That's right, after drawing about 11,000 fans to Pomona last year, attendance for Friday's punk-rock carnival was 21,000, Warped Tour founder Kevin Lyman said. He cut off ticket sales at noon.
"Punk rock is back," he said. "As of a week ago, we'd sold 9,000 tickets. Now I felt bad; I had to turn kids away. I said, 'C'mon kids, you should've bought a ticket a week ago.'"
The strength of Pomona's lineup -- which included punk torchbearers Pennywise and Bad Religion and veterans the Circle Jerks and the Adolescents, along with radio-friendly acts such as Tiger Army, Yellowcard, Paramore, Circa Survive and the Red Jumpsuit Apparatus -- had a lot to do with it. But the crowd already has Lyman thinking ahead to the end of the 45-date nationwide tour. The finale is Aug. 25. at L.A.'s Home Depot Center.
"I'm already thinking about how we can reconfigure it to get more people in there," he said, noting that 7,000 advance tickets have been sold for that final date.
A bit later, Bad Religion capped Friday's show in the waning daylight -- with Lyman, no doubt, among the thousands shouting along to the lyrics of "American Jesus."
[Technical problems delayed these final two posts; today's festivities are probably already rocking in Ventura, where it's sure to be cooler -- though not necessarily quieter -- than Pomona was on Friday:]
Saw snippets of a lot of bands in the late afternoon: Victorville's Loraine Drive rocked with the sun bearing straight down on the band and the crowd; the U.K.'s Gallows spewed out a caustic brand of punk; Bleed the Dream blasted off from a tiny stage; and Long Beach's I Am Ghost rattled ears with a goth/hard-core hybrid. If I interpreted the proceedings correctly, singer-violinist Kerith Telestai read an emotional statement from the stage late in the set resigning from the band.
But nothing prepared me for the hometown outing by the Desperation Squad -- who were kicked out of their own tour bus on Warped '01 and were voted Most Annoying Band on the reality show "America's Got Talent. People like to throw things at this bunch of '80s leftovers, led by the wildly entertaining but very profane Mr. P (who apparently once ran for mayor of Pomona).
It started before the set even began, with empty plastic water bottles and other small detritus being thrown at the stage. When Desperation Squad started playing, Mr. P might as well have been wearing a bull's-eye instead of a shirt bearing an obscene phrase (I had to edit the following photographs carefully). After a water bottle dinged a security guy in the forehead, the yellow-clad guards moved to the side; it seemed to be all in good fun. Then a flying hot dog hit Mr. P square in the bridge of the nose, causing his sunglasses to cut him below the right eye. He carried on, even distributing tortillas to the crowd to give them ammunition for the band's song "Taco Truck."
When the first entire wastecan of trash hurtled toward the stage, though, things got interesting. Other trashcans -- 3-foot-square cardboard affairs -- followed, showering fans upfront (and a few brave photographers in the well) with litter.
Warped management pulled the plug on the set as the band began its fourth song.
Top, Desperation Squad takes the stage (yes, that's some sort of, er, doll, behind Mr. P). Above, Mr. P during the set.
Paramore kicked up more than some late-afternoon dust. They had a "Riot!" -- the title of the Tennessee band's new album -- which a good portion of the crowd copped to already owning during their main stage set. It was hard to get close, but you could spot the buoyant Hayley Williams, with her bright orange hair, from a long way off.
It was clear than Paramore had won its fans, and the Utah quintet Meg and Dia (below), their voices cutting through the afternoon clamor, showed they were well on their way.
On the way to the other end of the field, I checked out O.C.'s New Year's Day on a sidestage. They're a band you might want to meet -- if for no other reason than to find out what its stylist had in mind with singer Ashley Costello's get-up. What to make of her tattered look? Lovelorn? Love-torn? The music, to say the least, was well-worn, spiky pop-punk delivered with the requisite energy and an excess of vamping by Costello.
Linger not, however, for Pennywise was about to hold forth on the main stage. The South Bay veterans acted like they owned the place, which they essentially do. They ripped through a greatest-hits set and sparked at least three moshpits, one so far from the stage you could barely hear the music.
It had been a couple years since the band had played the Warped Tour, but one thing's for sure: They work as well here as sunscreen.
You fight through the crowds of spiked haircuts, tattoos and roasting flesh, and you get hungry. The food's reasonable -- finding a place to eat it is another story, especially since the merchants look askance when access to their goods is blocked by a minefield of collapsed bodies. It's almost worth becoming a vendor here because your tent gives you shade.
So we take this opportunity to nod at the folks from Substratum, a San Fernando Valley-based shirt company that is hawking its wares on its second Warped Tour. Simple concept, theirs -- make shirts without company logos or band names or other surreptitious forms of marketing. I'm sure there's a term for their designs' artistic sensibility, but I can't think of it. Most of the people who stopped by merely said, "cool."
That moshpit that the Briggs started at noon was a dustbowl by the time the Circle Jerks went on around 2:30. Dust and punk rock flew, with the requisite shout-outs to their South Bay brethren. There was a bit of a beef, too -- apparently the Jerks' pals, the Damned, were only lukewarmly received on the last Warped. So the Circle Jerks brought them back in spirit with a cover, along with some paternal advice for the masses: "Be nice."
After wandering through the band-merch area, where T-shirt design seemed to have reached its all-time loud, I popped into the MySpace tent, where many bands are performing acoustic sets in addition to their plugged-in madness. It's cozy in there. And the generator that supplied the juice to the tent was down, delaying the set by Riverside faves Panima (that's Justin Canela, right) -- who are slugging it out despite voice problems encountered by their vocalists.
Then, after a quick stop at a side stage because Emily Whitehurst, the lead singer from the Action Design, sounded so nice, and after a welcome romp through a parade of squirt guns (who knew that a grown-up would find them so welcome), and after a slight intrusion on one of the many photo ops fans were getting with the Energizer Bunny, it was on to Yellowcard.
As the kids say, they killed it. Fans crushed toward the main stage, crowd surfers went nuts, and the California-via-Florida quintet powered through a set of their anthems. You got the feeling you'd be expelled from the Pomona infield if you didn't sing along. It was perfect summertime stuff.
That's Ryan Key and Yellowcard, above, and, below, the fans:
Buzz Bands looses his inner teenager at the Vans Warped Tour, where the principal mission seems to be to move bodies and move merchandise. Under the scorching sun at the Fairplex in Pomona on Friday, "punk rock summer camp" kicked off, seeming more like a carnival with a punk-rock soundtrack. You can look at this two ways, it seems: This is either where suburban teen angst goes to simmer under the summer sun, or this is where true punk goes to die, lost in sea of the crass commercialism doing bustling business under the scores of tents hawking energy drinks, mall fashions and those absolutely necessary sunglasses.
Vitamin Water is only 3 bucks, though.
Things move fast here, so there won't be a lot of typing today. Bands play 30-minute sets, and it's really heaven for the ADD-addled masses. Without taxing your legs too much, you can see three bands in an hour.
Like we did.
One of my L.A. favorites, the Briggs got a moshpit going in front of one of the mainstages in the noonday sun -- and crammed nine songs into a 30-minute set. Nice job, lads. The sweat and choruses were flying, and none rang truer than "Somehwere in this city / Walkin' the streets / Waiting in the shadows."
A bit later, the Adolescents blasted through a set on the other main stage, even though their veteran humor was lost a little bit on the young admirers: "Some bands work their whole lives to get on this stage. Not me. I worked my whole life to sit over there (pointing at the Fairplex grandstand) and watch the horses."
Then it was on to the Vincent Black Shadow, a Vancouver, B.C., five-piece that's doing its best to make ska-punk interesting again. They were impressive, with vocalist Cassandra Ford's detached cool (and how hard is that today?) working much better than any bubbly manufactured optimism.
[Ears Wide Open is an occasional series highlighting L.A. bands and their music:]
Six guys, six sensibilties -- and "an anything-goes type of mentality," singer-instrumentalist Tommy Valencia says. You're not getting an album when you happen upon "TOCA," the debut from the L.A. band of that name. You're getting paraded through every department of your mental record store. It's not so much genre-bending as it is genre-hopping. The album quick-cuts between rock to jazz to reggae to pop to hip-hop to punk.
It might all seem a bit contrived, if the songs -- the work of musicians with impressive resumes as collaborators and session men -- didn't reflect such a passion for those excursions. Among the guests on the record (which was released in May) are the likes of Aceyalone, Pigeon John and Busdriver. What TOCA members Xinxo (Danny Rodriguez), Danny Levin, Max Heath, Valencia and brothers Ceschi and David Ramos have produced is a collection that's bound to land a track or two or your iPod. Maybe even this one:
I know, the headline sounds like some kind of Blue Light Special. But take it literally -- thanks to KCRW-FM, you can download the new single off the Greyboy Allstars' album "What Happened to Television?" Oh ... (inserting my best announcer's voice) ... if you act now.
The song is the killer cover of "How Glad I Am," which features vocals by the Living Sisters -- the trio of L.A. women who are estimable artists in their own right, Eleni Mandell, Inara George and Becky Stark.
If hearing Entrance doesn't seem like time travel enough -- listening to Guy Blakeslee is (delightfully) like slipping through a psych-rock wormhole -- there is the video for his song "Grim Reaper Blues," off the album "Prayer of Death."
Entrance, along with Six Organs of Admittance, performs tonight at the Silent Movie Theatre (611 N. Fairfax). It's a benefit for the recently resuscitated counterculture magazine Arthur. There will be readings, poetry and an appearance by Ruthann Friedman. Tickets are $15.
Chicago singer-songwriter David Vandervelde was only 19 three years ago when he penned and recorded "Nothin' No," a slow-drag bang-your-header. It's only now being pushed as the second single from his debut album on Secretly Canadian, "The Moonstation House Band." Took a while. Ex-Wilco guitarist, Jay Bennett, co-wrote the tune and plays bass, but Vandervelde handles all the other chores, including production. There's a wonderful sense of crazy youthful abandon in the track, from Vandervelde's reedy whine to the hemorrhaging tubes in the amps (electric Neil Young fans, take note!). This is a song that demands to be played loud.
So Sunday night's Prince festivities at the Roosevelt Hotel weren't quite sold out ... although it helped when a high roller (name unknown) showed up at the door with $21,000-plus in cash and bought a chunk of the dinner seats.
I'd love to get his take on the show. Somebody have him call 1-800 LATIMES and ask for me; it's toll-free.
◊ ◊ ◊
Because of Prince's previous commitments, the last two dates of his seven-show stand are still TBA. Rumor is they will happen sometime around mid-July.
This week's shows (Thursday, Friday and Saturday) are sold out.
Touts for Tuesday, June 26
The National is at the El Rey, and it's sold out -- nice to see since the band's "Boxer" is one of the year's most compelling recordings. L.A.'s own the Broken West open. ... Plenty of other options around town: Frankel leads a three-band bill (with no cover charge) at Boardner's in a show put on by Radio Free Silver Lake. ... The Willowz join the Ruby Tuesday festivities at the Key Club, where power-pop trio Teaneck is finishing off its residency celebrating the release of the sweet "Masters of Achievement." ... South Wales' Funeral for a Friend warms up for the Warped Tour with a date at the Troubadour. ... Chris and Thomas celebrate the release of their album "Land of Sea" with a show at the Hotel Cafe. ... And at the Echo, balladeers Audrye Sessions headlines, with local songstress IO Perry opening.
Well, kind of. The Hollywood music store will be closed from 4 to 9 p.m. Wednesday to accommodate a special in-store performance by McCartney (which was first reported here). Wanna-be patrons should line up on Ivar next to the store on Wednesday morning; wristbands for the show will be given out beginning at 12:30 p.m. Wednesday. The former Beatle has a new album, "Memory Almost Full."
Summer is here, in case you were too busy on MySpace to get the memo. The concert calendar always seems to remind me before the real calendar, what with the Hollywood Bowl kicking into gear and the onslaught of distinguished veteran rock bands starting to make the stadium rounds.
(Email from a friend who went to Dodger Stadium this weekend: "They were pretty awesome for a Police cover band.")
The smaller events have their cachet too -- the Sunday afternoon Do-Over at Crane's, the Little Radio Summer Camp. And then there was last Thursday's Late Night at LACMA, the annual summer solstice soiree, which attracted 7,853 museum visitors and probably disappointed hundreds of others who waited for hours in long lines only to give up. (To be fair, what part of "early arrival recommended" did you not understand?)
Late Night was a melange of music, hipster ephemera (T-shirt screen printing by Hit + Run now seems mandatory if you are throwing any kind of cross-cultural event) and art. Suffice to say there were plenty of photo ops in the Dan Flavin retrospective, a refuge for attendees who could only handle small doses of offerings from DJs Steve Aoki, Internationalist and handful of others. I missed the set by the always-solid Rebirth but caught one of L.A.'s favorite party bands, Ima Robot, who got folks dancing despite the band's relative lack of amplification.
◊ ◊ ◊
Where did June go?
The Monday night residencies end tonight at Spaceland, the Echo and Silverlake Lounge. The L.A. quartet the Deadly Syndrome (Spaceland) seems to have grown into polished band overnight (and wait till you hear the album), and Thailand (Silverlake Lounge), despite playing as a three-piece with electronic rhythms, serve up a compelling new-wave/post-punk cocktail. And I have not made it to the Echo to see Philadelphia ex-pats Burning Brides (maybe tonight?), but people I trust give me good reports.
◊ ◊ ◊
At Safari Sam's on Friday night, the Silver Lake/Echo Park masses gathered to bid farewell to Sea Level Records and its proprietor, Todd Clifford. The independent outlet has been a locus of the Eastside music scene for more than 5 years, and Clifford is closing more for I-need-a-life-change reasons than business.
Today is the last day Sea Level is scheduled to be open.
Photos: LACMA attendees get up close with Dan Flavin's work; Ima Robot rocks in the courtyard. By Kevin Bronson / LAT.
[Read Times pop music critic Ann Powers' review of the first night of Prince's seven-show residency in Hollywood here.]
It is 3:30 a.m. and I just dragged myself home from the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, where Prince played the second of his seven shows to the well-heeled (and, on this night, well-lubricated). My head is throbbing and my legs ache more than they should for somebody who spends many a night as a standing-room-only patron in indie rock clubs where basically all you can do is stand.
But it was exhilarating. Maybe not every single minute of it, but certainly enough that anybody who complains about shelling out $312.10 for a standing-room ticket ought to be taken outside a knocked around a little bit by a couple of those polite security dudes who were so intent on policing the cozy Blossom Room for cameras and cell phones.
I'm sure some folks would pony up three hundred bucks just to be in the company of some Hollywood boldface names, but that wasn't the attraction here. It was the music and the musicianship, and if you weren't dazzled by it all then you probably had one too many of the hotel's stiff drinks during the seemingly interminable wait for Prince to materialize.
The set was scheduled to start at 11 p.m., which on this night was 12:55 a.m. Prince Standard Time. (What on earth happened to the concept of punctual Midwestern lads?) Anyway, that's when Prince's estimable horn players paraded through the room; the man himself appeared at 1:05. The next 1 hour, 40 minutes brimmed with an ear-bending avalanche of funk, rock and disco. Karaoke broke out. Prince played some of his hits, touched on some new material and dipped into others' catalogues, including the Beatles'. "The Long and Winding Road" was overwrought as only Prince could overwring it. "Come Together" became a dancefloor song. The artist didn't seem satisfied with a couple attempts at an improvisational jam, but a run of ballads featuring just two acoustic guitars virtually silenced the room, a tough order with this crowd.
By the time Prince and his band were ripping through "You've Got the Look" near the finish, the whole room was up, even the folks in those comfy booths (who had bought the $3,121 dinner-for-two package). In the right rear corner, where tired legs prevailed, there was movement too -- from the Prince look-alike near the sound booth, to the celebutantes in their skimpy dresses, to the aspiring young actor and his date, to the two tipsy Australian reporters who'd seen the Police the night before.
We'd passed the test of stamina and been richly rewarded. If only one of us didn't have to walk the dog in 2 hours.
Photos by Kevin Bronson before the camera police issued their stern warnings.
[Contributor Casey Dolan suffered an anxiety attack watching this video:]
The first video from Unkle's new album, "War Stories" (due July 24) is bound to get viewers feeling a bit constricted around the chest. Ian Astbury, on hiatus from resurrecting the ghost of Jim Morrison, sings the song "Burn My Shadow" as actor Goran Visjnic ("ER" and "Welcome to Sarajevo") wakes up in his boozy post-disaster flat to discover that he has a bit of a problem and not much time to solve it. Director Miguel Sapochnik, who previously worked as a storyboard artist for the films "A Life Less Ordinary" and "The Winter Guest," guides us to an explosive climax in this compelling video. David Cronenberg would be proud.
Mike Semple’s music might be good for chasing desert horizons or assuaging those quick breaths of sadness you catch before returning your gaze to the night sky, but it doesn’t seem to be good for his ego. Humbly, he calls his first album under the nom de tuneSecretary Bird “honest and modest,” adding, “We’re not trying to set any land speed records or reinvent the rock ’n’ roll wheel here. It doesn’t exactly come out swinging.”
No, it comes out soothing, wedding his storytelling and guitar work in textural bliss that recalls “Zuma”-era (or earlier) Neil Young, certainly in how Semple’s coruscated chords prop up his genteel vocals on “Somewhere Girls” and “Affected/Unaffected.” “I’m not interested in trying to out-produce the hot band on the block,” he says. “For me, it’s more about tones.”
The 36-year-old’s ear was tuned to such tones in his native Tucson, Ariz., where he aligned himself with “the cool kids on the block,” Giant Sand co-founders Howe Gelb and Rainer Ptacek and their extended musical family.
“Looking back, it’s really clear how lucky I was to be around these kinds of people,” says Semple, who played briefly in Giant Sand, was a member of Friends of Dean Martinez and Campfire Girls and, with Bill Elm, scored the movie “Fast Food Nation.” “If nothing else, I learned the importance of having a sense of humor, and not taking yourself too seriously.”
“Secretary Bird” was released in March by In De Goot Records, and the band, with bassist Einar Pederson and drummer Kirke Jan, plays tonight at Boardner’s and next Thursday night at the Echo.
Any other indie rocker might regard it as a skeleton in the closet, or a least a topic better deftly evaded, but Nate Cole and his L.A. sextet Castledoor are nothing if not forthright: Cole and bandmate Gabe Combs used to be in a Christian boy band.
"People come at that as if we need to defend ourselves," Cole says amiably of his days in Plus One, who made three albums (selling half a million copies of the first), toured nationally and performed at the 2000 Democratic National Convention. "But we were just coming out of high school and hadn't listened to anything but Top 40 radio when we auditioned."
That was then, and this is now: Castledoor has earned its DIY cred by playing dozens of shows in Eastside clubs, winning hearts with its exuberant boy-girl harmonies and layered guitars and keyboards. The band also just finished recording an EP, "Shoutin' at Mountains," with Earlimart frontman and studio whiz Aaron Espinoza.
Castledoor's tight presentation owes much to the band's family oeuvre — Cole's wife, Lisa, and Combs' wife, Coury, play keys and sing, with Brandon Schwartzel on bass and Joel Plotnik on drums. "We wanted something that worked friendship-wise and music-wise," Cole says of the decision a year ago to add the spouses to the lineup. "But we didn't want it to be gimmicky — they are playing big parts in songs."
As for the past, Cole acknowledges it in the song "Remember When" on Castledoor's "Follow the Dove" EP and moved on. In the manner that many bands do (think: Arcade Fire), the sextet explores spiritual themes in its music, but they are not proselytizing from the stage. Says Cole: "Right now, we're just a starving band hungry for shows."
||| See Castledoor tonight and next Thursday at the Silverlake Lounge, and Friday at Chain Reaction.
I'm not sure exactly what last night's Hilfiger Sessions were for. To remind us of the brand? Eh, not likely. To project upon the hipster masses of Los Angeles that Hilfiger scion Andy holds music very near and dear to his heart, if not wallet? Probably.
Whatever its purpose, the party was strangely wonderful, what with the Avalon reconfigured into a club-within-a-club and an eclectic lineup of performers that included the estimable Section Quartet (who held forth from the south balcony), the charismatic Emma Burgess, the energetic Fiction Plane and the party-hearty guys from Whitestarr. Sure, the lack of a cover charge and the open bar might have had something to do with it too, but it would have been a decent value even without the freebies.
The stage for this affair was a 15-foot square erected in the middle of the Avalon dancefloor. Mics were stationed on three sides of the square, allowing performers to play to the audience in the "round." The actual stage was re-outfitted into a hip lounge, with a bar and sofas. Nicely done.
Have no idea whether Andy Hilfiger will reprise this event (which started as jam sessions at European clubs), but Fiction Plane singer-bassist Joe Sumner likened the proceedings to a house party. "Whose house is this anyway -- yours?" he joked to a nearby patron during his set. "Nice party."
Yes, Fiction Plane drew its share of curiosity-seekers, since Sumner is Sting's son and the band is opening for the Police tonight at an arena near you. Fiction Plane's Britpop-infused indie rock packed plenty of punch, thanks to the work of guitarist Seton Daunt and drummer Pete Wilhoit, and Sumner's icy intensity and pinched vocals suggested that he has not fallen far from the family tree. But Fiction Plane's breakdowns and freakouts, while raising the temperature, felt like non sequiturs.
Nice tour, though.
Photo: Joe Sumner of Fiction Plane
Touts for Wednesday, June 20
Big shows, little shows -- there's plenty of both tonight. The Police at Staples, Nelly Furtado at the Greek and Radio Birdman at the El Rey will fill the big spaces. ... Eleni Mandell, Great Lake Swimmers and Ferraby Lionheart make for a nice triple-whammy at the Hotel Cafe; Juiceboxxx leads the party at the Echo; Moving Picture Show rolls at the Silverlake Lounge; and Astra Heights rocks King King.
[Contributor Casey Dolan knows a truly funky thing when he hears it:]
Following Buzz Bands' exclusive on his Purple Majesty, here is "Dear Mr. Man," an ingenious mix of soul and polemic from Prince and Dr. Cornel West that harks back to the days of Gil Scott-Heron and the Last Poets. There's more than a healthy dollop of simmering funk. Dig those delicious, understated horn charts and Prince's slinky vocals. West, a Princeton professor of Religion and African American Studies, has brought together a hodge-podge of talent -- Andre 3000, Talib Kweli, Rhymefest and Jill Scott among others -- to address the issues facing a black person in America today. The forum is the CD, "Never Forget: A Journey of Revelations," to be released Aug. 14 in partnership with West's Black Men Who Mean Business (BMWMB). The link is only streamable at present.
Prince indeed will be bringing his regal self to the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, kicking off a series of seven performances this Saturday night. Details of the shows, which were to have started earlier this month, have been worked out over the past couple of weeks and will be announced in a release later today.
They are:
The series will be billed "3121 Live" and underwritten by Verizon Wireless, V Cast Song ID and Thompson Hotels, which operates the Roosevelt. Prince will debut new music, including "Guitar," the first single from his new album "Planet Earth," and the song will be available for download by guests at the shows.
Dates of the shows will be this Saturday and Sunday, three nights next week (June 28, 29 and 30), with two additional dates to be announced.
As expected, Prince's shows will not be a cheap ticket. VIP packages (for two), limited to a total of 65, will cost $3,121, with 70 standing-room only tickets going for $312.10. (Yes, numerals in the pricetags add up to 7; the guy has a fondness for that number.)
The show promises to be intimate. The evenings kick off with a 7:30 p.m. dinner in the hotel's Dakota restaurant, presented by Prince's personal chef Lena Morgan. After dinner, guests will go to the Blossom Room for a DJ set followed by a two-hour Prince performance. And at about 1 a.m., Prince will preside over a "free-form jazz jam." Expect cameos by special guests -- the likes of Elton John, Will.I.Am, Herbie Hancock and Kelis have sat in with Price before.
How to get tickets? I'll have details later today. Promise.
[Contributor Casey Dolan can't stop "dancing like a butterfly":]
Common's first single, "The Game," from his upcoming album, "Finding Forever," is a churning track, with rhymes swooping in and out, syncopatingly seducing the listener like a prizefighter looking to land his blow. He may be a Chi-town native, but there's a New York feel to both the song and black and white video. Shades of Elia Kazan, John Cassavetes and John Frankenheimer, except edited by a DJ/mixer with ADD. You can smell the smoke and sweat. The track has a old school funky horn sample and one helluva beat that propels it from start to finish -- from the locker room mirror shots in the opening to the gauzy glaze of a packed club at video's finish. Kanye West produced the track and the great DJ Premier adds the scratching that serves as the basic fabric.
[Our fearless young Buzz Bands correspondent Jeff Weiss refuses to succumb to anything at Bonnaroo: humidity, hallucinations, hippies or hype. Here's his final-day transmission -- if you missed the first three installments over the weekend, just scroll down -- from the wilds of Tennessee. A round of digital applause, please:]
Bronson, Bronson, Bronson:
And on Sunday I didn’t rest,
No the humidity has not gotten to me. Or maybe it has. I’m not sure what’s going on. At Bob Weir & Ratdog, a middle-aged woman performed something vaguely resembling “The Elaine Dance” from "Seinfeld" (a dry-heave set to music), and strangely I found it somewhat re-assuring. A 15-year-old Deadhead in tie-dye slammed back a Budweiser and spun around in a dance last seen in "The Nutcracker." I found it totally normal.
By Day 4, surreal things no longer seem to stand out. I’ve been sucked into the Bonnaroo vortex, a place where the bizarre is par for the course. I mean, there’s something called a silent disco, where hundreds of people strap on headphones and dance to trance music till dawn, looking completely and utterly ridiculous. It’s the sort of place where you can wander around at 2 in the morning and accidentally bump into Bob Weir sitting in with Government Mule and performing a chilling version of the Dead classic, “Loser.” Trust me, it was mind-blowingly awesome.
Once again, Weir was the grand ol’ man of the festival as his status as former rhythm guitarist for the Grateful Dead makes him a veritable deity in the Jam nation.
The gentle jangle and orchestral swoon on the Lovetones' third album, "Axiom," might project the aura of the '60s, but the Australian quartet's songwriter, Matt Tow, keeps his psychedelia forward-looking.
"It's important not to forget the past, but what we're trying to do is take the spirit of that era and make it our own," Tow says. "The last album was more of a rock record; now, because of the instrumentation we used, the music is a lot more textured."
Less swaggering than 2005's "Meditations," the new album (out Tuesday on Tee Pee Records, home to the Brian Jonestown Massacre) was recorded partly at the Sydney Opera House — where the band's engineer works as an assistant — and partly in the home studio of Rob Campanella of L.A. kindred spirits the Quarter After.
In fact, the bucolic single "Wintertime in Hollywood" was inspired by a trip to the U.S. early last year. "You're on the road and away from loved ones, and you find inspiration in that," Tow says.
||| The Lovetones and the Quarter After perform tonight at Safari Sam's.
Touts for Monday, June 18
The Horrors and Bloodcat Love rock the El Rey Theatre, and tickets still remained as of this morning. ... Residencies continue full blast for the Deadly Syndrome (Spaceland), Thailand (Silverlake Lounge), Burning Brides (the Echo) and the Hong Kong Six (Detroit Bar). ... Frank Lenz and Frankel are on the bill at the Scene in Glendale. ... And at Indie 103.1's "Check One ... Two" night at the Viper Room, Strangers Smile and the Shys are playing.
[Maybe the heat and humidity are getting to Buzz Bands man-on-the-scene Jeff Weiss -- he seems to be loving all that is Bonnaroo:]
Hey, Bronson, here we go again ...
4:15 p.m.
By Day 3, a twisted calculus begins to emerge out of the madness that is Bonnaroo. A weariness like you’ve never experienced begins to set in. Shooting pains stab your knee with each step. And you start to empathize with the hippies collapsed (or maybe just lying down) in the ocean of dirt. But out of these tired tribulations, a strange sense of order begins to make itself known; astonishingly you start to fit in. You realize that a bandanna is eminently necessary to cover your face from billions of dirt particles. You start to understand the almost incomprehensible vastness of the concert, its labyrinth of tent cities, vendors and drug dealers scouring the streets like "Blade Runner" gone hippie. You start to consider the possibility that Bonnaroo might be the strangest places you’ve ever been and also one of the best.
Of course, booking bands like the Hold Steady make such conclusions seem logical. After all, few bands seem more appropriate to play Bonnaroo, considering the Hold Steady’s pre-eminent status as America’s best Saturday night band, with Craig Finn’s erudite but unflinchingly honest lyrics heavily bent on illustrating the confusion of being a teenager just trying to get drunk and high. Considering half of this festival is confused teenagers trying to get drunk or high, the kids could relate.
Running through a 1-hour 15-minute heavy on material from last year’s brilliant "Boys and Girls in America" and 2005’s "Separation Sunday," Finn & Co. turned in a typical Hold Steady show: full of bone-crunching drum hits, shouted rapped vocals, blistering guitar solos, and the occasional declaration that “the Yankees suck.” It felt like what rock 'n' roll was meant to be. And when the set ended, the crowd erupted into some of the loudest applause of the weekend to the delight of Finn, who couldn’t stop thanking everyone for their support. To cap it all off, the band’s bassist started tossing cigs into the crowd of adoring fans, took a slug of Jim Beam and walked off-stage with the crowd still losing their minds.
[Buzz Bands delegate Jeff Weiss is in Tennessee, and lucid enough to send along this missive:]
Salutations, KB:
Friday, 1:15 p.m.
Bonnaroo is the type of place where you don’t bat an eyelash when the 17-year old girl hippie girl to the right of you abruptly starts vomiting today’s breakfast (and probably last night’s booze) onto the vast dirt bowl that serves as the festival’s field. In fact, girls think nothing of walking around topless or even donning green paint and dancing manically to Hot Chip, looking like a cluster of relatively attractive jolly green giants. In short, it’s so hippie that you expect the ghost of Jerry Garcia to rise from the dead and start laughing at the drug-addled masses for being fooled into thinking that the String Cheese Incident is a good band.
In other news, the Cold War Kids are still a good band. Don’t believe any of the backlash against them. "Robbers and Cowards" was a fine debut and those Christian rock charges sound even more ridiculous when you see them live, as the only gospel they’re prostylizing is their own stylish version of filthy white-boy blues.
Strange seeing a band you saw in front of eight people at the Silverlake Lounge just two years previous packing “That Tent” to its capacity, tearing through a stomping and rollicking set. Lead singer Nathan Willett, traded off between the keys and guitar, commencing the performance with album opener, “We Used to Vacation,” full of jagged bursts of psychedelic guitar and a cheering crowd packed 20 deep out the sides of the tent.
After a year of touring, the Cold War Kids sounded ridiculously tight as a band, unleashing a dirty and primal version of “Passing the Hat,” with Matt Aveiro’s warehouse drums booming throughout the acres of dust. The haters can say what they want, they can invoke Willet’s fairly overt usage of Christian imagery, they can point out CWK’s fairly familiar sound, but none of it mattered to a couple thousand screaming fans in Tennessee, half of them born after the Cold War. Live, few bands can produce the sense of catharsis and power that the Cold War Kids bring to the table.
4 p.m., Hot Chip, "This Tent"
Hot Chip should just be over-hyped hipster schlock. All of their songs have a patina of arch ironic cool and they don’t move much on-stage, opting to hide behind an array of electronic equipment and a lone guitar. But I’ll be damned that in the repetitive hypnosis of their techno-pop there is a certain core emotional resonance that makes them one of the most interesting bands in the world today.
It's a bit narrow to think of the new compilation "From L.A. With Love" as a snapshot of this city's underground music and art scene -- it's more of a slide show, an eclectic series of aural glances into the world of the city's passionate boundary-stretchers. Conceived and assembled by Andrew Lojero, the guy behind downtown's ArtDontSleep parties, the collection features original tracks by such luminaries DJ Nobody, Adventure Time, Flying Lotus, Georgia Anne Muldrow, Free Moral Agents (featuring Ikey Owens from the Mars Volta) and Carlos Nino, among others, and also includes a track from the late Tarek "DJ Dusk" Captan, who was killed a little over a year ago when he struck by a car. The booklet that accompanies the CD, with a nifty intro from Mike the Poet, features artwork corresponding to each song, making this 4.75-inch-by-4.75-inch package something of a gallery with a soundtrack. Cool stuff for the eyes, ears and soul.
Last week's release of the CD will be celebrated at a party starting at 7 p.m. Saturday at the A+D Museum, 5900 Wilshire Blvd. Cover is $10.
Friday, June 15:The Noisettes, the Maccabees and the Pity Party play the Troubadour. ... The Long Blondes headline the Echo. ... And Sage Francis, backed by a live band, rocks the Fonda Theatre.
Saturday, June 16: Old-school punkers Channel 3 are the stars of the show in Long Beach -- the DVD "One More for All My True Friends," directed by Erik Carreon, will be screened at the Art Theatre of Long Beach at 9:15 p.m. (free), with a party before and after the screening at the Pike. ... At the Avalon, the Fratellis (with Division Day opening) play a rock show, followed by the DJ stylings of Danny Tenaglia, who's rumored to be ready to spin all through the night until 8 a.m. ... Franki Chan's Check Yo' Ponytail club night at the Echoplex features a DJ set from Juan Maclean. ... The Rosebuds bring their dance rock to Spaceland. ... And there's a 4 p.m. CD release party for Frankel at soon-to-be-shuttered Sea Level Records.
[Buzz Bands correspondents are such nice people -- they even write notes to the home office while they're on road trips that Bronson wishes he were on. This landed in the wee hours of the morning from Jeff Weiss, who is at the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival in Manchester, Tenn., and is lucid enough to write about it. He was not, certainly, among the people who tried to smuggle in some of the contraband pictured below -- which included, besides healthy amounts of booze, a hand axe and a machete. Careful, Weiss ...]
Tallyho Kevin,
9 p.m.
Bonnaroo is not Coachella. Big surprise, right? No one in their right mind would ever conflate Paul Tollett’s sleek, well-run indie-rock leaning desert enterprise with the jam-heavy, hippiefied, Tennessee festival awkwardly named Bonnaroo. And yet somehow, my Los Angeles-centric world view had dreamed up the idea that all festivals were one and the same: A lot of music, a lot of heat, a lot of people hard-pressed for a shower thanks to their penchant for watching music in the heat. Not so.
Of course, I had my suspicions. Friends had already warned me in advance that the operation wouldn’t be as seamless as Coachella. Then again, the stock cliché goes that everything in life is a trade-off and after witnessing the star-heavy VIP coterie that dominated Coachella, I was more than willing to lose a few creature comforts in exchange for being surrounded by 80,000 screaming hippies there solely for the music. After all, something told me that Lindsay Lohan, Jessica Alba and Scarlett Johansson weren’t about to make the trek to Tennessee. And I’d be willing to bet my life that Paris Hilton wasn’t about to do a Bonnaroo reprise of the dancing show she put on during Girl Talk at Coachella (sometimes, the lord works in mysterious and wonderful ways).
But it didn’t really sink in until 7 p.m. when a hotel shuttle dropped me off at the Bonnaroo gates, allowing me to skip the eight-hour traffic snarl of people waiting to get in, a jam so nasty it made the 110 at 5 p.m. look like the Autobahn. Congratulating myself on my foresight, I asked the bus driver if he could take me to the Holiday Inn so I could pick up my press information. Shrugging his shoulders, he hopped back in the bus and ditched me -- sans tickets, sans press pass, leaving me to walk 3 miles to the press check-in and forcing me to miss both the Little Ones and the Black Angels’ set. On the bright side, in the course of my endless trek, I learned that all the stereotypes often assigned to hippies are pretty true.
[Contributor Casey Dolan, who will be weighing in here on many things digitized, is starry-eyed and bible black:]
The new Strokes video, directed by Warren Fu, pays its respects to both Stanley Kubrick’s “2001” with a floating black monolith and lysergic cyclotron finale and Godfrey Reggio’s “Koyaanisqatsi” with sped-up footage of the human ant farm. Worthy homages, but it’s all dross.
A time capsule containing the holy relic of a holographic Strokes performing “You Only Live Once” is shot into space following a nuclear exchange. Destination? The dog star, Sirius, beacon to our galaxy. Interesting choice, but Sirius A or its miniature dwarf star, Sirius B? Either place and the capsule would be boiled. Scientists put Sirius A at 8.6 light-years from Earth. The capsule’s onboard tracking monitor puts Sirius at 40,000 light-years.
Ehh, so what if Fu fudges the numbers? It’s all an exercise in style, but forget the song. There’s utterly no connection between song and image. Hey, you might say, Sirius has played a significant role in millennialist thinkers over the centuries (not to mention lent its name to a satellite radio outfit). That’s Fu’s dog-eared ace up his sleeve. The star was the projected destination for the French, Swiss and Canadian cult, the Order of the Solar Temple, a modern mystical update on the Knights of the Templar, but many members managed to have an earthly death before immolation by a celestial object.
||| Go here to watch it. Think of it as a trip to outer space.
[Random notes from a couple solid weeks of show-going:]
So you were probably out dancing Wednesday night, convulsing to the liberating glitches of Hot Chip or bouncing giddily to those Norwegians in red tracksuits, Datarock. Even after three nights of LCD Soundsystem, you can't get enough. And it was probably good, even if you needed a shower afterwards. But so were White Rabbits, the New York sextet who brought their brilliantly honed clamor to Club NME at Spaceland.
White Rabbits' indie rock demands a bit from the listener, what with two drummers and even another floor tom onstage when the band's polyrhythmic noise needs an exclamation point. But the star of Wednesday's set was easily singer-pianist Steve Patterson, whose caterwauling cut through stabbing guitars and percussion and whose rollicking work on the keys was almost ragtime-gone-punk. White Rabbits ended the set with a 200-mph cover of Dylan's "Maggie's Farm" that segued into their own number, "Kid on My Shoulders."
Fun, and not a silly synth in sight.
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What's happening with plans for a Prince residency at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel? Wish I knew. Originally it was supposed to start this weekend, but representatives for all parties have been silent on whether the series of shows will actually happen. Stay tuned to this blog.
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The lineup continues to fill out for the Sunset Junction Street Fair, with two Sunday headliners still under wraps. Late-afternoon performers on the Bates Stage include the Bronx, the Aggrolites and the Buzzcocks. That last Bates act better be pretty good, because at the other end of the festival on the Edgecliffe Stage, the O'Jays will be headlining.
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Other stuff we heard: "The Ortolan," the forthcoming album by the Deadly Syndrome, is as sophisticated and smart as the band's live shows are chaotic and exhilarating. With the upcoming (and long-overdue) release of Foreign Born's "On the Wing Now," that makes two very good albums later this year from Dim Mak. ... Nice to see that the members of the Adored are working with Annie Hardy of Giant Drag. ... The Gray Kid has a new album on the way. ... Best wishes for recovery to 25-year-old Eric Howk, guitarist for the Seattle band the Lashes (who layed around L.A. a lot last year and made plenty of friends here). Howk suffered severe spinal injuries in a fall last month and remains hospitalized.
Touts for Thursday, June 14
The Start have a new album, "Ciao, Baby," and front woman Aimee Echo and the gang celebrate its release with a big show at Safari Sam's. ... Also: Castledoor continues its residency at the Silverlake Lounge, with the Monolators among the supporting acts. ... The Mother Hips and Strangers Smile play a free show, presented by L.A. blogger An Aquarium Drunkard, at the Echoplex. ... And another local blogger, Rock Insider, presents the Henry Clay People and Death to Anders at the Scene in Glendale.
Photo of White Rabbits singer-guitarist Greg Roberts by Kevin Bronson.
Call it what you want — new rave or nu-rave — but Norwegian electro-rocker Datarock is happy to be playing it, even if the tag, which originated with the English band the Klaxons, is cause for a bit of eye-rolling among those who remember the trance-heavy realraves.
"The term doesn't make sense," says singer-guitarist Fredrik Saroea, who with bassist-keyboardist Ketil Mosnes is the driving force behind Datarock. "But the youth culture needs something new now and then — or about every six weeks."
The current explosion in the indie dance movement — populated by the likes of Hot Chip, Cansei de Ser Sexy (CSS), Low-Fi-Fnk and Justice — "is really kind of an international trend, and it's a fun thing to be part of because the audience is so engaged," Saroea says. "Our shows are a bit ravey, but the funny thing is the term totally re-energized Datarock without us having to change anything."
True, the red-tracksuit-wearing band, whose debut, "Datarock Datarock," came out this week on Nettwerk, is still the same outfit that rolls Devo, the Talking Heads and the Happy Mondays into one big disco ball. Don't look for the pointed lyrics of an LCD Soundsystem here; Datarock keeps things campy and playful on songs such as "I Used to Dance With My Daddy," "Princess" and its latest single "Fa-Fa-Fa."
And if anybody brings glowsticks to Datarock's show, they'll be more fashion statements than anything. Says Saroea: "Everybody wants to dance and work up a sweat. We're just trying to re-create the dance floor."
||| See Datarock perform tonight at the Troubadour.
There's be an even bigger dance party at the Fonda Theatre, where the aforementioned Hot Chip headlines tonight (there's a DJ set later at Star Shoes). ... Bodies will be moving, too, at the Knitting Factory's front room, where Scissors for Lefty celebrates the release of "Underhanded Romance." ... On the Knitting Factory's main stage, meanwhile, Zoe and Babasonicos will be bringing it en espanol. ... And White Rabbits (see yesterday's post) are at Spaceland.
This has come slowly for Jim Fairchild: his songwriting career, the emergence of his debut under the moniker All Smiles and even the warming of friends and fans to that album, "Ten Readings of Warning."
"I think it's one of the latent qualities of being a professional musician so long but not being responsible for composing anything," says the guitarist, who spent a decade executing the vision of songwriter Jason Lytle in the band Grandaddy. "Things happen when they're supposed to happen."
The reflective, sometimes oblique narratives on "Ten Readings" — recorded in Chicago; Portland, Ore.; and L.A. in 2005 and '06 — frequently allude to moving on, although Fairchild says the album was not specifically about the late-2005 breakup of Grandaddy. "There's a whole bunch of notions that you've been on this path a long time, and now the harbingers are singing in your ear that you're going to have to make a change," he says. "It's more about realizing that a certain cycle in your life has been completed."
He initially had only modest aspirations for his solo project, but All Smiles ended up being signed to L.A. indie Dangerbird Records, whose co-founder, singer-songwriter Peter Walker, encouraged Fairchild's urge to loose his voice. "There was so much uncertainty," he says. "I had never sung publicly."
||| See All Smiles open for Menomena tonight at the Troubadour.
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Touts for Tuesday, June 12
If only I were 4 or so bodies tonight: Cold War Kids and the Little Ones get together at the Echoplex for a benefit for dual causes -- the kids' writing program 826LA and the nonprofit Water Wells for Africa. ... LCD Soundsystem finishes a run of three sold-out nights at the El Rey Theatre. ... English rockers the Duke Spirit bring it at Spaceland (with support from the CoCo B's. ... White Rabbits [see next post] join Yo Majesty at Cinespace. ... John Doe plays a 7 o'clock in-store at Amoeba. ... And Livesavas hold forth at the Roxy.
