not appreciating the Marx Brothers, I felt, was a character flaw. But it was a character flaw that I really, really didn't want her to have. I was so enamored, so in love, that if it turned out she had such a character flaw, I might have had to adopt such a character flaw for myself.

This turned out to be the most irrelevant of concerns. She laughed harder at Duck Soup than I ever had. Her appreciation for Harpo was joyous and authentic. Her stomach was growling, and whenever it did so, she would laugh extra loud to cover it up.

While this went on, I wanted to make some sort of move, to touch her in some way. It didn't have to be anything too heavy--I was new at this, after all--I just needed some affectionate contact with her, some concrete indication that, just maybe, she liked me as much as I liked her, that she didn't think I was as fundamentally defective as I assumed I was. If someone with her wit and poise, her sense of silliness and darkness in equal measures, her beauty--if someone like that could find gross old me desirable, I would have had to reexamine my entire worldview.

Ideally, I wanted to jump on her. But I was far too much of an amateur to pull off a move like that. Kissing would have been a wonderfully adequate substitute, but that wasn't exactly in my repertoire either. Putting an arm around her, with or without a fake yawn, would have been so simple, and so satisfying. Yet even that was outside the realm of risks I was willing to take.

So what did I do?

I casually took her feet from where they rested and placed them on my knees. And I held them for the rest of the movie.

And, months later, in 1999, sitting in that dark Beverly Hills movie theater, I knew that that's the memory I would take with me into the afterlife. Watching Duck Soup, laughing, holding her feet like an idiot.

Because, within that memory, nothing bad had happened yet. Without any first-hand evidence to the contrary, I could believe--for those desperately few minutes remaining before Freedonia's ultimate victory over Sylvania--that everything I knew and believed about the horror of love was wrong. Maybe love could happen and endure without heartache, madness, or boredom. Maybe the outrageous power over your well-being that you give to the one you love will always be exercised with kindness, never with recklessness. Maybe love could always feel the way it does at first. Maybe I was worthy of it. Maybe it wasn't a dog from hell.

Within a couple of weeks after our Duck Soup night, she began to break my heart for the first time. (I broke her heart plenty over the years too, but you probably could have guessed that.) And, in a sense, all was lost. Between us, what followed were years of drugs, alcohol, absence, ennui, betrayals large and small, and, in the end, violence. There was plenty of love mixed in there, of course, but it was love how it actually exists, not how I needed it to exist that night, with her perfect feet in my sad hands.

In that perfect memory, the one I wanted to take to heaven with me, my brain was swarming with lies. But what wonderful lies they were.

"A lot of my friends will be there tonight," I tell Matt a couple hours before Sunday night's show. "Don't embarrass me. You guys better not suck."

Which sounded like a bunch of bullshit to him.

The collision of worlds at the Tonic Lounge that night is not nearly as traumatizing as I expect. Old friends and new drink three dollar well drinks and get along famously. We drunkenly talk about how much we like each other and how we should have stayed in touch. I encourage people to move to L.A. "Echo Park's okay," I say.

MMM turns in their tightest set of the trip. The stage and the room are a bit cavernous, so even with Jack Gibson metal-ing up in the front and K. and her friends roaming this way and that, it feels a bit empty. But the songs can't be contained, and they easily fill the room. The band opens with "Christmas Day"--a scummy shot of Hollywood grime for the serenely green folks of Portland. Then they ease into "Smoky Mountain," a tale of sorrow and anger and lapsed love that says so much more about the subject in four minutes than I ever could in four blog posts. I look around and K. is nowhere to be found. This pleases me. Standing beside her while MMM plays "Smoky Mountain" would be a far too easy and, in the end, misleading way to finish this goddamn thing.

After the set, everyone gushes to me about how great the band was, about Teardrop's incredible voice, about how they wish they had record players and jobs and money so they could buy the album. Teardrop's fantasy about having money to buy whiskey and a sandwich in "Honda Prius" seems to have struck a particular chord. I agree with everything they say.

We hang around for a while, drinking heavily, helping the ladies evade the drunk old pervert harassing them at the bar. Things get blurry.

At some point, my L.A. friends split to go to a party. My Portland friends stay at the bar. I could paint this moment as a major decision point, when, in spite of the good vibes abounding with my old friends who now live in Portland, and all the hoary old attachments between us that might remain, I leap into freedom, embracing my current life, cutting my old life off once and for all.

But I'm not going to do that, because that's dumb, and that's not what it was like. There was no decision to make.

I go to the party. Of course I go to the party.

We pick up an inhumane quantity of beer at the Plaid Pantry and head to the party house. We take a bunch of Adderall, drink a bunch of beer, eat a bunch of asparagus.

Next thing I know it's Labor Day morning. I wake up and I have no idea where I am.

We drag ourselves away from Sunday night's crash pad around noon, and we head back to K.'s house to collect ourselves. K. is at her boyfriend's. The house is deserted.

I don't know what everyone else does, because they're in the other room, but I pack my things and take a two hour nap. I assume their regimens are similar.

A little after three o'clock we hit the road. K. is still at her boyfriend's, so we leave her a note thanking her for everything.

An hour later we're back at the Enchanted Forest. Katya and Matt want to check out the haunted house. I follow them into the park, but when they ask me if I want to buy tickets for the haunted house, I'm still so lifeless from the night before that I can't articulate a coherent response. They go ahead without me.

As we're driving away from the Enchanted Forest, K. texts me. She's upset that we left without saying goodbye. I don't quite know how to respond. We haven't spoken since.

After spending Monday night in Crescent City, we drive all day Tuesday, through my beloved fog and redwoods, through my much-despised city of San Francisco, down the Central Coast, in and out of the Valley, arriving at my door around four o'clock Wednesday morning.

I wave goodbye to my friends and, standing there, I light one last cigarette before I'm officially home. I think about the trip. I think about the music, and how grateful I am for it, and how much I'm looking forward to my thirty-seventh MMM set, whenever that should occur. I think about K., glad that she seems to be doing well. I think about work and the bus and not getting drunk every night, and all the other obligations that will arise when I wake up in a few hours. I realize that, almost to the minute, it's been a week since my friend dropped me off at home after that trip to the beach that followed the show at the Central. I wonder if my premonition was right or wrong. Did I survive the trip to Portland? Part of me seems to have. But how much of me?

Picking up my bags, I make my way inside. Everything looks the way it always does when I stumble in at four in the morning. I throw my stuff on the bed and walk to the bathroom. The floor is covered in sand.

To Portland and Back: A personal account - Part Three

2011-09-18T02:11:00.000-07:00

I sit alone on a bench outside a darkened record store in North Portland.

That one sentence is all I've been able to write today. "I sit alone on a bench outside a darkened record store in North Portland." It's not a bad sentence. I've written worse. It has geographical specificity, which is exciting, plus a certain evocative sadness. Can't you just picture it? The sun has recently set, Mississippi Avenue is deserted, and there I am, alone, unshowered, oily, fidgeting on the slatted wooden bench whose design is indifferent to human contours, no doubt a cigarette smoldering in my hand. I can sure picture it. Then again, I was there. Apparently.

But, still, it's not much for an entire day's work. I set this Saturday aside for writing, to finally finish this infernal multi-part saga of a road trip that I hardly remember anymore. I got wasted at pehrspace last night, so nothing involving physical movement was going to get done today anyway. It seemed like the least I could do--given the fact that, before any of us knows it, I'll be dead--not to squander an entire day.

And, yet, here it is, after midnight, early Sunday morning, and that's all I have come up with. One sentence. I'm not sure why. I got most of the heavy stuff out of the way in part two. Part three should be a breeze. But here we are.

I haven't been feeling well. That's one thing. Physically I'm fine, aside from all the fatal diseases that I'm convinced I have. But the poison in my brain seems to be reigning unfettered. What can you do? It happens.

Also, so much has happened since we returned from Portland. Nothing life-altering, or particularly interesting, but however anonymous the days have been, their events accumulate, and they clutter your mind, and that awesome rock and roll road trip a couple weeks back grows faint, its sensations vague, the whole thing best left forgotten, lest your day-to-day life--where you're handcuffed to work and routine and responsibility --becomes, by comparison, even more unbearable than usual.

It feels like trying to wring meaning out of a half-remembered dream that, once put into words, wasn't that meaningful after all.

I sit alone on a bench outside a darkened record store in North Portland. It's Saturday night. In a few minutes, Manhattan Murder Mystery will be playing a set at the Black Rose Infoshop, an anarchist bookstore and show space.

I'm doing my best to feel well, but it's hard. I may not be smart, but I'm old enough to know that--even on the road, with the shackles of work and home a distant, booze-drowned memory--freedom is never attainable. You're always tied to something, or someone. You always end up stranded someplace you don't want to be. You always end up wanting to lie down when you must stand up, having to pee when there's nowhere for you to go, wanting to eat something yummy when the only thing available is Portland's unique take on the cuisine of Mexico. Freedom's allure still remains, but it lies in its elusiveness, in all its promise that can never be fulfilled in this world.

Which is a frilly way of saying I was grumpy, I wanted MMM to play already, and then I wanted to go back to the house and get drunk, preferably in a prone position.

I didn't want to wallow, or bring anyone else down, or come off like the big jerk that I am, so I went for a walk through the neighborhood. I smoked too much and unsuccessfully tried to pet cats.

And, after completing a circle, I end up back on Mississippi, on a bench outside a record store. A scruffy couple approaches.

"I really hate to bother you," the man says, "but we're stranded out here, and my girl's pregnant," gesturing to the lady, who is indeed pregnant, "and we just really need a place to stay for the night. I'm really, really sorry to ask you, but do you think you can help us out?"

It's hard to reject personal appeals like that, especially on an empty street with no crowd to blend into. So I break out my wallet and find that my smallest bill is a five, which I'm disinclined to part with. But I've already crossed the point of no return by extracting the wallet, and what's five bucks anyway--five-eighths of a well drink at the Echo?--so I give it to them.

"Thanks so much," the guy says. "Hey, if you're interested, we've got a bunch of Vicodin. I don't want them, and she can't take them because she's pregnant, so you can have one if you want."

I don't particularly want one. Vicodin is pretty low on my list of favorite substances. But declining free drugs is not a habit I want to cultivate--there's something unacceptably grown-up about it--so I accept the pill and put it in my pocket.

Later that night, a quick google search indicates that the pill is not Vicodin at all, but is in fact a 500 milligram acetaminophen. The moral of the story being, some people are so inept that they can get burned on drug deals even when they're not trying to buy drugs.

It's hard to reckon what the guy's motivation was. He already had my money. Perhaps he hoped to brighten my evening with the placebo effect? Or maybe he just wanted to poison my liver, not realizing that I've got that job under control.

It's an inexplicably cruel world.

A few minutes later, up the street, MMM plays a strong set for a small but enthusiastic crowd (except for the girl who was reading the whole time). The Black Rose has a no drugs or alcohol policy (there's also a "no bullshit" policy, but that one's less strictly enforced), but, even so, when I return Teardrop's guitar to the performance area after he throws it down and runs out into the street at the end of "Parking Lot," I notice some barf on the floor.

To Portland and Back: A personal account - Part Two

2011-09-13T01:27:00.000-07:00

Do you ever wish that San Francisco would break off and sink into the sea?

Sometimes I do. Not always. Just when I go there.

I'd like to add a caveat, to say that of course I don't want any harm to come to the people who live there. But I kind of do. They're the primary problem. The land itself is objectively gorgeous; what beef could I possibly have with that? An aesthete like me lives for beauty ... or something. It's the people--not as individuals, but as a community--who inspire this mistrust.

(Of course, if you--yes, you, I know who you are--have family or loved ones living in "The City," then I'd be happy to see them spared. I didn't mean to offend you by wishing death on your family or loved ones. But, that being said, I hope you realize that this scenario is entirely hypothetical. I don't actually have the power to destroy metropolises by blogging about my distaste for them. Though wouldn't it be rad if I did?)

It's Thursday, September 1st, and we (me, two-thirds of Manhattan Murder Mystery, one fellow non-musical traveler, and a local friend) sit on a hill in Dolores Park overlooking the Mission. We'd spent the previous night in Oakland, a city with a much higher murder rate and a way bigger heart than San Francisco's. Matt drank a bunch of whiskey, I shared a bottle of cheap Cabernet with some friendly fruit flies, and everyone else drank beer and smoked weed. We took it up a notch by watching several episodes of Jon Benjamin Has A Van, because this is rock and roll, baby, and that's just how we do it.

But today finds us in San Francisco. We sit around, taking in the sun and the view, smoking cigarettes and drinking beers. All around us, people do the same, with some variations: barbecues, dogs, marijuana. We marvel at the harmony, the peace, and the freedom. Here is a none-too-secluded spot where open-container ordinances are irrelevant. Diverse people drink, and drink heavily, with the tacit approval of the authorities: hipsters, yuppies, gutter punks, gutter hippies, gutter yuppies, travelling musicians and their hangers-on, no cops in sight. And everybody seems to get along. In spite of the creeping discomfort that San Francisco always instills in me, I must admit, the whole scene is quite idyllic. In spite of myself, I begin to relax. Anxiety lifts.

Just then a fight breaks out. I don't see how it starts, but it soon escalates and drags. Some people try to stop it, even more laugh and egg it on. A woman gets involved and, while sustaining some major kicks, manages to hold her own.

I only catch this in glances, doing my best to look away. While I believe that the peacemakers are surely blessed, as far as that goes, I don't believe it enough to become one and risk getting punched. At the same time, I don't want to gawk, because watching people thrashing violently at one another makes me melancholy. I shield my eyes and sip my beer.

Shortly, as the violence dissipates, it becomes clear how the fight began: someone was urinating in a trashcan, a passerby objected to this, and fisticuffs ensued.

And I realize that I have just witnessed everything I loathe about this vain, foolish city. A millimeter below its shell of progressiveness, peace, diversity, love, and freedom, there lies a heart as black as the dog that the homeless kid a few yards away is throwing on the ground and berating. All it takes is a drop of urine in the trashcan, and every one of this city's pretensions explodes.

We finish our beers and head back to the car. And from there, northbound, to Portland.

Portland.

How much do you want to know?

The autumn of 2005, when I first visited Portland, was an interesting time. I had a car, a quarter-ounce-per-week weed habit, and I was back--after a three year hiatus--with my high school girlfriend, K.

After years of indifference to independent transport--and a fear of people honking at me--I'd discovered the joy of chain-smoking, music-blasting, fossil-fueled exploration. Which is to say, I liked to drive.

And even after four years of constant consumption, a part of me still believed in the visionary potential of THC, that I could channel my indulgence into art, that one day the stony lassitude would lift and the words would start to flow of their own accord and, like that, I'd be the writer I was always meant to be. All this without having to give up being baked 16 hours a day! (I tease myself, but I should give credit where it's due: During this era, I did complete one short story. It was about the Civil War and also, obliquely, about time travel and Abu Ghraib. It wasn't very good.)

And, finally, after three years apart--both emotionally and geographically--I was back with K. And, while I wasn't inclined towards grand proclamations and decisive future planning, it felt a little bit like forever. Our knowledge of one another reached the brink of telepathy, and yet nothing felt old, or tired, or mundane. Plus, after three years of practice with other partners, to say nothing of the occasional addition of alcohol and Vicodin, the sex had become considerably more dynamic than it was in high school.

Sure, I suppose the autumn of 2005 was interesting in other ways too. Iraq burned by daylight, Afghanistan in obscurity. An American city had recently been washed away, along with almost 2000 souls.

But--perhaps shamefully?--I'd pushed that off my radar. I was sick of engagement, and awareness, and futilely giving a fuck just for the record--a record I was certain no one was keeping. Hell, I didn't believe in America anymore. Had I ever? Not really. I'd been raised to believe in television and the Lakers and ... that was about it. The idea of taking the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights seriously never came up.

So what, in the autumn of 2005, did I believe in?

The open road. Love. Freedom.

And so we drove, K. and I, North on the 101, one-hitters in our mouths, laughing like morons all the way.

The 101 held a great deal of romance in my mind. I knew parts of it well, of course, but everything above Goleta was a mystery. (Why Goleta? Well, have I ever told you about my ill-fated stint as a student at UC Santa Barbara, circa 2003? I remember that month. I won't bore you with the whole story. Instead, I'll just say that I spent most of that time in Encino, drinking Keystone Ice and smoking weed with my girlfriend and her cat. I went to exactly three class sessions, and spent exactly one night in my student housing. That one night remains a bit of a blur, but there was a case of Tecate involved, and I woke up the next morning naked on the couch, wrapped in a scratchy tweed blanket.) (Come to think of it, that is the whole story.)

Prior to our trip, I had read a biography of John Charles Frémont, the noted explorer of California and the Northwest, abolitionist presidential candidate, and really, something of a dim bulb. (That was my main recreation in those days: getting really stoned and reading history, after which I'd browbeat everyone around me into pretending they were as interested in my latest subject as I'd become. I was insufferable. It reached its nadir when I read Robert Caro's Lyndon Johnson books; during those months, I really should have been quarantined.) In spite of Frémont's notable shortcomings--both moral and intellectual--something about the paths he found inspired me. I wanted to see redwoods, and greenery, and fog, and mist, and towns with names that were either quaintly Anglo or tragically native. I wanted to see where my marijuana came from. And I wanted to do it with the woman I loved.

And so it was. With our eyes fogged with potsmoke, I felt like Frémont--a champion of freedom (for slaves, at least; not so much for Indians), twisting new paths through the mysterious, fog-enshrouded terrain, our liberation complete. In reality, I was just some 21st century yutz in his cousin's old Mercedes stonily shuffling down well-worn highways and spending too much money at Powell's Books. But, with the windows down and a life teeming with love, it felt like freedom, and that, it seemed, was what mattered.

In 1964, in and around Salem, Oregon, a man named Roger Tofte had a dream. The exact nature of this dream remains obscure, as dreams must after half a century, but it involved building sculptures of weird fairy tale scenes in his backyard. Then he placed these sculptures on a hill that he owned off of Interstate 5. And so the Enchanted Forest was born.

It's Friday, September 2nd, and I'm exploring the Enchanted Forest with Matthew Teardrop. (If you ever travel with Manhattan Murder Mystery--and I'm confident that you will someday--you'll discover that their sincere affection for roadside attractions and kitschy theme parks is infectious.) We didn't bother paying admission, having confidently walked in through the exit/gift shop. We feel like we've gotten away with something, but I'm fairly certain the staff knew exactly what was going on. Some eighteen-year-old working a summer job at the Enchanted Forest doesn't have a whole lot invested in keeping jokers like us from sneaking in.

After checking out the three bears, the witch, Humpty Dumpty, the water show (which I do not recommend), and so much more, we retire to the fenced off smoking area. While we smoke, I receive a text from K. She lives in Portland now, and I had texted her earlier to tell her we were coming up. I would not have done this--things have been weird between us for three years--but she had shown up at my house unexpectedly the previous week. I was taken aback at first, not particularly thrilled about seeing her, but within an hour we were drinking a bottle of whiskey, smoking cigarettes, listening to music, falling back into old habits.

According to her text, she is quite excited to see me. In fact, she says that my three fellow travelers and I are welcome to stay at her house.

I'm reluctant to accept this offer, for a variety of reasons. It would surely be pleasant, but it might be weird being in such close proximity for three days. It might put a strain on our just-rekindled friendship. Plus ... well, other stuff. But it would be nice to have a free, comfortable place to stay. There is no denying this.

"Hey," I say to Matt, "looks like I found us a place to stay."

The last time I visited K. in Portland, in October of 2008, she lived alone in an apartment on Division Street. We drank lots of beer and smoked lots of weed. She had a birthday party. We went to a star-crossed WHY? show at the Wonder Ballroom and to Multnomah Falls. At night, after she'd had a lot to drink, she would do things like call her mother and/or cry hysterically. This concerned me somewhat, but it did not seem entirely out of character.

Two months later, back in L.A., as I lay in bed smoking weed and dozing off, she called me.

After I spent two hours trying to convince her not to, she cut her wrists open.

I managed to get Portland 911 on the line. Thankfully I remembered her address from the two weeks I'd spent there.

An ambulance came. They kicked down her door and took her to the hospital.

I called her friend on the phone, told her what had happened, asked her to go to the hospital and find out if she's okay, and to let me know as soon as she could. Then I sat down and cried. I haven't cried since.

Once she got out of the hospital, she moved back to Los Angeles. We briefly, misguidedly rekindled something resembling a romance. She tried to hurt herself a few more times--she almost brained herself on a coffee table, I had to wrestle a knife out of her hand, she tried to throw herself out of my moving car.

Things settled down a bit after that. I didn't see her much, though. She ditched me for a junkie she'd just met. She said I was too depressing to be around.

She had a point.

We stand together, K. and I, as we have so many times before, watching Manhattan Murder Mystery perform, as I have so many times before, at the Kenton Club in Northeast Portland. It's her first MMM show, my thirty-fourth. It's Friday night and I killed half a bottle of whiskey before arriving.

The band sounds good, but not as tight as they could be. I later learn that this has much to do with the fact that Teardrop is being mildly electrocuted with nearly every word. He abandons the microphone more than usual. I assume it's because he's feeling frisky, but it turns out he just doesn't care much for electrical shocks.

But the crowd is into it. They're playing the first set of the night, but there's a decent-sized audience, and everyone seems to be dancing. I'll defend Los Angeles's merits to any Portlander who comes along, but I'll concede one thing: those fools dance way harder than we do.

They break into "Ambulance," a violent encapsulation of everything MMM stands for. "And I don't want to live at all," Teardrop wails. "And I don't want to live at all!" K. leans into my ear and says, "Neither do I," and we have a good laugh, because if you can't laugh about these things....

Just then the microphone explodes in Teardrop's face. As it's repeatedly grazed by his dangling guitar strings, sparks fly, engulfing his beard, his mouth, his face.

Some people react appropriately. Our friend Jack Gibson, whom we know from Tenlons Fort, is in attendance. His sober mind is quick to action, reacting fast to get the ball of flames away from Teardrop's face.

Me, on the other hand, I'm drunk and, as always during "Ambulance," in thrall to the glorious and painful noise. From my blinkered perspective, the sparks do not look dangerous. Rather, they look inevitable, indicative of everything that MMM is about, and everything that a well-lived life is about. They look like freedom, and risk, and strength in the face of dangerous vulnerability. They are the beautiful, wretched consequences of giving yourself over to what you can't control.

To Portland and Back: A personal account - Part One

2011-09-07T22:46:00.000-07:00

"Sounds like a bunch of bullshit to me."

-Matthew Teardrop

On Labor Day morning, I wake up and I have no idea where I am.

This isn't a brief sensation, soon rectified by the familiarity of my surroundings. Nor is it some odd metaphysical crisis like the one I had the other week.

No, I simply have no clue where I am, or how I got there, or whose floor I've been sleeping on. If I had to guess, I'd say I'm somewhere in Portland, Oregon, since that is where I've spent the previous few days. But, really, this apartment could be anywhere. Tigard. Beaverton. Benghazi. Gresham.

I'm apparently in the right place, though, since I see Katya sleeping on the floor across the room. After a bit of exploring, I find Matt sleeping in the pantry.

My Parliaments have disappeared--either into a drunken vortex or into my lungs--so I pick up a full pack of Fortuna Menthol 100s off the table and make my way out to the balcony. (Why are all the hip kids smoking menthols these days? It seems like whenever you bum a smoke anymore, the best a non-menthol enthusiast can hope for is a Crush. I guess this is just one more way in which I was inadvertently ahead of my time as a teenager. Back then I smoked Kools, because I'd read somewhere that only crazy people smoked Kools, and I fancied myself quite the nut.)

Looking over the semi-industrial neighborhood, squinting briefly at Portland's downtown skyline in the distance, I text my friend back in L.A.: "I have no idea where I am." For some reason, he doesn't text me back with my coordinates.

Eventually, one of the apartment's residents comes out and sits with me. He looks kind of like Win Butler if Win Butler wore sunglasses with neon green frames.

"How you feeling?" he asks.

"Oh, all right," I say, "all things considered."

"Yeah, it seemed like you had a lot to drink last night."

"Haha. Yeah."

He proceeds to tell me all about the neighborhood, the winos who drink across the street until they get arrested, the sounds of sword-fights happening every morning except for weekends and holidays. I don't quite follow what he's saying and I don't quite know who he is. I walk back inside and lie down.

This whole thing starts the previous Tuesday with a text from Matthew Teardrop. "Wanna go to Portland tomorrow?" it says. Manhattan Murder Mystery will be playing three shows there over the weekend.

"I'm in," I reply, after clearing it with the boss man.

In spite of everything that's wrong with my life--you know, the usual First World stuff: allergies, Crohn's Disease, depression, an inability to whistle, anomie, writer's block, a general lack of prospects, loneliness, conspicuous gaps in my sideburns, an ever-slowing metabolism, probable Vitamin D deficiency, this strange compulsion my body has to be conscious 16-plus hours a day, and on and on--I have experienced many blessings, and one blessing stands above most in circumstances such as these: I have a job where I can basically come and go as I please.

My appreciation for this rare freedom overcomes the nagging sense that I'm not entirely necessary.

"Sous les pavés, la plage."

That Tuesday night, the 30th of August, is the final installment of Judson McKinney's residency at the Central in Santa Monica. I'm feeling slightly ill, with a tickle in my throat that could only portend a late-summer cold. Given that I'm leaving for Portland the next day, I should probably stay in and get some rest. But I go to the show anyway. Rest has never obstructed an incipient rhinovirus before. Maybe, I think, torrents of whiskey and beer will.

And guess what? They do!

How come that jerk Dr. Oz has a show and I don't?

Anyway, Judson and Mary and Kaitlin and Johnny and Sheridan and John Carpenter once again give Santa Monica much more than it deserves--this salt-sick city lulled by its climate and its wealth into not caring when real American music is being given away for free right at its doorstep.

That's one way of looking at it, at least. There were actually some pretty decent turnouts over the course of the month. But that place should have been overflowing.

MMM follows, turning in a set that would be considered legendary if every other set they played didn't carry vague whiffs of momentousness. "This is the one people are gonna remember forever," you say, hopefully to yourself, but if you're drunk enough then you might say it to someone else. Next thing you know it's three shows later, and the set that seemed like such a turning point a couple weeks before has blended into dozens of other whiskey-misted sets, indecipherable. Just one more block in the crooked, towering monument the band is constructing night after night.

Oh, but also, on this night, they do an encore, which you don't often see. Following "Parking Lot," they play a creepy, incisive version of "Smoky Mountain"; a characteristically mad "I Always Think About Dyin'," which conjures camaraderie and violence in equal measures among an audience full of visiting eastsiders (studies show that when you drink in unfamiliar surroundings, you act extra stupid); and, finally, they close with "Christmas Day," blessedly risen from the grave.

Afterwards, a bunch of us grab some Duraflames and some beers and head to the beach. Some wade into the sea, some sing songs. I grow weary, sloppy, drowsy. I stare into the fire. I try to remain human. As I stagger away to pee on a dark mound of sand, I am seized by the terror of freedom, and the certainty that I will not survive the trip to Portland.

Franco Near Death, Cardboard Lamb, The Health Club, George Glass - Pehrspace - Friday, August 19, 2011

2011-08-27T14:28:00.000-07:00

The night before last, I woke up thirty minutes after falling asleep, and I had no idea where I was.

This feeling should have been unremarkable. I pass out on new friends' sofas, old friends' futons, and the bus all the time. When I wake up, there's usually a brief moment of hungover confusion before the night's sordid path reveals itself through the boozy fog. And I situate myself.

But this time it was different. It wasn't confusion I felt. It was panic--the type that makes you claw at the walls, blinded by the darkness and your own streaming sweat, on the verge of howling if you could only find your voice. Nowhere in my conscious mind could I locate any trace of where I was, or even who I was. It was strange.

Rolling off of where I slept, landing (by the grace of God) on my feet, I briefly cradled my head, some weird instinct suggesting that doing so might help me identify myself. ("What fabulous hair! Oh, yeah, I must be Greg.") I looked up, but the combined darkness and nearsightedness made the room a deathly blur. Pawing around, blind, longing for something familiar, my hand at last made contact with a doorknob.

What would I find on the other side of the door? Friendly faces? Probably not. Judgmental faces? More likely. A yawning desert? Wouldn't be surprised. The devil himself, or perhaps just death's sweet abyss? Sure, probably.

I pushed the door open with a desperate vehemence. And I found my own bathroom.

It all came back to me: who I was (me); where I was (home); how I was (meh); what and why I was (jury's still out).

If I had been drinking earlier in the evening, or, heaven forfend, doing drugs, I wouldn't even be telling you this. I would have written it off as one of the downsides of intoxication, decided that it still didn't outweigh the glorious upsides of intoxication, and moved on with my life, such as it is. But I had gone to bed that night as sober as a ... well, I don't hang around sober people much these days, so I don't feel qualified to complete that simile. But I was sober. Totally, totally sober.

When I was young, I used to harbor a suspicion that I woke up every day, literally, a different person. I feared that there was indeed such a thing as the Self, but that it was independent of one's memories and thoughts. The Self was just a Spark of Consciousness that could move from one brain to another; not being a product of the brain itself, it had no mechanism to form memories, and thus there would remain no trace of all the other people you used to be. Once you'd transitioned to your current mind and body, every recollection of your prior minds and bodies would be gone, replaced by your current body's memories. So (I thought at the time) yesterday I might have been a middle-aged Canadian truck driver with a meth problem, today I am a lonely thirteen-year-old contemplating the nature of existence, and tomorrow I will be the president of Zambia, and none of us will be any the wiser.

(I recall finding, a year or so later, a similar theory posited by a character in some goddamn Tom Robbins novel, but I don't remember the details. I'd track it down for you, but I'm a very busy man. Not really, but I'm not so un-busy that I'm going to go flipping through Tom Robbins' novels on a beautiful Saturday morning. There are, uh, shows to review.)

Anyway, I'm pretty sure that's what happened to me the night before last: I woke up at the very moment when my Self was transitioning into a new mind. And, it turns out, there's a bit of a lag time before your Spark of Consciousness becomes integrated with your new memories. You're not supposed to be awake during this lag time, but, hey, you know me (whoever that is): I like to break the rules (maybe).

For a few seconds there, I was no one. Which ain't as fun as it sounds.

While I've reviewed shows that The 704 has presented before, I've known all along that this is something of a conflict of interest. (Maybe? I don't know. Nobody cares, right? All my interests are conflicted.) But I eventually settled on a compromise: it's okay to review shows I "present" (shows that other people put together and then kindly ask me to put The 704's name on), while I probably should not review shows that I present (shows where I secure the date, book the bands, et cetera).

But, you know what? Fuck it. I secured the date for this show (with the help of some lobbying from my friend Brian), and I booked the bands. But I'm going to write about it anyway. I think.

(Full disclosure: I didn't actually book all the bands. I got commitments from The Health Club and Cardboard Lamb. Then the kind folks in Cardboard Lamb offered to help me book the rest of the bill if the need should arise. This wasn't entirely necessary, but I said, "Sure, why do I need the tsuris? Go for it, you crazy kids." And who did they end up asking to play? George Glass--a band that, uh, I kind of know. Oh well! At least I didn't have to talk to those creeps!) (Franco Near Death is a longer story, but it turned out nicely.)

The week before the show did not begin well. I occasionally get it into my head that I'm the same person I was a year ago, and I get excited about hitting the town on Monday night for free residencies, to discover new bands, to expose people to them on my blog using my "sparkling wit and insight" (to quote the great blog critic Chester von Vaughn, who I just made up).

Once I make it to Echo Park, however, I always remember that there hasn't been a Monday residency I've cared about in months, that I've already heard more bands than anyone was ever meant to hear, that my "local music blog" now uses local music as just the thinnest pretense to write about myself.

But on the Monday in question, I muscled through the doubts, rather than retiring to the Gold Room for a bleary night of specials. I saw a band I liked at Lot 1, but there was no one working the sound, so the music was sludge and the vocals were little more than an implication. It's frustrating to watch a guy singing his guts out and producing no audible voice.

After that, Spaceland seemed like a viable option. At least there was an outside chance of decent sound.

And, well.... I managed to get through most of Stone Darling's set without falling asleep.

FIDLAR played at midnight, and I looked forward to this, having heard good things, and having developed an increasingly soft spot for dopey punk rock. But some punk rock is just too dopey.

I was drunk and terrified that this was it for me, that this lovely, unexpected musical interlude in my life was over. On my way out of the club, I got lost in a poster advertising an upcoming show, and I began nursing a paranoid suspicion that Duniven was plotting a violent takeover of the Eastside, and that all would have to submit to his bland Americana or face the lash.

Things settled down when I got home. But, still, a question lingered: what business did someone who hated going to shows have putting on a show?

(The next night, I had a lovely time at the Central in Santa Monica (I know, right?) with Little Red Lung, Death to Anders, The Californian, and Judson McKinney's 100 Percent Natural Good Time Family Band Solution, aka Judson McKinney, who just gets tighter and more ambitious every time out. He's channeling some serious Dylan mojo on some of that new stuff. And the night ended with an after-party at Izzy's Deli with old and new friends, and, overall, it was just a super time. The following Thursday, The Happy Hollows played, and I don't have to tell you how much I enjoyed that, since you saw me swigging beer and grooving in the front row. But, for the purpose of the current "review's" narrative arc, I'm going to pretend that both of those nights never happened.)

So there I was, on a sweaty Friday night at pehrspace, moping around while the bands set up, my arms crossed (a position that I never felt comfortable with until my recent acquisition of a beer belly), wondering who I had become that I cared so little for being there. Who was I that hosting a show with my friends--helping people enjoy themselves for a few hours of music, which I've generally though to be God's sweetest, most irrational gift--was little more than a headache? The stress on my limited promotional skills, the lineup not being settled until a couple days before the show, the super-last minute scramble to find someone to work the sound--who was I kidding that I thought I needed that sort of thing?

And yet, all it took was the opening chord on George Glass's first song--George Glass, on this night, being Nicholas Ceglio on acoustic guitar and vocals, joined later by Peter DiBiasio on bass--to transform me. Grumpiness and despair melted away into that old enthusiasm, that feeling that--even though very few people would ever care about what I was witnessing, and seeing a badass acoustic set by George Glass may never carry the same cultural cachet as (oh, let me pick an example at random) seeing Dylan in '66--it was nonetheless special, more so than any of us has a right to expect from a life that promises us nothing. How many of you have heard the Nirvanian drone of "For the Headless" soaring as it's stripped down to its sturdy bones? I have. And I'm ever so slightly better for it.

Then ... argh, The Health Club. Every time I used to see them, I was shocked by how fascinating they could make all those familiar elements that should be tired by now, and just how it was they conjured that mix of vitality and chops that sets them apart from all the other garage-y punk bands--the ones that are little more than groovy drinking music. Then, finally, a couple months ago at pehr, I stopped being shocked by it and realized that, dammit, that's just how they are, and I'd have to deal with it. So they were high on my list to play this show, and, even with a modified lineup (a fill-in drummer, with Gabe, their injured, be-slung regular drummer on slambourine and backing vocals), the familiar songs remained full of life. They were efficient but never perfunctory, gleeful but never cloying. Rocking and always rocking.

"You know what," I said afterward, in the parking lot, The Health Club's afterglow remaining, the space filling up beyond my expectations, "I was dreading this night a little bit. But this ... this is really nice."

Who was it saying words like that? You got me.

Cardboard Lamb played next, behind a great wall of Tecate and, standing there like a monument to debauchery, a neon green bottle of Mad Dog 20 20.

I'd seen Cardboard Lamb once before, well over a year ago, at the Delta Mirror Echo residency, back when I cared a lot more--so much so that I was on the verge of starting a blog. They were called Full Frontal back then, and they put on the most energetically intoxicated set I'd ever seen in a nine o'clock slot.

My hope that they'd bring the same intensity to a late pehrspace set was amply fulfilled. (I can't speak to their levels of intoxication. I'd normally be happy to assume, but I was later informed that their drummer was making some of the most grandly goofy drum faces in the history of rock and roll without chemical assistance. So maybe they were all just high on pure joy and abandon. It's none of my business.) Their sounds were intently dark and textured, but the moodiness never interfered with the amphetaminic drive underlying it all. It was pitch black, but never bogged down in gothiness or tedium. The kids loved it, I loved it, and they even got an encore.

I liked what I recall of Franco Near Death, but I was wasted. I had helped myself liberally to the wall of Tecate, you see. I'm only human.

I woke up the next day on a futon at some friends' apartment. There was no shock, no panic; I knew exactly who and where I was.

Then, after breakfast, we went golfing.

Golfing?

Yeah. Golfing. And it was fun. I began to wonder who I was again.

Didn't matter. Adolescent metaphysics aside--that is, even without changing bodies--you're going to be someone new every day. Perhaps even every hour. Sometimes from minute to minute.

And no matter who you are right now, or how hard you try to avoid it, life will surprise you.

Sometimes pleasantly.

Show. Tomorrow. Good. Fun.

2011-08-18T13:12:00.000-07:00

So, apparently, the trick to getting a show at pehrspace is to give up on ever getting a show at pehrspace. If you learn only one thing from the demon hellride that is reading The 704, let that be it.

I thought my show-booking days were over. But then, thanks to a last-minute cancellation, August 19th fell into my lap. Hard. And this is what we did with it:

(Flyer by Colin Ambulance.)

Besides Cardboard Lamb, The Health Club, and George Glass, Franco Near Death will also be playing.

It will be big, it will be loud, and there's a ninety-nine percent chance of debauchery.

Won't you come? There are literally no other shows happening in Los Angeles that night. I don't care what you've heard.

George Glass, The Seizure, Manhattan Murder Mystery - The Mint (Bakersfield) - Saturday, August 13, 2011

2011-08-18T01:24:00.000-07:00

I didn't realize I was going to this show. I figured I'd be spending my Saturday at home, weeping softly and cutting myself. Or perhaps I'd be at Spaceland, weeping softly and cutting myself.

Instead, I headed to Bakersfield, America's Dustbasket, to hear some songs I've heard a million times before, performed this time in a markedly more unpleasant context.

But it's all about life experience, you know? A change of scenery? Road trips? Some burgers, some beers, a few laughs? Maybe something to write about? A travelogue full of local color and cockeyed observation to enliven one's dreary, dormant blog?

Something like that. Actually, my presence in Bakersfield had more to do with the previous Monday at pehrspace, when I'd drunkenly promised that I would go. ("Yeah, fuck, I can get a car, I don't care! I'm going to Bakersfield! Let's do it! Woo!") Or so I was informed on Thursday. ("You still coming to Bako on Saturday?" a friend asked. "The fuck are you talking about?" I replied.) And I like to be a man of my word, however slurred that word might be.

Getting a car didn't turn out to be so easy. That was a stupid idea anyway. What was I planning on doing? Spending an entire Kern County evening teetotaling? Please. And I certainly wasn't going to drive in Bakersfield with even a drop of alcohol in my blood. I know how they run things up there. I've heard the stories.

So I rode up with some George Glass and George Glass-affiliated characters, pulling into town around nine o'clock in a car full of empty tallboys, because I'm a college student on a spring break that won't fucking end.

I had never been to Bakersfield before. I'm pretty sure I still haven't been. There were those few hours I spent within its city limits Saturday night, sure, but sneaking in and out under cover of darkness can't really count as being in a city. I've been to the Mint, and to the little market across the street from the Mint where I bought dinner (cigarettes and peanut butter crackers), and to the parking lot around the corner, where I ended up spending a fair amount of time. But other than that, Bakersfield remains a profoundly unalluring mystery.

The Mint was okay: a narrow bar with cheap beer. Desperate weirdos coexisted comfortably with the type of people someone who's never been to Bakersfield imagines people from Bakersfield are like. The bands played out back, on the small patio, amid the ninety-plus degree heat. Not ideal, but not terrible either. I didn't get punched or stabbed.

After a few pitchers of beer (provided free to the bands and, by implication, to the sweaty, twitchy blogger sitting in the bands' vicinity), Manhattan Murder Mystery got things started. And, frankly, you and I know I've done enough deep thinking and "deep thinking" about this band and their music. Enough of that. What you want is details of their performances, right? I guess? Maybe? (I have no idea what you want. No one tells me these things.)

So ... it was a solid set. I've seen them better, I've seen them worse. Matthew Teardrop seems to have ditched his army helmet for the time being. The significance of this change escapes me, so I'll just say, as has been said before, "Nice hoodie, bro."

That new song they've been doing--the one that goes, "I got a hole in my head!"--is a musical landmine.

The Seizure played next. To an increasingly disinterested crowd, they turned in a fine set of songs from their record Sunset Transmission, which I unreservedly recommend. (The crowd's disinterest had, I believe, little to do with the music. It was several degrees cooler in the bar than it was outside. So, even though they missed some top quality jams, I don't entirely blame the bar's patrons. Should one stay outside, copiously sweating in the name of rock and roll? Or should one go inside, cool off, grab a drink, and find someone to have hot Bakersfield sex with? I know which one of those choices I opted for, but most people's priorities are different than mine.) The Seizure's music occupies an elusive space and time. It's good, it's harsh, it's catchy, and it rocks. But it seems to draw from a naggingly familiar era of punk rock that, upon reflection, never happened. It's a skewed, cubistic take on the old archetypes. And it's fun to listen to.

George Glass closed it out. I enjoy their tunes, if you hadn't heard, but, by that point, the night had become boozy beyond recognition. No one in particular cared. Home seemed very far away.

I wandered over to the bar for one last beer, managing to procure one after about twenty minutes. Making quick work of the Newcastle, I strolled out of the bar and over to the empty parking lot, wondering about this touring business. Not to speak ill of Bakersfield or its inhabitants--they're both as horrific as anyplace else--but booking a show there seems like the purest masochism.

Is life not difficult enough without trying to convey your artistic vision to a bunch of good desert-dwelling folks who are just trying to get drunk, to forget their miserable child- and tattoo-addled lives for one sacred evening, hoping to do so in peace without some out-of-town band polluting the patio with their noise?

It's a curse on an artist, that compulsion to convey one's vision. They can never know if they succeed. You can create the finest piece of art in mankind's history, but you'll never know if anyone gets it, if anyone actually likes it, or just what it does to them. Creative people would be a lot less crazy if they could inhabit the psyches of an appreciative audience for just a few seconds, to know what their best work makes people feel, to know what it means to another person, divorced from any knowledge of the work's glorious conception and botched execution. But this can't happen. And insecurity, doubt, and craziness remain, and reign.

This being the case, what in the world are bands doing playing in Bakersfield to people with no interest in having any sort of vision conveyed to them?

I'm confident that there exists a very good answer to this question.

Perhaps, given the circumstances, I should instead be asking: What was I doing in Bakersfield?

I know there's no good answer to that question.

Body Parts, Touché, Masxs, Geoff Geis - Pehrspace - Friday, July 29, 2011

2011-08-02T15:53:00.000-07:00

Today is my birthday. Thought you might like to know that.

This is the part where I might make a joke about how ancient/decrepit/muthafuckin old I am, because that's what people my age do. Nothing astonishes my generation more than the passage of time. But I'll spare you. Because, really, I'm not old at all. Compared to the age of the universe (six thousand years), I'm just a little baby. In fact, a coworker just told me that she'd give anything to be my age again. I assured her that I'd make the most of what youth I have left. I was probably lying.

Last year on my birthday, I went to see Fol Chen at the Echo. At the foot of the stage, I met a performance artist. She had never seen the band before, but had a friend in common with Patrik-Ian Polk. "Wasn't he great?" she asked me.

"Yeah, sure," I said. "He's got a beautiful voice."

A few minutes later she introduced me to him. "This is my new friend Greg," she said. "He thinks you have a beautiful voice."

It was weird.

After the show she took me back to her place. With a bong fastened to her lips, she showed me a bunch of her video installation projects. One was a loop of people kissing in front of a passing subway train. I tried to think of something to say about it, but I was tired, and drunk, and what's there to say about a loop of two people kissing in front of a passing subway train besides, "Please kill me"? She wasn't listening anyway. Instead, she cued a bunch of YouTube videos of Asia Argento for me to watch. I'm still not entirely sure who Asia Argento is.

We were probably supposed to have sex after that, but I declined to make a move. I was exhausted. Plus, she wasn't really my type. And there are only so many banal video installations a person can show you before she becomes unacceptable as a sex partner.

I could be wrong about that.

In any case, she drove me home. We said we'd get together for coffee later that week and never spoke to each other again.

This year's birthday will be less eventful, and no doubt less fraught with missed sexual opportunity. Indian food with the folks and then, probably, going to bed early. I'd love to party, but last night I killed a fifth of Kessler at a friend's house and then wandered lost around Los Feliz until four in the morning before finally flagging down a cab. (I shouldn't have been blowing that much money on cab fare, but, hey, it was my birthday. Sometimes you gotta treat yourself.)

I'm not sure how one gets lost in Los Feliz. (See the Observatory? It's fucking North. Travel accordingly.) Alcohol helps.

Am I really reviewing this show? I don't know. That remains to be seen. But I thought I'd at least make a gesture in that direction since, at this show, I said to someone (or possibly several people), "I'm gonna review this show." The idea struck me as comical. Show review? What a laugh. I should try that.

So here I am. It's going okay, I guess. Easier than it has been.

The primary obstacle between me and this blogging game has been the nausea that sets in upon reading any sentence that I write. This sensation is not uncommon. Sometimes you can work through it and sometimes you can't. Sometimes you retch away and sometimes you go to bed early.

Also, I'm increasingly uncomfortable with enthusiasm. Like the nausea, this is nothing new. It goes back to the day I was born, when I wrapped my umbilical cord around my neck and tried to hang myself on my way out of the birth canal.

Let's try to be enthusiastic about Geoff Geis's music. I think it deserves it.

(In the interest of full disclosure: Once, after a show at Pehrspace, Geoff Geis and his girlfriend drove me back to their place, where I promptly got the dizzies and passed out on their loft.)

No matter what Hater X might have you believe, Geis's music is sincere, almost relentlessly so. And it's less weird than one might suspect at first glance.

Most of the perceived weirdness is a matter of context. During his solo performances, he uses his old headset microphone, which is an oddball choice for a dude singing songs in Echo Park, but it's fairly orthodox for charismatic pop stars Geis quite earnestly emulates. He has a deep appreciation for the art of the pop song. So why not integrate the props?

He sings electro-pop songs about subjects like Saddam Hussein. Might seem weird, might seem gimmicky, might seem like he's having a laugh. But he's interested in history, and politics, and figures who accomplish great and evil things. There's no good reason not to turn such subjects into pop songs.

And the passion he puts into his performances--which have a certain in-your-face boldness that might feel a bit askew, or even discomfiting to the bashful audience member--is the result of nothing more outre than showmanship. Even Friday night, performing on crutches after an unfortunate run-in with some stairs, he engaged his audience in a way few performers would dare. And, precisely harnessing his unique voice, he belted out his cover of "Where Have You Been (All My Life)" with an unfeigned, sorrowful conviction. It was, indeed, quite moving.

Hip hip hooray!

Masxs were pretty good!

I didn't watch Touché.

I caught most of Body Parts' set, but I don't remember it too well. I did, however, buy their new CD--or, well, I took one off the front counter and gave some money to a guy who I think was affiliated with the band. He might have just been some dude. Anyway, it's a solid listen. You should check it out.

You should buy the cassette that this song is on:

&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://geoffgeis.bandcamp.com/track/the-lonesome-part"&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;the Lonesome Part by Geoff Geis&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

The 704 Is Presenting This Show. It's True! Ask Anyone!

2011-07-11T14:46:00.000-07:00

Since the previous seven were so much darn fun, we at The 704 (i.e. me and my demons) have decided to present another show.

Yes, I know that The 704 isn't listed anywhere on that stylishly foreboding flyer. But this blog is totally presenting! It's true! I mean, look at that lineup--my greasy fingerprints are all over this show. And do you really think I'd go around pretending to present shows that I have nothing to do with? I'm not a psycho. Plus, these days I'm far too lazy and drunk to provide free advertising for anyone else's shows but my own.

Still not convinced? Will it mollify you if I have the flyer professionally updated? Fine.

There.

You should come! If you do you'll see an all-too-rare performance by the mysterious Happy Casualties. Or, I suppose these local country-funk heroes aren't exactly mysterious. Frontman Stephen Sigl is just too busy reading Hegel and discussing theology to bother much with self-promotion. Which explains the scarcity of decent YouTube footage of them. But here they are at their last Lot 1 show, playing "Love That Man" off their new album Sons of the New West.

Of course, George Glass will be playing. (Why on earth would George Glass not be playing? Get real.) The only appropriate reaction to a George Glass set is to exclaim, "Jesus Christ, is this so hard? Why isn't everybody doing this?" Of course, it probably is so hard, and if everybody were doing it, we'd all be quite bored. But, the fact remains, George Glass does everything right.

If you're anything like me (God help you), you're horribly intimidated by people who dress well. But, nevertheless, you should keep your insecurities at bay long enough to embrace the debonair San Jose two-piece known as San Francesca. Their songs are dark and moody and quite lovely. If I were the type to say things like, "Their music will make you swoon," then I'd probably be saying, "Their music will make you swoon." Thankfully I'm not that type of person. At any rate, I'm excited about their set, and I'm borderline incapable of excitement. So check it out:

And then there's Judson McKinney and company. I caught his band's latest configuration at HM 157 last week and ... I don't know, friends. I knew he was good, but last Thursday he was possessed by the spirit of something I don't know the name of, and the frantic exhilaration damn near made the porch collapse. What will he do next? I don't know! Come to the show! Find out for yourself!

Everybody loves "Celia," and "Celia" loves them back:

RSVP here.

Seriously, Let's Party At HM 157

2011-06-30T21:51:00.000-07:00

Here's a tip for those aspiring music bloggers who are primarily concerned with building up enough credibility to allow them to present shows and thereby feel special for a night in spite of their lack of talent: Don't write. Or, hardly ever write. Do something like five posts a month, and make those posts really, really weird.

Because, if you didn't notice, I haven't been writing much lately. And when I have written, it's been kind of oddball stuff about looking for God and hating life and dead grandfathers. And yet, all of a sudden, everyone's asking me to present their awesome shows! For example:

I'm not sure who put this awesome show together, but after it's over and everyone agrees that it was a smashing success, feel free to congratulate me. It'll make me feel special.

Judson will be playing. You know Judson. I know Judson. In fact, I practically discovered Judson. Or maybe he discovered me. Or perhaps we both remain undiscovered. In any event, he's been making some beautiful and true music with his new combo, which features your favorite drummer Sheridan Riley and noted bon vivant Johnny Seasons. Don't believe me? Well you should. Here, look:

Pageants will be playing. I caught them for the second time last week at Pehrspace, and I'm pleased to report that I stand by my initial judgment: they remain "hypnotic" and "transfixing" and "liable to make your fat, pathetic old self pine for your lost youth." They also have really neat t-shirts. Bring merch money!

And, finally, Manhattan Murder Mystery's Matthew Teardrop will be playing. What can I say about him that I haven't already said?

...

That's actually a pretty good question--one of the better questions I've ever posed to myself. Because, seriously, for the moment at least, it seems like I've said all one person has any right to say on the matter. But I really should come up with something. I'm presenting this show, after all. Um.

Oh, here's something: Once, in Las Cruces, New Mexico, Teardrop called an 800 number and left a message requesting more information on Southern comedian James Gregory, The Funniest Man In America. As far as I know, he is still patiently awaiting a response.

Here he is singing a song:

Please come to the show. Even if you think I'm full of baloney, Thrillhouse Productions is co-presenting, and they wouldn't steer you wrong.

It's on Thursday, July 7, it starts at 8:30, it's five bucks, and it's at HM 157, which is located at 3110 North Broadway in Lincoln Heights.

RSVP/leave funny comments/insult my mother here.

George Glass, Manhattan Murder Mystery, Death to Anders, Shirley Rolls - The Satellite - Tuesday, June 21, 2011

2011-06-24T01:36:00.000-07:00

"Anybody who stays out until 2am getting drunk listening to local bands is Looking for Something. And it isn't 'great music' they are looking for."

-Ben "Mouse" McShane

"What else is sacred? Oh, Romeo and Juliet, for instance.

And all music is."

-Vonnegut

We're all 21st century adults here, of course, with all the rights, privileges, and despairs such a distinction entails. We were born into harsh wisdom that our ancestors, for all their primitive suffering, never could have fathomed. We've never known a world that did not quiver with eagerness for its own destruction. Books of our species' recent history bleed with technocratic slaughter, so much that the savagery still occurring every day becomes little more than background noise, ambient brutality, and the fresh blood on our hands appears indistinguishable from the dried blood tattooed there long ago by our sorry race's sins. No one but the most grandiose fool would believe that we were created in anything like God's image, lest God be judged a degenerate brute.

All true.

But still, that being said, do you ever get that spiritual longing? Have you ever considered joining a religion?

I mean, I haven't. Yuck. That's dumb. God schmod. We're rational round these parts, right? We're all secular humanists and shit. We are strong. We have no fear, no trembling.

Which is not to say I'd hold it against you. No, no, no. If you once considered trying to force yourself to find religion, that's okay with me. Maybe, for example, your childhood household practiced a very half-assed version of Reform Judaism, even by Reform Judaism's standards, so you'd never really known what it was like to be a believer. You always kind of thought it was only fair to give it a shot. There must be something to it, you figured, right?

And suddenly, at a very lonely, desperate point in your life, the idea of a covenantal community coming together to worship God genuinely appealed to you, even if you knew it would be a community of all sorts of different people, most of them fairly unlike you, many of whom you would actively dislike.

You found yourself wanting to take part in rituals, even if they were repetitive and inexplicable to the outside observer.

Furthermore, you wanted to put your ego aside and gleefully partake in what many other people, including large segments of yourself, would find totally ridiculous.

And, perhaps most importantly, you wanted to pursue the glimmerings of beauty you so briefly saw even in the mundane and the ugly: the traces of transcendence you sensed in the black-spored green of a ratty fern, the snowy ash of your cigarette, the sodden clink of a beer can. Sometimes, for a fraction of a second, such things glowed with such overpowering meaning, they could have been God speaking to you.

But you didn't go through with it. You never went to a single service. For a couple of reasons, really.

First, you went to the website of your old synagogue, thinking that it might be a convenient starting point for your entry into spiritual life. Judging from the website, however, the congregation's proudest achievement was the People magazine-level fame it had achieved through its willingness to perform B'nai Mitzvah ceremonies for dogs. This did not suggest the type of solemnity and rigor you were seeking from a spiritual community. Plus, while you were no Maimonides, you were fairly certain that dogs couldn't be Jewish. A Bark Mitzvah is not a real thing.

Second, and perhaps somewhat more importantly, you just didn't believe in any of it. You were fairly certain it was all bullshit.

This was a bit of a snag. So you stopped thinking about it.

But, even having abandoned the idea of religion, you still found yourself acting oddly. You started going to shows obsessively, ritualistically, getting drunk until two in the morning, looking for great music, and perhaps something more. Sometimes you found it.

Maybe there was a certain band you got particularly hung up on. You found yourself attending their shows with a weird compulsion, wherever they might take place, from Echo Park to Westchester, from South Central to Austin.

You met many people at these shows. There were people you considered friends whom you only ever saw when you were moshing in the front row during the band's sets. It was an odd assortment of people you came to recognize--older and younger than you, dirtier and cleaner, hotter and uglier, smarter and dumber--but it was a welcoming community. If you didn't mind getting jostled and jumping around like a fool, you were in.

After some twenty-five shows, there was very little reason for you not to be bored of the whole experience. You kept waiting for that sad day to come when the band's appeal would be played out, tired, jejune. But it never arrived. The shows, with inevitable variations in the set-list, were largely the same. The singer would abandon the microphone at the same points every time; whoever knew the words was free to scream extra loud at those points, a scorching variation on a roomful of Catholics mumbling, "And also with you." And, yet, in spite of the repetition, the ritual remained vital.

During those forty-five-minute sets, your self-consciousness--that lifelong travelling companion--without fail took its leave. You'd do things you felt dimly embarrassed by the next day--drinking way too much, dancing way too awfully, screaming way too obnoxiously, and the fist pumps--oh the fist pumps! But, in the end, you never considered not partaking in the exact same embarrassing behavior the next time around. There was never any question. The sheer joy of finally being outside of your doggedly miserable head, even for less than an hour, was worth every goofball fist pump, every misremembered lyric, every ill-busted move, every hangover.

It was something you had never experienced before. Did it, you wondered, have something to do with God?

No. God was, of course, dead. Darwin knocked him out and the rest of humanity had been kicking the shit out of His corpse ever since. But everything God used to provide, you discovered, remained available, if one knew where to look. Arbitrary community. Ritual. Transcendence. (And there's a lot more truth in "Ambulance" than there ever was in Leviticus anyway.)

And just maybe, in the creases of those gloriously abrasive songs--or, really, in any song that does the job for any given person--and in our communal responses to them, there resides something like God, something that we mustn't call God, something that cannot be held responsible for this miserably botched world. Something that deserves a more glorified Name.

Ahem.

So Shirley Rolls opened Tuesday night's show. And they were delightful, a joyous mess of garage and punk and blues and soul and silliness and nonsense and weird noises and running and efficiency and outfits.

Death to Anders followed. They came to play a rock show, and so they did. No dabbling in balladry--even the band's signature twitchy, emetic brand of balladry. It was one complex ramble after another, idiosyncrasies writ large and sung in one of my favorite voices in town, the voice that I have the most fun and least success describing. I think I usually end up comparing it to peanut butter in some way. Close.

This was followed by the Manhattan Murder Mystery revival. It included two characteristically powerful new songs. The liturgy expands.

And, ah, George Glass playing in the last place George Glass belongs: mop-up duty. But beyond the chops and hooks and noise and emotion that they always bring, George Glass harnessed the night's chaos in a way any band would envy. They even had an intermittent four-to-five-man mosh pit going. Not bad for the wee hours of Wednesday morning.

Like, for real, you guys: basically everything bores me these days. But this show--it was really something. It was fun.

An Excellent Show; or, Mark Your Calendar With Blood

2011-06-14T15:02:00.000-07:00

Well this is quite an honor, you know, being asked to co-present what will no doubt be the best show of the summer, perhaps the best show of the year, maybe even the best show of your life, and probably the best show since the demise of Jesus's 13-piece horrorcore collective back in A.D. 33.

(Artwork by Rob "Dancin' Rob Danson" Danson.)

I was sitting here wracking my brain, trying to think of insightful things to say about these bands and their music, the type of things that would get you pumped about this show. But you know what? If you're not already pumped about this show, I really don't know what to tell you. If you see a flyer indicating that George Glass, Shirley Rolls, Death to Anders, and Manhattan Murder Mystery are playing at the Satellite on Tuesday, June 21, 2011, and you say, "Hmm, I am insufficiently convinced, please persuade me further," then you're probably an asshole who has no business being at this show in the first place. I mean, I don't want to be harsh, but fuck you. If you need me to explain why you should go see George Glass, Shirley Rolls, Death to Anders, and Manhattan Murder Mystery, then you don't deserve to see George Glass, Shirley Rolls, Death to Anders, and Manhattan Murder Mystery. And that's okay with me. More awesome for the rest of us.

For the record, I speak only for The 704, not for this show's co-presenter, the super-duper, friendly, positive, professional organization known as My Friends Are Great. Becca and all the fine folks at My Friends Are Great probably think you should come to this show even if you are a jerk.

RSVP here. Or be a chump and don't. It's your life.

Archers of Loaf - The Troubadour - Friday and Saturday, June 3 and 4, 2011

2011-06-08T23:20:00.000-07:00

1: There's Something Wrong With My Toast

Friday night's set was bruising. By which I mean I woke up Saturday morning severely bruised.

This bruising occurred mainly in the left eye area, which I suppose qualifies the injury as a black eye, although it's still mostly red and, praise be, mostly hidden. It's confined to the area above my eyelid and below my caveman brow ridge, and further obscured by the frames of my glasses. To even notice it, one would have to pay me more than a cursory glance, and Lord knows no one's doing that.

How did this happen?

Well, the sheer, capillary-bursting force of mid-90s indie rock did it, of course. Everyone who was on the floor for Archers' set walked out with wicked shiners. Only the old folks in the balcony were spared.

Not really.

What actually happened was, well, I hadn't seen Archers of Loaf play since 1996, so I had to deal with fifteen years' worth of pent up enthusiasm bursting forth, from both me and the drunken knuckleheads surrounding me. We pogoed violently. Limbs flailed dervish-like. And, at last, inevitably, I felt a sharp elbow crack right into my eye. I didn't see where it came from, nor did I care, since the adrenaline masked any pain. In the light of day, however, it was ugly and it hurt.

No, that didn't happen either.

You see, the reason I'm being so evasive is that I'm really not looking to start something. I'd hate for all the indie rock tabloids to catch wind of this. But, well, if you must know, I had a brief, awkward encounter with Eric Bachmann. He was rushing from the back alley to the staircase leading to the artists' area. Recognizing him, I said, "Hey, Bachmann, looks like we've both put on some weight since 1996, eh?" And, with very little wasted motion, he punched me in the face.

Okay, that's not what happened. Eric Bachmann did not punch me in the face.

A bunch of street toughs did. They were harassing a group of orphans. I couldn't let that stand, so I stepped in. The orphans escaped while the street toughs beat the shit out of me.

Just kidding.

Enough with this nonsense. What actually happened? How did I blacken my eye?

I fell.

This has been happening more and more lately. Also I've been dropping things. I'd like to attribute this to the onset of a terminal disease, but I'm pretty sure it just means I drink too much.

You might suggest that I drink the exact right amount. I'm inclined to agree.

But riddle me this: Why is it that, when I fell Friday night, I wasn't at the Troubadour? After the Archers show, I had ended up at Lot 1 for some reason, way the hell across town. How and why did this happen?

You know what? Never mind.

This black eye? Yeah, I got it protecting orphans.

2: Nostalgia

It makes no sense to me that I saw Archers of Loaf at the Troubadour in 1996. I know that I did. I remember it. I bought a t-shirt that I wore for years thereafter. But, still, this memory makes no sense. (Which, of course, did not stop me from bragging about it incessantly to whomever I spoke to on both Friday and Saturday nights. "I saw them here in ... 1996," I said, feigning uncertainty at the date. "Neat," you replied. "I know, right?!" I said.)

This memory baffles me because I was thirteen in 1996, and an Archers of Loaf show is a pretty cool place for a thirteen-year-old to be. And, if there's one adjective that does not describe me as a youngster, it's "cool."

At thirteen (to the best of my recollection--I've spent the subsequent years training myself not to think about it) I was a book-addled bundle of anxiety and loneliness and self-loathing. My hair was weird and my glasses were aggressively unstylish. I thought I was going to be some sort of writer. Ninety-nine percent of my conscious mind was occupied by girls, but the idea of talking to them was the most exotic fantasy I could conjure.

So, basically, I was the same as I am today, except with pinker lungs, a healthier liver, more optimism, and less well-developed coping mechanisms.

But, it seems, even back then I occasionally liked a good band. I'd like to say that my youthful affection for Archers of Loaf was indicative of a broader musical precocity. But, no, most of what I listened to was shit. The better part of my CD collection was devoted to deservedly obscure pop-punk bands, the fun but ephemeral stuff put out by labels like Dr. Strange and Lookout!, bands that were exactly as interesting as Green Day but less business savvy. Occasionally something decent would poke through the morass--like Jawbreaker, say, or Garden Variety--but that was rare.

And it's not like I was that into the bands people associate with Archers of Loaf's milieu. Of all the seminal bands that have recently cashed in on the fact that their old fans now have disposable income, AoL is the only one that reached me back in the day, and the only one I bothered checking out on their reunion tour. I didn't care about Pavement. Guided By Voices' catalog was too intimidating. Superchunk was almost there, but not quite.

I wonder why. It's hard to define Archers' appeal to a kid who's indifferent to Pavement and enamored of bands like (um, let's see here) Hemlock and ff. Or maybe it's not. Archers knew their way around a catchy melody (which my simple mind required) and yet they were unafraid to delve into screeching distortion and hellraising noise (which my adolescent rage demanded). And then there was Bachmann's voice, which was like no other I'd heard before or have heard since. It had strength and vulnerability in equal measures, a full-bodied howl that had been chipped at with an icepick.

So, anyway, I somehow developed sufficient interest to end up at the Troubadour that night in 1996. My mom dropped me off. When I'd first started going to shows the previous year, she would escort me and lurk in the back. But that got old for her quite fast. And she realized--or convinced herself--that the danger to me was minimal. She'd pick me up afterwards and my hair would reek of cigarettes and weed, but she was confident it was all second-hand. She thought I was too smart to indulge in that sort of thing, when in fact I was simply too timid.

This was all a desirable arrangement for me. I didn't feel at home at school. I didn't feel at home at home. But I liked going to shows. I certainly didn't feel at home at places like the Troubadour--a wandering middle-schooler lost among the proto-hipsters--but at least it had potential.

I'd like to write about that 1996 show, to do an inordinately untimely show review. But I don't remember it well. This amnesia is due to a number of factors, one of which is, well.... Have I mentioned that I spent about eight years of my life stoned morning, noon, and night? While those years are understandably a blur, they also seem to have retroactively fuzzed out all the years that came before. Or maybe I'm just getting old. In any event, my only vivid memory of the evening is the band's rendition of "Greatest of All Time". It was good.

One thing I idly wonder, though: If you were to tell me at age thirteen that I'd be seeing the same band at the same venue fifteen years later, and asked me what I thought my life would be like come Friday, June 3, 2011, what would I have said?

At first, I'm inclined to think I'd say, "Well, after going off to college, I'll finally find a place for myself in the world. I'll study English probably, or maybe journalism. I won't be rich, but I'll be comfortable, with a job teaching or writing for newspapers or magazines. I'll have a nice little place of my own, maybe a beautiful girlfriend. My first novel will have come out recently. Less reputable publications will give it unreservedly positive reviews. More discerning publications will see it for what it is: a noble failure, but, nonetheless, proof that a true talent is at work, a real writer who just needs a few more years of experience to find his voice."

But, honestly, I don't think that's what thirteen-year-old-me would have said. I might have thought it, but I wouldn't have said it. Back then, I found the idea of having dreams and ambitions to be slightly embarrassing, the sort of thing one would only discuss with a diary or a therapist. I never would have copped to that sort of optimism.

So what I actually would have said might have been something like, "In fifteen years I'll be a fucking loser, a college dropout, pushing thirty and still living at home. I'll be drinking too much, which will occasionally cause me to fall flat on my face and give myself a black eye. What little writing I do will be about other people's art. I'll be quite miserable, fairly alone, susceptible to public bouts of self-pity, but there will be brief moments of music- and booze-induced ecstasy, which will become harder and harder to achieve as the years pass. I'll ride the bus a lot."

Yeah, that's definitely what I would have said. But I wouldn't have believed it. I would have been joking.

3: The Bastard's Drunk

Given that it was just a few short days ago--rather than fifteen short years ago--I should be able to remember Friday's set a bit better than I do. But that's not how it worked out.

Drinks at home. Drinks in the front bar. Drinks in the regular bar. Drinks in the parking lot. Drinks in the alley. Drinks in the park across the street in Beverly Hills. More drinks at the bar.

Next thing you know, I'm that guy in the back who's dancing around and pumping his fist and singing along using all the wrong words (but I mean, come on, what's he actually saying in "Harnessed in Slums"? Nobody knows!) even though no one near me is doing anything similar. You know, that asshole who's too wasted to make his way to where everyone else is dancing, so he has his own little dance party and bugs the hell out of the people who just want to quietly watch the show? Yeah, that was me.

I mean, a few details peek through the ravages, and some general impressions remain. The band opened with "Step Into the Light", a rather on-point way to ease into a set after a decade-plus absence. Bachmann was reserved. Gentling was a goofball. But the music, from "Step Into the Light" all the way through the sixth encore (I'm pretty sure there were six encores--might have been two, but I'm fairly certain it was six), they were maddeningly tight, almost luridly so, like we had stumbled onto some arcane ritual that we weren't supposed to see.

Or maybe I was just wasted.

4: And There's A Chance That Things Will Get Weird

I hadn't planned on attending night two. Seeing the same band two nights in a row suggests the type of fanaticism that I try to resist. Plus, it was sold out, I felt dead, and my knee and face hurt.

But, Saturday afternoon, when I learned that my friend had an extra ticket, I decided to go for it. In spite of the condition of my guts, liver, knee, and face, Archers of Loaf were in town! Reunited! It would be nice to take in a set of theirs that I'd actually remember.

And, yes, it was quite nice. They played many favorites--opening with "Audiowhore", playing "Harnessed in Slums" again, "Plumb Line" and "Web in Front", "Greatest of All Time" (just like in 1996!), a troublesomely energizing "Wrong". The sheer tightness and swinging energy of the night before had not, it turned out, been a drunken illusion.

And yet....

There was nothing phoned in about the performance. No one would mistake the performers on stage for four guys doing it solely for the paycheck. If you'd stumbled in off the street, ignorant of the band's illustrious, truncated history, you would easily have believed that we were all witnessing something very special.

But we weren't. As much as I enjoyed the music--loud, live versions of songs that have had their own well-worn niches in my brain for fifteen years--in the sad, sober-ish light of Saturday night, I could see the men on stage for what they were: consummate professionals, forty-somethings who probably don't like each other very much, or at least no longer have much in common, playing a cluster of brilliant songs that can't possibly mean anything to them anymore, their renditions sounding a lot like they do on the albums. There was nothing about the performance to indicate that the songs weren't fresh and pulsating with meaning for the performers, but, still, the fact that they weren't remained difficult to forget. It was a beautiful, invigorating performance and, in the end, it felt hollow.

It's a lot easier not to think about things like that when you're wasted.

5: Clearly It Doesn't Mean A Thing

On the bus to Friday's show, all the seats were taken, so I stood next to the rear exit. A couple was sitting in the seats in front of me. They weren't speaking much, but would occasionally exchange a brief, pleasant comment. In his hand, the guy held a tiny, colorful stuffed poodle and a strip of photo booth pictures taken at the Santa Monica Pier. Unusually, the couple didn't appear to be doing anything goofy in the photos, but they looked happy.

I wondered what their day had been like. I imagined that the guy hadn't been too thrilled with the prospect of taking the bus all the way to the Pier. If they had to go all that way, he'd rather just relax on the beach. But his girlfriend was into it, so he didn't resist too much. And, in the end, he'd had a nice time. The girl knew he wasn't too enthusiastic, and she had worried that he'd be a total drag, but, from the start, he'd acted surprisingly gung-ho, because he knew having a silly, fun, romantic day was important to her. The tiny, multi-colored poodle was a rather pathetic little prize, but he'd worked so hard to win it for her. Even though she insisted to him that he shouldn't try so hard, that she wasn't in the mood to tote some made-in-China piece of fluff all the way home on the bus, she knew she'd end up cherishing it. They were going to make love when they got home, and they looked forward to this, but they were feeling so close already, they wouldn't have minded if the bus ride lasted forever, even with the weird boozy-smelling guy looking over their shoulders.

Or not.

Maybe they hated each other. Maybe they only remained together out of codependent desperation. Maybe he'd get drunk and slap her and go out and sleep around. Maybe she'd reached her limit a week before and had a complete mental breakdown. Maybe he'd had to restrain her for an hour to keep her from braining herself on their coffee table. Maybe their trip to the Pier had started out as a sick joke at the expense of their loveless, broken-down relationship, a cruel dare. Maybe they'd spent the day cutting each other down, with brief interruptions wherein they'd pantomime a morbid parody of a happy couple having a nice day at the Pier, playing games, taking photos, their quiet loathing for one another growing with each passing hour until it seeped out of their pores.

Maybe it was something in between.

But I don't think so.

If you carry around a tiny stuffed animal and a strip of photo booth pictures, I will, against any contrary evidence, against common sense, assume that you are the most blissfully happy couple in history. I can't bear to think otherwise.

Silver Lake Jubilee - Saturday, May 21 - Sunday, May 22, 2011

2011-05-28T02:06:00.000-07:00

It was close, it almost didn't happen, it was touch and go there for the longest time. But, in the end, you went to both days of the Silver Lake Jubilee.

If the impeccably snide trolls of the local blog-o-sphere (ugh) are to be believed, it's quite uncool to get excited about the Jubilee, or to think that it exceeds its modest goals, or to decree that folks who prefer Sunset Junction or FYF are a bunch of fucking chumps.

That being the case, you were almost very, very cool. Because, up until the very last moment, you wanted no part of the Jubilee. It was old hat. A schlep. An invitation to alcoholism. A poignant reminder of more hopeful days.

Last year's Jubilee was a joyous moment for you. You'd been writing a weird little blog about local music for a couple of months, and it was starting to get attention. You were excited about damn near every band on the bill--either you were newly enthusiastic about them, or you were puppyishly eager to hear what they were all about. You got to meet Mouse from Classical Geek Theatre and you got a hug from Sarah Negahdari that left bruises through June.

This year, on the other hand--meh. Your blog's glory days are behind it. Looking over the bill, it seemed that every band was either godawful, or incapable of inspiring any feelings in you whatsoever, or pretty darn good. The pretty darn good ones, however, you had seen approximately a gazillion times before. On top of that, you can only meet Mouse from Classical Geek Theatre once, and, over the past year, you've received considerably more hugs from Sarah Negahdari than you deserve.

But you forced yourself out of bed. And it wasn't until the bus approached Vermont early Saturday afternoon that you realized you'd probably have a pretty great time.

The first day of the Jubilee took place on the date that some looney tunes preacher had decreed as the day of the Rapture. During the week leading up to this day, jokes about the impending Rapture became so pervasive that even today, a week later, simply mentioning the Rapture feels like an indirect Rapture joke, and therefore tired and lame. But feigned Rapture-anxiety was very much a part of this Jubilee, so, as a respected member of the press, with hastily procured press credentials, you feel compelled to mention it.

Apparently the big event was to happen at 6:00 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time. When 5:00 rolled around, you and your cohorts were all very excited. When 6:00 arrived, you were too drunk to remember that you were supposed to be waiting for something.

The week since the Jubilee has been an odd one.

On Monday, you saw Downtown/Union and Manhattan Murder Mystery perform at Cheetahs, a place where lovely, sparsely dressed women dance in exchange for money. The sound was awful and the drinks were watery. And, as much as you love both "Smoky Mountain" and pretty dancing girls, was it necessary to combine them? "(703)," bump, "403," grind, "248," bump, "9," grind. The song was nakeder than the dancer.

On Tuesday morning, you awoke to a vicious sore throat, which you initially attributed to drunkenly snoring like a pig. As is your wont. But your sinuses soon made clear that you were, in fact, sick with a cold. You spent the next few days deep in the throes of NyQuil psychosis, which is a beautiful place at first. Your thoughts moved at a speed hitherto undreamt of, their insights as crystalline as they were elusive. What you wouldn't have given for a machine that would transcribe your thoughts instantly, as they happened, aided as they were by just a touch too much DXM. But things soon turned ugly. Slowed to an ooze, the true pustulant nature of your thoughts burst through. They made no sense. They corroded your equilibrium, your very sense of self. What were these words and images passing through your head, and why? When you finally dozed off, your dreams were naught but sweaty purgatories. You found yourself sitting next to Eric Clapton. You were both smoking cigarettes. You don't like Eric Clapton and you had nothing to say to him so you just sat there. Smoking and smoking. Forever.

Fucking NyQuil.

And on Tuesday night your grandfather died.

The first band you saw at the Jubilee was Marvelous Toy, an old favorite of yours, a damn good band you'd seen a gazillion times before.

At last year's Jubilee you drunkenly approached Marvelous Toy's singer, Jordan Hudock, and told him how much your dad liked his EP. You were trying to convey the generation-gap-bridging power of his music, but you're pretty sure he thought you were trying to insult him.

This year brought no such faux pas. They played songs and you smoked and bopped your head. They've been playing a reworked "Waiting for the Fire" lately, with an almost ska opening that forestalls the song's signature dramatic flourishes until the middle. You guess they're operating on the assumption that each band is only allowed a certain quantity of drama, and must use it sparingly. There might be something to this.

Early Sunday, after the Rapture was to have come and gone, you watched One Trick Pony--one of Los Angeles's gems, a truly misunderappreciated band--perform on the Santa Monica Stage. "Dancin'" Rob Danson provided strange, hyperkinetic backing, which was worth the five dollar admission that you did not pay.

Singer Randolph Williams beheld an exodus of hipsters fleeing the sweetly unhip sounds he and his band were making. Or so he said. Whether this exodus was real, metaphorical, or the visible-only-to-him manifestation of his demons, you cannot say. You were too busy smoking and bopping your head and enjoying the music to find out.

You weren't particularly close to your late grandfather. While he wasn't exactly old school, he remained a bit distant. A landscaper--a hardworking man--he never seemed to hold your fundamental softness against you. But bear hugs and frequent, earnest proclamations--"I love you kids"--were about as close as he came to connecting.

He always referred to your grandmother as "lover," which should have creeped you out but didn't.

You can only remember having one good talk with him. You were visiting with your then-girlfriend. While your special lady chatted with your grandmother, you and your grandfather sat on comically undersized stools and, for some reason, talked about your family history. You don't remember many details, beyond the explanation of why he, an Irishman through and through, ended up with a French surname. You were sitting just a bit outside of yourself the whole time, savoring the fact that you were having an enjoyable conversation with an extended family member, with no desire to flee.

This was rare. You weren't raised to value your family. Where for many kids a trip to grandma's house was an unmitigated delight, it was always presented to you as a necessary chore to be dispensed with quickly and, hopefully, painlessly. You didn't realize until embarrassingly late that some people genuinely do like their families.

This unfortunate attitude has stuck with you into nominal adulthood. You would like to value family. Yet, while you're all grown up and are perfectly capable of choosing your own values, you're all too content to be the man your parents raised you to be. And that man just can't be too sad about his grandfather's passing. He's sad about not being sad. He has further evidence that he is incapable of deep feeling, and is effectively dead inside. But that--while comforting in its way--is it.

Ladies?

At last year's Jubilee, the third, indoor stage was located inside El Cid. This year, amusingly, it was located inside the Eagle, which is no doubt the gayest gay bar in the history of gaydom.

It was a pretty nice joint. The bartenders (shirtless, dressed in tiny shorts) were friendly. The TV screens showed 300 on repeat. Drinks were somewhat cheaper. There were bears everywhere.

Quite a scene, man.

You caught a bemused AV Club turning in a solid set there. You were iffy on AV Club at first and then you saw them live and realized they were pretty good and then you got into their EP more and more and then you presented a show that they played but by the time they went on you were blackout drunk, so you were pleased with this opportunity to catch a full set of theirs with a relatively clear head.

And, boy, were they solid. They know their way around the intricacies of a pop song, but never seem content with the cheap tricks and easy outs favored by their more successful peers. They may very well be rising and going places and makin' it, but if they are, against all odds, they're doing it the right way.

Heller Keller played in the tunnel behind the Sunset Stage on Sunday. They proclaimed themselves the greatest band in the universe. You felt inclined to disagree but, when pressed, you couldn't muster much of a counterargument. Upon further consideration, you think they might be right.

In the interest of full disclosure, the perks of your press pass must be mentioned.

Press, artists, and assorted VIPs had access to a parking lot about a block and a half away from the festival. There were chairs, some minimal shade, occasional food and, uh, oh yeah, free booze.

It was--as you apparently like to say now--quite a scene, man.

Particularly on Sunday, when you had precious little desire to hear any music. You sat around most of the day, drinking tequila and coconut water, smoking cigarettes, just generally taking advantage.

At one point, a clown gave you a pot brownie, which you ate. (As previously mentioned: quite a scene.) You wouldn't have eaten it, since it's generally a bad idea to eat pot brownies that clowns give you. But your friend ate one first, and as long as you weren't going to be the only one to get killed/roofied by the clown brownie, you didn't mind. Dying wouldn't bother you; but the posthumous humiliation of being the only person dumb enough to eat the clown brownie would torment you. As long as someone else died too, you were fine.

Anyway, as the brownie kicked in, a bunch of abrasively drunken rabble-rousers started singing, "I ain't gonna pee pee my bed tonight," over and over, and you decided it was time to go home.

Quite a scene, man.

You went to your grandfather's funeral in Las Vegas on Friday. You appreciated the ceremonial aspects and the Psalm and the readings from the Gospels and Revelation.

When the priest ad-libbed, however, he ran into some trouble. He led an inquiry into the significance of flowers at funerals, how such a tradition started, why it continues. He concluded that flowers are an unadulterated gift from God, a pure embodiment of His love, entities whose sole purpose was to provide human beings with aesthetic and olfactory pleasure.

What a nice thought this was! That such a thing would exist, with no evolutionary or biological purpose, just a flourish from God for the innocent pleasure of His most favored creation. How lovely!

But, yet, you couldn't help but think, "I guess they don't study pollination at Seminary. Dude's never heard of bees."

Stab City played at the Eagle on Saturday evening. It was a vivid, vivifying set. It was absolutely essential, at that point in your life and at that point in your drinking schedule. The pure joy of punk rock, of banging and thrashing as fast as possible, bumping into people, shoving friends, generally acting a fool. The drummer was an acrobat and a monster. The foundation of the building split apart as the bears looked on unamused. You and everyone else were swallowed into the chasm but it was worth it for the most vital set of the weekend.

If the priest needed an example of an unadulterated gift from God, a source of beauty that serves no useful purpose, he should have gone with music. It's better than flowers anyway.

Saturday night ended at Little Joy, a quick bus ride east of the Jubilee. Depraved, degenerate reprobates, drunk on abandon and booze, gathered beneath Karen Centerfold's rain of confetti for sets by Haunted Tiger, The Schoenberg Knife Fight Ensemble, and Manhattan Murder Mystery (and more, but you stupidly got on the bus because, hey, look, a bus, you better get on it!).

There was drinking and smoking and stroking and more confetti. You wallowed in the joyous insanity and inanity that your body, pushed to its alcoholic limit, could produce. It was earthy and sweaty and beautiful and disgusting and holy.

Manhattan Murder Mystery played what may have been their drunkest, sloppiest set ever. Matthew Teardrop fell several times, lost all track of the microphone, his fingers, gravity. Friends pitched in. The set was completed.

It made you realize: the Rapture had, in fact, happened on schedule. May 21st, 2011, 6:00 p.m. It's just that no one in the entire world was righteous enough to ascend to heaven. And it turns out we've been living in hell all along. Which, when you get down to it, ain't all that bad.

We make do.

Future Dancing, Cody the Band, Count Fleet - Lot 1 - Thursday, May 19, 2011

2011-05-20T15:22:00.000-07:00

Okay, so my laptop is all screwed up with an easily remedied glitch, but I have no desire to get it fixed because, really, come on, who has the energy? Or the time? And who needs a computer anyway? God forbid I should read a book.

So I'm writing this at work, which might explain why it's more disorganized and disjointed and rambling than one might expect, even given my long tradition of disorganization, disjointedness, and ramblingosity. Plus, I hardly slept at all last night, and I'm wrestling with a highly acidic hangover, one with a gummy mouthfeel and subtle notes of oak and Klonopin.

What I'm saying is, don't expect much from this review. But I don't have any (pressing) work to do, and I feel like writing for some reason, so: words words words words words.

Every week, I tell myself I'm going to start reviewing every show I see in a timely manner (and also I'm going to start working out again and I'm going to eat better and I'm going to drink and smoke less and, God forbid, I'm going to read a book) (I don't actually tell myself I'm going to drink and smoke less--I'm in a good place with that--but that seems like something I should tell myself, so I'm going to pretend that I do for appearances' sake). Then Tuesday rolls around and I find myself massively hungover, lungs freshly encrusted with tar, stuffing my face with dead animals, and with absolutely no desire to write. This being the case, a lot of worthy shows have fallen through the cracks.

There was that Henry Clay People/Manhattan Murder Mystery show at the Satellite last Saturday. I kind of wanted to write about it, but not really. Thankfully, Mouse "nailed it" (in the parlance of our times). MMM always brings it, of course. The relative quality of their sets really comes down to how insane the audience feels like getting. And, last Saturday, we felt like getting quite insane. (These days, I always lose my shit at MMM shows--after all, it's almost three decades of repressed dancing and screaming (and self-loathing and rage) exploding to the surface. Anyway, it's nice, and somewhat less embarrassing, when I'm not the only one going ape.)

Then I caught The Lonely Wild at the Central in Santa Monica on Tuesday. And, between you and me (seriously, don't tell anyone), I kind of want to dislike The Lonely Wild. They're so damn hardworking and ambitious. As a man whose ambition does not extend beyond lunch, this offends me. I mean, they're everywhere. What other band plays at the Central, Mr. T's, and Lot 1 in the course of a couple weeks? What other band has weekly residencies over two consecutive months? Damn overachievers.

But then they hit the stage and all doubts and petty resentments are allayed. Because ... I don't know, just go see them. You'll have plenty of opportunities and you won't regret it.

As we were leaving Lot 1 last night, my friend and I were accosted by a gaggle of drunk girls outside Barragan's. They woozily embraced us. One of them said, in a rather demanding tone,"My vagina needs attention."

Now, I have a fairly long attention span for a member of my generation, and I've been known to expend it on vaginas from time to time. But, still, for whatever reason, I passed on this opportunity.

After all, I'm pretty sure it was just God trying to trick me. I've been cleansed of all my sins, and I currently lead a blameless life. Even so, I have reason to believe that God doesn't care for me, and that He would really prefer not to rapture me tomorrow. (I'm not much of a conversationalist. I complain a lot. And there's that odor.) So he's sending out drunken temptresses to cross my path and try to lure me into some last minute sin.

L.G. wins this round. I'll keep you abreast of any further developments.

Oh, music, right.

Count Fleet came out and did their thing. I've more or less written about Count Fleet's thing before. Click on the tag and read about it and then transport those observations to the setting of Lot 1 last night and you'll get the idea of how Count Fleet was.

I'm also extensively on the record about my enthusiasm for Cody the Band. And I thought they turned in a pretty strong set, but Cody the human being informed me I was mistaken, so I guess we'll take his word for it. ("More like Grody the Band," he said.) (Not really.) Though I've come to realize that, at Lot 1, things tend to sound better in the audience than they do on stage.

Future Dancing closed out the evening, filling up the stage and then some. It was my second time seeing them, so I guess I'm qualified to say that they always put on a spirited show. If I were president of Future Dancing, I'd have them ditch the Peter Gabriel cover (a matter of personal taste), but other than that their appeal is pretty undeniable. They're upbeat, but never in a cloying, phony, Grouplovey sort of way. And both Brandon and Maggie Kaiser are passionate lead vocalists, Brandon driving and earthy, Maggie lofty and ethereal. I could see them going places. But, then again, I'm wrong about most things, so ... make of it what you will.

I'm going to take a nap under my desk now. Love you.

&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://codytheband.bandcamp.com/track/give-daddy-a-smile-demo"&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Give Daddy A Smile - DEMO by Cody the Band&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

Remote Consoler, The Happy Casualties, Richard Sax Ross, Matthew Teardrop - Lot 1 - Friday, May 13, 2011

2011-05-16T20:39:00.000-07:00

Oh, hey, I went to see Prince at the Troubadour last week. So ... bully for me. Mr. Millionaire over here.

If you're jealous, don't be. He wasn't that great. I mean, he was great, but he wasn't blowing-a-hundred-bucks-that-I-don't-have great. To say the least, he did not play the hits.

Now, I'm not normally a "play the hits!" kind of guy. By and large, I feel that an artist owes the audience what he or she feels like giving the audience. Caveat emptor and all that. Just because you blow a hundred bucks that you don't have doesn't mean that you can tell Prince--or any lesser or greater artist--what to play.

Then again, this is all coming from a guy who pays to see Bob Dylan's Mumblepalooza whenever it rolls through town, and loves every second of it. Perhaps I'm too deferential to artists.

All that being said, it would have been nice if Prince had played his hits, or, really, if he had just played more songs. He didn't owe it to me or anything. But, still, woulda been nice.

Instead, he spent the better part of the set fronting a jazz-funk jam band. It was a top-notch jazz-funk jam band--I'd venture to say the finest I ever have seen. But, still, as much as I'd like to pretend that I'm capable of getting excited about saxophone virtuosity, I can't, so I won't.

In the end, it's not like I'm a huge Prince fan anyway. I probably shouldn't even have been there, as I was, in effect, taking a ticket away from some theoretical person who'd probably give a kidney and half their liver to see Prince in such a small venue. (And heaven knows I could have used that kidney and liver.) Hell, what do I know about Prince? My favorite Prince song is "7". (I get the feeling this isn't the most respectable favorite Prince song to have. Am I wrong? I don't know. What can I say? I'm a sucker for art that's derived from the Book of Revelation, even though I find the Book of Revelation itself to be rather insufferable. Plus, "7" has an awesome video, what with the lacy masks and the hot girl and the freaky children and Prince in that weird smoky tube and those vagina flowers at the end. It's outta sight.)

So what, in that case, was I doing there? Why throw so much money at an artist I like, but whom I'm not crazy about?

Well, because I didn't want to regret not going. Which is stupid. Think of your million biggest regrets--how many of them involve not going to a concert? None, I hope. Most of them involve ... what, like ... people, right?

I would have regretted missing Friday's show at Lot 1, though. I went, so it's irrelevant. But, still, I would have regretted missing it. Appropriately so, too. Someone needed to support the vibrant, vital ... visceral music that was happening. While the rest of you goons were up at Spaceland, or in your opium dens, or gathering flowers, Brad Roberts and I were keeping it real at Lot 1, taking up as much room as we could to support some underappreciated artists.

Plus, it was fun getting fucked up with old and new friends. (I'm pretty sure that's what I'll be weeping over on my deathbed: "I didn't get fucked up with old and new friends often enough.")

Matthew Teardrop opened the show, solo and acoustic, in civilian attire: a beanie pulled low and a backpack, no army helmet or pea coat in sight. And ... what's there to say? What's there to say about thirty minutes of the most gut-wrenchingly incisive music out there, played for an audience of seven that eventually expanded to near twenty lucky souls?

He played five new songs, plus "Smoky Mountain", the centerpiece of Manhattan Murder Mystery's recent LP. He opened with "Artie Lange", a new song that stands with, if not above, his best work. In the song, Teardrop continues to mine the lives of odd celebrities, outsiders who stumble into fame only to fall low and fall hard. In the MMM classic "Owen Hart" he took the absurd death of a wrestler and turned the man into a folk hero. "Artie Lange" falls into the same category, but, in the end, it's something quite different.

It's hard not to feel sympathy for Artie Lange. I mean, on a personal level, some people might feel compelled to write him off as a fat, hopeless junkie. On a professional level, some might dismiss him as a crude purveyor of dick jokes. But all you have to do is read his book--or, for that matter, pay the slightest bit of attention to him when he speaks--and you'll see that there's a brilliant, damaged mind behind those dick jokes. He has the type of comic mind that, under different circumstances, with different life experiences, could easily have evolved into the next Bill Hicks. That's not how it worked out, but given the stories and the jokes Artie has told over the years, he's got nothing to apologize for.

But, back to that personal level: he's also, undeniably, a fat, alcoholic drug addict. Not only that, but he's a fat, alcoholic drug addict whose public persona and fame are, it would seem, inextricably intertwined with his being a fat, alcoholic drug addict. That must be a tough place to arrive. I mean, evidently so: about a year and a half ago, he stabbed himself in the stomach repeatedly, only to be discovered by his mother, who rushed him to the hospital.

And that's the story Teardrop tells in his new song. Speaking from Artie's point of view, he effortlessly inhabits the mind of someone driven to such violent despair, and he carefully plucks out the sparse, resigned words he finds there. The song is so eerily concise; in taking on the type of agony Artie must have faced, words inevitably fail; they invariably come out banal--just so much half-articulated air. What's the point in trying to be florid and detailed? "Fucked my life up beyond repair," Teardrop laconically sings. "I stabbed myself in the stomach ... eighteen times." Nothing romantic or heroic about it. It evokes nothing so much as a tragic shrug of the shoulders, a bowing to the inexorable, delusional logic of pain. It's a work of breathtaking empathy.

And it's always worth noting that the ghosts of traditional American music reside somewhere deep in Teardrop's bones. Even in a suicide ballad about a fundamentally urban American, a man who is New Jersey through and through, he throws in a closing line that breathes life into all those old, weird characters who centuries of folk singers have buried six feet under the clay: "I ain't got much reason to live / So I might as well just die / Bury me down in the cold country ground / I'm sure nobody would mind."

I'm sure I'll ramble about the second song of the night, "Drunk as Fuck", at some point in the future. It's not about a celebrity or a folk hero. It's about a guy named Teardrop, and the human condition, and it'll break your heart.

And on and on from there.

(You can watch his entire set here, courtesy of Tyson Zoltan, though I'm somewhat disinclined to provide this link, because shame on you for not being there.)

I caught most of Richard Sax Ross's set, which I very much enjoyed.

But (1100 words later) this night was about The Happy Casualties and the release of their fine album Sons of the New West, which I highly recommend.

I'd been meaning to catch the Casualties for about a year, which gave me lots of time to weirdly internalize all sorts of ill-sourced assumptions about what they would sound like. Why did I think they were some kind of hard-ass balls-to-the-wall garage rock outfit? Did someone actually tell me this, or am I just making bizarre assumptions based on band names now?

I don't know!

At any rate, while I was expecting the best, what I discovered was in reality more delicate, expansive, and interesting than what I'd anticipated. I'm kind of starting to wish they were a hard-ass balls-to-the-wall garage rock outfit, since that would make my job here easier. But, playing as a three-piece, they melded a lot more influences than that into songs that ranged from the hushed and wistful to the gritty and boisterous to the chilly and dark. Frontman Stephen Sigl proved a compelling narrator, with a voice that relied more on toughness, conviction and confidence than range, which, in the end, I find more impressive. Pretty voices are born. Conviction is earned.

I'd like to see them again to get a tighter grip on how they're evolving outside of the context of their record. Are they pinballing between subgenres? Or are they in fact offbeat enough that one can say they're actually doing something different.

Who knows? Not me. But it's good.

Closing out the night were Randolph Williams and Todd McLaughlin from One Trick Pony, billed as Remote Consoler.

And, uh, yeah, I don't want to talk about it.

Les Blanks - 'In Country'

2011-05-13T14:08:00.000-07:00

Do we take Les Blanks for granted? Probably.

Well, maybe you don't. I shouldn't presume. You may very well wake up every morning, empty your bladder, and say a quiet prayer thanking G-d or Jesus or Allah or Gaia for the continued existence of Les Blanks. Perhaps you fall asleep every night teary-eyed with gratitude that such a solid band is out there doing its thing.

What I'm trying to say, I guess, is that I take them for granted. (Excuse me for briefly projecting my shortcomings onto you. It won't happen again.)

Case in point: Two weeks ago at the band's record release show at Spaceland. I had been looking forward to this show. I hadn't seen Les Blanks in a while. But instead of focusing on the airtight, rollicking rock and roll that was to come, I got gloriously, disgracefully wasted.

I mean, it wasn't entirely my fault. (It was entirely my fault, of course, but hear me out.) That Black Jeebus band was opening, and I really don't care for them--like, irrationally so--so I spent the entirety of their interminable set in the rear bar. And, well, Jimmy was pouring 'em fast and strong. Next thing I know it's morning, and I'm the proud owner of a Les Blanks CD, a tiny Les Blanks t-shirt that barely stretches over my gut, and only the vaguest memories of the night before.

Some might say this qualifies as taking Les Blanks for granted. Some might say it's irrelevant. Some might say I have a drinking problem. But, really, who's to say? Let's not get bogged down in semantics and value judgments.

At any rate, In Country (the Les Blanks album that mysteriously ended up on my nightstand) seems to indicate that, while I was lost in whiskey's prickly embrace, I was hearing some perfectly executed songs.

It would be easy to mistake Les Blanks for a trifle, an entertaining enough drinking soundtrack, a bar band. They work within a well-trod genre--bluesy countryish indie whatever rock, the type of stuff hacks like me call "twangy" and "gritty" and "rootsy" and "whiskey-soaked" and, uh, let's see here ... "rollicking." As I've said before, it's the type of music that's so easy to play competently, and so hard to play well.

But if I had to come up with an example of a band that plays it well, Les Blanks would be high on the list. They play it straight (the fist-pumping opener "Straw Man") just as well as they go nuts (the score for a modern apocalypse, "Hecho en Pakistan"), and it's always precisely controlled.

Their aims are modest. But if you judge a record solely by how well it achieves what it sets out to achieve, In Country will be one of the finest albums you'll hear this year.

Listen to it. Buy it. Whatever. We're all doomed anyway.

</div>

Seasons, Count Fleet - Casey's - Friday, May 6, 2011

2011-05-08T20:50:00.000-07:00

It would seem that you have forgotten how to review shows.

This amnesia should not exist. Far from being elusive, show reviewing should be automatic by this point in your, um, career. You've spent the better part of a year reviewing several shows a week (with a few breaks here and there due to depression, discouragement, and a rigorous drinking schedule). Is not music blogging like riding a bike (i.e. goofy-looking to the outside observer, conducive to head injuries, and impossible to unlearn)?

You remember the basic structure. Right here, for example, should be the part where you ramble about something semi-relevant. It might be a rumination tangentially related to the bands you saw the other night, or it could be a seemingly unrelated anecdote that will later be tied into the actual "show reviewing" portion of the show review. Or not. Maybe it will only tie into the "show review" in a distant, instinctive, dreamlike, bullshit way. In any event, the important part is to write enough words so that, in the end, you feel like you've sufficiently differentiated yourself from other bloggers who review shows, even if it's only insofar as you're exponentially more self-obsessed and self-indulgent than they are. Everyone needs a hook.

But you can't seem to do it right anymore. It's not that you haven't witnessed some inspiring music recently: C-Horse and The Terrapin and Peg Leg Love and So Many Wizards and Battles and Cody the Band and Les Blanks and others have provided you with everything you ask for from bands. But the words haven't been there.

And when the words do come--when you force yourself to write something--it invariably comes out in the second person. You're not sure why this is. A hundred years ago or so, such a gimmick might have been considered innovative, but in the ragged, sorrowful year of our Lord 2011, it's just played out.

You have some ideas, though, as to why you suddenly find this technique so appealing. Writing in the second person is a cheap, easy way to seem less self-absorbed, to use "I" and "me" considerably less. Plus, when you have written lately, it has involved topics that you're not entirely comfortable addressing in a public forum, such as spiritual longing and your unhealthy obsession with the music of WHY?. Rather than associating yourself with such topics, you attribute your feelings to an abstract "you."

To be honest, there have been moments over the past few weeks when you thought your public life as a local music blogger of some note was over. You decided to put your pseudonym to rest and reassert your old identity: just some drunk asshole who goes to shows. Your work was done. It was time to move on.

But you were never serious about that. There was nothing to move on to, unless you count drinking alone. And when a chorus of voices built demanding that you return to blogging (well, not a chorus, really--more of a jam band), you decided to reclaim your passion, to go to shows, drink, observe, and review the living hell out of every band. You cut your hair off. You shaved your beard. A new era had come.

Then you went to Casey's Friday night and you realized that you'd forgotten how to review shows.

You could, you thought, write about how you don't like Casey's. That seemed like something you would do. But what would be the point of that? Why wallow in negativity, even if a bro bar in the aftermath of a Laker playoff loss is as close to hell as you ever hope to come?

You could just focus and write about the bands. But that would be boring for everyone involved. Who wants to read a show review that's not weighed down by paragraph upon paragraph of irrelevancies? Not you. Not me. Not Hater X.

So where did that leave you?

You could ramble on and on about how you've forgotten how to do show reviews? And then you could throw in a few kind words about the bands, who did turn in lovely sets Friday night?

Yup. That's it.

Let's make this happen.

Count Fleet Played a sunny, bouncy set of hard-to-resist pop, as has been standard operating procedure for them lately.

Seasons isn't your favorite band in the world, but they probably should be. Their set was sweet and dark, ragtag and goofy. Every time you blinked they were conjuring a different sound, evoking a different emotion, tightening and falling beautifully apart.

Okay. Okay. That wasn't so bad. It wasn't good, but it wasn't so bad. You think you could get back into the habit of show reviewing. After all, you're going to have to. Tragically, it's what you were born to do. You will be doing it for the rest of your life. (The world is ending on May 21st, right? You hope so. You're really banking on the Rapture being nigh. You don't have a back-up plan.)

You're not sure whether it's more appropriate to close out this review by embedding "Light, Lost" or "Always".

Let's go with "Always". Why not?

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://sseasons.bandcamp.com/track/always"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Always by Seasons&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

How About That: //orangenoise

2011-05-02T18:34:00.000-07:00

We've all been there:

You get home from the Silverlake Lounge around 1 a.m. It's been a long bus ride back, but you're still pretty wasted and fairly alert, so you break out your crusty old laptop and start poking around the internet. One thing leads to another. Next thing you know you're on Twitter and you're drunkenly apologizing to someone in Pakistan for America's Predator Drone attacks on his country.

Yeah, you know how it is.

The next morning, of course, you feel kind of dopey about this. It's sort of like going up to a random black person and apologizing for slavery and Jim Crow and Donald Trump. Plus, the Twitter friend in question--a musician based in Karachi--lives pretty damn far from Waziristan, so perhaps he's not the most appropriate person to apologize to. (Then again, if Pakistani robots were slaughtering civilians in Alabama, you'd probably feel rather peeved about it.)

However, in my case, it all worked out for the best. The Twitter follower I apologized to was Talha Wynne, frontman of the band //orangenoise. He said that if I gave his band a listen he'd forgive me for all the drone attacks.

I figured this was a pretty good deal. Absolution for my silent complicity in my nation's sins, and all I had to do was check out a five song EP? Twenty minutes of music, and the blood would be washed from my taxpaying hands? The gruesome, inexorable logic of the American Empire would no longer be my problem?

How could I say no?

To make the deal that much sweeter, it turns out //orangenoise is making some fine music. Putting both politics and undeclared war aside, the twenty minutes were a real pleasure.

//orangenoise produces some deep, broad, thrumming sounds, the kind that start right in your chest and creep out from there. In the classic shoegazey style, the vocals are understated compared to the chunky, assaultive guitars, but they manage to maintain a punkish singalong sensibility. It's an impressive melding of influences and vision. If such a thing were geographically feasible, I could see //orangenoise fitting rather nicely on a bill with local bands like Smokers in Love and Modern Time Machines.

Check out the opening track off their //veracious EP. I'm pretty sure it won't actually cleanse us of our responsibility for our nation's war crimes, but it can't hurt. (If you like what you hear, you can download the whole EP for free on Bandcamp.)

<a href="http://orangenoise.bandcamp.com/track/rabblerouser">Rabblerouser by //orangenoise</a>

Yoni Wolf - Bootleg Theater - Thursday, April 21, 2011

2011-04-22T23:44:00.001-07:00

...I mean, it must be weird for an artist like Yoni to just walk around among his audience like he did at the show, and to man the merch booth as he did, because he's the type of musician who gets in your head, you know, like, WHY? isn't the type of band whose albums you just enjoy a lot and you look forward to the next one and when they're in town you might go check them out if it's not too expensive and there's nothing better happening in town that night, no, they're the type of band that you want to understand, that you spend unsettling amounts of time contemplating and trying to figure out just what it is about these sounds and these words that affect you so much, what it is about a stray, fairly nonsensical couplet coupled with a particularly vivid beat that can dig so deeply into your brain and release so many elusive chemicals, the type of chemicals that other music doesn't touch, chemicals that all the cognitive behavioral therapy in the world can only palely imitate, chemicals that external chemicals can occasionally replicate but only in a way so false and lacking that it's hardly worth the trouble anyway, and, unlike how it is with most artists, you want to understand the mind behind the music that releases such wonderful chemicals in your glitchy, addled brain, you want to know more about the person behind it all, not because you think you'd understand him or he'd understand you or that you'd be best buddies, but because your personality is nothing if not addictive, and music this good cannot be enough for you, once you exhaust what's available on iTunes and, further, all the out-of-print stuff from his past that you'd gladly pay handsomely for if you had the opportunity to, like Greenthink and Reaching Quiet and Almost Live from Anna's Cabin and Miss Ohio's Nameless and Part Time People Cage, all of which you eagerly track down on Mediafire, once you've exhausted this, these hours and hours of sound and words both brilliant and stonily ephemeral, you need more, so you find yourself trawling the internet for interviews, even as you feel stupid, since even sophisticated interviews of brilliant writers and raconteurs conducted by respected journalists are generally fairly useless when compared to the writer's work, so you're not sure exactly what you expect to find in five year old interviews with a shy Cincinnati rapper conducted by half-wit bloggers, but you do it anyway, because his music is in your head, not like it's caught-in-your-head but it's IN YOUR HEAD, and it's not going anywhere, and you need something more, some insight into how this music happened, what combination of elements, what happenstance went into making an artist who can see things so differently and so clearly and still have the vocabulary and the wit to convey it to the rest of us, you have to know this, even as it becomes clear early on that Yoni's not the easiest interview, that he's remarkably and somewhat endearingly inarticulate, and rather guarded, yet, in spite of considerable odds, the interviews are without fail revealing, because how could they not be, given how oddly revealing his songs are, so when he's asked about a song like "Gemini (Birthday Song)" or "Good Friday", just the way he reacts to questions about work so cuttingly confessional is inherently significant, inherently revealing, no matter how evasive or "um"-laden the answers may be, so you keep searching, googling well into the night, everything from his Pitchfork Guest List to an audio interview he did with a Christian music site that turned rather uncomfortable rather fast, and, in the end, you learn a lot but none of it's what you want to know, which is the elusive HOW, how he did it, how he made this music, because, in the end, he's just a guy, a weird guy who feels more than most people do, no doubt, but just a guy with gifts that no one this side of God can explain, and you can imitate him all you want using all the gems of information gleaned from the dozens of interviews, you can take up exercise and become a vegan and learn to figure skate all you want, you can change your hair- and beardstyle every few months, but that still doesn't mean you're gonna be able to write "These Few Presidents", which, in the end, is what you want, you feel like if you could write a line as indelible as, "Even though I haven't seen you in years, yours is a funeral I'd fly to from anywhere," then you'd die with a satisfied mind, but you wouldn't even have to go that far, you'd be perfectly happy just having written that song's second-best line, which is, of course, "Wah wah wah," because those three perfect syllables are better than anything you've ever written, which is really the problem, the joy and the frustration of your relationship with WHY?'s music, I mean, this being the seventh WHY?/Yoni set I've seen (read about the others here if you're so inclined), I've found that there are three aspects that affect you most about each performance, the first being the sheer pleasure of seeing a great band with a great frontman who never phones it in, is always engaging, his gorgeously unpretty voice always impeccably controlled, and his between song wit ranging from cutting rejoinders to surreal silliness, I mean, it's just always a good show, but the second aspect is a bit more intense, has a bit more meaning, it being that inescapable, ecstatic sense it gives you that you're seeing an artist at the absolute height of his considerable powers, you're seeing him smack-dab in the middle of his supernova years when every song is an unforeseeable step forward, and when, however many years from now, he's comfortably retired in the wilds of Cincinnati or doing nostalgia tours or perhaps still making new music that realistically cannot match the vitality of what he did in his twenties and thirties, you can say to yourself, fuck, I saw him when he was touring in support of Alopecia, I saw him debut a handful of Eskimo Snow songs in the courtyard of an art gallery, I saw him debut brand new songs from Eskimo Snow's follow-up at the Bootleg Theater before they were even recorded, and even though it wasn't the ideal circumstance--it took place in the theater play part of the Bootleg, not the front bar area where they usually had shows, so it was, like, seated, and it was difficult to drink/use the bathroom/smoke without losing your seat, I mean, your friends could have saved your seat for you, but it was the wild west in there as far as seating went, and you didn't want to risk it, so, in the end, you kind of felt trapped and claustrophobic, but Yoni's one of those rare artists you can enjoy sober, with a full bladder, and nicotine-deprived, to such an extent that you had no patience for the idiots in front of you who kept getting up during the set to get drinks from the bar in the other room, because, while you're the king of giving up your primo spot at a show in favor of further drunkening yourself back at the bar, all you could think was, YOU FUCKING DINGBATS, YONI AND JOSIAH WOLF ARE UP THERE DEBUTING SONGS FROM THE NEXT WHY? ALBUM WHICH ISN'T EVEN RECORDED YET AND YOU KNOW HOW FUCKING PERFECTIONIST THEY ARE, I MEAN, GOD, HOW LONG DID IT TAKE FOR ESKIMO SNOW TO SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY AFTER IT WAS RECORDED, SO IT COULD BE YEARS BEFORE YOU HEAR THESE SONGS AGAIN, AND YOU'RE WASTING THIS OPPORTUNITY IN FAVOR OF GETTING ANOTHER FUCKING BEER, I MEAN, MY GOD, WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU, WHY DON'T YOU JUST GET DRUNK AFTER THE SHOW AND EVERY OTHER NIGHT OF THE WEEK, THAT'S WHAT I PLAN ON DOING--anyway, as I was saying, even though it wasn't the ideal circumstance, you knew you were privileged, that seeing such an artist in such a way made caring about music worth it, made it worth sifting through all the mediocrity and worse, so yes, these are the good aspects of your average or above-average WHY? show, but the third aspect, the more frustrating aspect, the most frustrating aspect, is the sheer intimidation you feel beholding an artist who is so, so, so fucking good at what he does, that you, as someone who fancies himself creative, who likes to glue words together, when you see such perfectly realized artistry--from the opening a capella rap to the Smiths cover to the gentle piano rap of the "Pick Fights"/"Deceived" medley to the quietly euphoric version of "These Few Presidents" that closed the show--it can light a fire, it can make you want to create, it can inspire you, or, on the other hand, and perhaps more likely, it can make you give up, it can make you realize the true, abysmal depths of your own limitations, it can make you resolve to stop stressing, quit it with the abortive creations, and get as much pleasure as you can out of spectating, you, you think, shall be a full-time audience. So, yeah, as I was saying, Yoni's music and persona affect people in weird ways--I mean, not me, but other people--so it must be weird for him to be so accessible to his fans, since they probably lay some weird shit on him...

EXCLUSIVE: "We've Just Cheated Death" by Cody the Band

2011-04-21T13:46:00.000-07:00

I come to you from, apparently, beyond the grave to say: I know where you're going to be tonight. I mean, not to be creepy. I'm not keeping close tabs on you or anything, or haunting you (even though I could). I mean, I do some low-level Facebook stalking now and then, but, really, you can't hold that against me. You're gorgeous.

But you're a good, smart person, so it's rather obvious to me that you will be here tonight:

It's a hell of a lineup. And to whet your appetite, here's a brand new song from Cody the Band's new EP, Stranger Things Have Happened:

We've Just Cheated Death by Cody the Band by Lord Growing

Everyone who attends will receive a free download of the new EP. See you there!

Danielson, Death to Anders, One Trick Pony - The Satellite - Saturday, April 9, 2011

2011-04-11T22:55:00.000-07:00

About four years ago, on one wine-soaked Halloween night, you briefly joined a conga line, and you've regretted it ever since.

Nothing bad came of the experience. You didn't injure yourself. You weren't captured on film. You weren't caught inappropriately sniffing the hair of the girl in front of you.

But, still, the memory haunts you. You're all for letting loose, dancing, setting aside the inhibitions that stand between human beings and communal ecstasy. But conga lines? They're just so ... so.... You just can't do it, okay?

Which brings you to Saturday night's Danielson show.

You love Danielson. You firmly believe (and are correct) that their album Ships is a masterpiece--an entirely unexpected achievement, the type of record that has no business being as good as it is, the type of collection that you're tempted to call magical. You also love some of the Familie's older, less fully realized records, like Fetch the Compass Kids and Tell Another Joke At the Ol' Choppin' Block. They don't cheer you up, exactly--they're not miracle workers--but if you're already in a good mood, they help you maintain it. They're full of belief and fun and a uniquely wise innocence--joy free of naivete.

Saturday night, you tried to bottle the sensations Danielson's music has instilled in you over the years, holding it inside you (with the help of, let's say, a few whiskeys), ready to direct it at the band just as they directed it back at you. And, for a little while, it worked. You'd been feeling lousy all week, and you were ready for some joy. And there they were, the happiest indie rock band in America, all dressed up in their uniforms, dancing and squealing through "This Day Is a Loaf" and "Grow Up". It was not quite the joyous revival your soul was craving, but you couldn't complain.

Then, for the next song, they demanded that the audience form a conga line. And they lost you.

Lord knows you've been known to mosh. Particularly lately, as your nagging desire for human contact grows more acute. It's usually a bad idea--you've broken your glasses at the Echo, almost destroyed a wall full of knickknacks at Lot 1, and twisted the fuck out of your knee at Pehrspace--but there you go. And when you're not drunk enough to join the moshers, you usually wish you were.

The same cannot be said for conga lines. As much as you want to say yes, to be a part of something, to set aside your fear of looking foolish, a conga line is something you simply cannot abide.

Why?

Ugh. You don't know. It's a good question.

You don't think of yourself as a rugged individualist or whatever--God knows--but there's something about being told when and how to dance that causes you to recoil. You're not proud of this trait, but it exists, and pretending it doesn't won't help anyone.

It probably explains why--in spite of a certain spiritual longing, in spite of your preference for the God Story over the Beautiful Cosmic Accident Story--you can't foresee yourself joining any sort of spiritual community. Even though you suspect--hell, you know--that any modicum of peace will only come with the sacrifice of your ego to something larger, putting aside what you want to do, how you want to dance, in favor of the strictures of a tradition ... you just can't do it. Not yet. You can't join that covenantal community. You can't join that conga line into heaven.

Anyway. That's what you thought as you watched the conga line snaking through Spaceland. It sort of took you out of the whole experience. You lost interest in the rest of the set, until the band played "Did I Step on Your Trumpet". Nothing you saw before that demanded your attention.

It's okay. It's all okay. Ships remains a masterpiece. Danielson remains a beautiful band, even if they do demand that their audiences conga. Heck, it's nothing compared to what Dan Deacon makes his audience do. That guy's an honest-to-goodness fascist.

But, hey, One Trick Pony and Death to Anders played. Aw hell yeah.

It was a good night.

A Grand Alliance, A Kick-Ass Show

2011-04-04T18:10:00.000-07:00

I am pleased to announce that, much like the United States lending a hand to Saddam's Iraq back in the Eighties, your friends at Radio Free Silver Lake have entered into a loose, limited, non-binding affiliation with The 704.

Why would such a storied institution lend its prestige to such a shoddy, morally ambiguous operation as this here blog? It's for a noble purpose, I assure you: We are presenting an unmissable night of exemplary music at that place we used to call Spaceland. (Come to think of it, we still call it Spaceland, even though it's now the Satellite or something.)

I was blasting Rademacher's album Stunts recently, as I drove through Texas Hill Country--that unforgiving terrain that gave rise to noted warmonger and civil rights champion Lyndon Baines Johnson.

Stunts is an impeccable document in any context, but it lent a particularly apt glow to the barren Texan countryside. The record sounds like decrepit, weatherbeaten houses and acres of browning scrub, yet it sounds no less like gleaming cars and trucks, shimmering in the harsh light, speeding at 80 miles per hour past the old-timey general store that doubles as a Valero station. It sounds like America, goddammit. It also sounds kind of like the Pixies, but not too much.

Anyway, Rademacher hasn't played in Los Angeles in too long, and we must--must--come out to the Satellite and give them a good reception, so that they never leave us again. They'll make it worth your while. Promise.

It's a hell of a bill, too. Sweaters will be playing. When I saw them last, they sounded like a roll of Starburst spiked with unreasonable quantities of vodka. Light FM will be playing songs culled from deep in mankind's consciousness, songs you were born humming. And, from San Diego by way of Germany, we have Maren Parusel, whose music will make you dance or swoon or freak out--anything but stand still.

Oh, and Mouse is DJing! And we all know he knows what's what (aside from his misguided defense of some weirdo Zevonite Heresy, but we can forgive that).

Do come. It's 21+ and only eight bucks and a great deal of fun. RSVP here.

Tonight

2011-04-01T08:30:00.000-07:00

Let's have some fun. Yes?