Masaya Nakahara, Mike Kelley and Paul McCarthy at Echo tonight

Royal/T, the new Culver City cafe-gallery-performance space, is having an opening party tonight for "All of this is melting away," a show from the collection of Susan Hancock that's chock-full of artists such as Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami, Hans-Peter Feldmann and Wynne Greenwood. But the best part, at least for the more musically inclined viewers, might be the after-party performance at the Echo with Masaya Nakahara (who is deejaying the opening party) and artists Mike Kelley and Paul McCarthy.

Rocking out in a spectacularly freaky way is nothing new for these art stars. Kelley and UCLA professor emeritus McCarthy have played together in Gobbler and several other incarnations, and Kelley has recorded more than a few albums with his outfit, Destroy All Monsters. And let's not forget his knotty, dingy artwork that graced the cover of "Dirty" from Sonic Youth, his longtime pals and collaborators.

Tonight's show should be eventful, but will it be on par with McCarthy's latest in Switzerland? According to BBC News, McCarthy's sculpture, a giant inflatable dog turd, blew down a power line and broke a greenhouse window after "escaping" from a Bern museum on July 31. For a prankster artist like McCarthy, this is beautiful poetry.

For a taste of Nakahara's work, check out this video of him noodling around with Jim O'Rourke, one of the master producer-noodlers.

-- Margaret Wappler

Masaya Nakahara, Mike Kelley and Paul McCarthy at the Echo, 1822 Sunset Blvd. 10 p.m. $8.

Photo of Mike Kelley's video installation "Candy Cane Throne" from J. Paul Getty Trust; photo of McCarthy by Robert Durell/Los Angeles Times