No Age’s secret show clocks in at 19 minutes — still awesome

It's safe to say No Age is the band of the moment. At Paper Magazine's 24 Hour Store a couple weeks ago, where Miranda July wandered with the slow gait of Victorian royalty visiting the TB hospital, No Age discs were for sale at nearly every booth. David K of Family Bookstore was wearing a No Age t-shirt last night at Trinie Dalton's book party. Also, Sasha Frere-Jones wrote some heady thing about them in the New Yorker. It's been decided.

So we absolutely had to go when we heard about their secret show near the Sunnynook Bridge at the LA River at 3pm Saturday. The set-up lasted an hour, the music part clocked in at 19 minutes before two smirking park rangers shut it down, but it was a fairly splendid 19 minutes and the hour set-up wasn't bad either. About 100 in-the-know art-punk-bar dorks gathered on the granite river bed, shared beers and watched No Age's Dean Spunt and Randy Randall plug their gear into a vibrating red generator as the sun set behind a line of trees. Arthur publisher and show organizer Jay Babcock watched from the top of the hill like a proud papa. No Age's distorted nature-punk soaked into the atmosphere and vice versa.

And then the park rangers came. With absolutely no riot vibes, No Age packed it in and the audience slowly dispersed. The reason the rangers cut the show short? For one, you're not allowed to be so close to the river (No Age was only a few feet away). But way more ludicrous than that, we were all at risk because "two dams to the north could bust at any time and wipe away the whole crowd."

Yeah, right. L.A. is just so drenched these days.

--Margaret Wappler