Honey, Honey: Re-Discovering the Sunset Strip – Viper Room, Trip One
Re-Experience. Here’s a brief quote about me in the intraffik.com contributors section: “. . . you’ll occasionally see him at music venues across Los Angeles – from Mr. T’s to The Key Club and various in between locations.” It occurred to me that I’ve given a lot of love to North-East Los Angeles recently. Now this is mainly driven by the fact that I live near the music venues in this area and so it is just easier for me to see bands at Spaceland versus say The Key Club. To provide some proof, here’s my column “What I Listened to in February” with venues assigned:
Seamonsters: Silverlake Lounge
Venus Illuminato: Silverlake Lounge
The Muddy Reds: Silverlake Lounge
Rich Podgur: Kibitz – the farthest west of the bunch
Open Hand: Spaceland
Year Long Disaster: Spaceland
Obi Best: Spaceland
Eastern Conference Champions: Spaceland
Asa Ransom: Spaceland
Hockey: Spaceland
My January list has a broader music venue scope, but it also has a high focus on bands playing in North-East Los Angeles. Kibitz was once again the farthest west I got. There was also Club Moscow at Boardners (Hollywood) and Fox and Hounds (Studio City), but then North-East Los Angeles popped up with regularity: Spaceland, El Cid, Echo Curio and the Bootleg Theatre.
Do you see where I’m going? It was time to head to the Sunset Strip.
Three years ago, I was heading to the Sunset Strip on a monthly basis. Those trips started to dwindle over the years, but recently I found myself there three times in a period of a week.
First Trip to the Sunset Strip. Viper Room
Off to see Honey Honey. (more…)
OUT TO SEE…YEAR LONG DISASTER
A friend recently returned to the United States from South Korea. She is teaching English across the Pacific and is on a two month long vacation. To celebrate her return, we decided we’d head off to check out the local music scene. Via e-mail, I suggested two places as possibilities: either Spaceland or Silverlake Lounge. I also gave her a couple myspace links so that she could listen to the residency bands at both locations and decide which she liked best. We ran into some immediate problems. I didn’t realize that her Internet access was spotty (she didn’t have a cell phone as she’d cancelled her cell phone plan when she left for South Korea). I started to feel some pressure when I got a text from another friend asking what the plan was.
After finally exchanging some e-mails (she headed off to the library), she said she wasn’t able to listen to any of the bands at the two venues and wanted me to make the decision. I replied back saying we’d go to Spaceland and if she’d just call me to determine an appropriate time to pick her up.
She called me up later, using her mother’s phone. Unfortunately, I was on my work phone with my boss when she called. So when I picked up my cell phone, I asked if she’d call me back in five minutes. She didn’t call back. After 30 minutes, I decided I better call her back. She didn’t answer. I waited another thirty minutes before calling again and got her mother who promptly hung up on me. Hmm . . . I called back. The phone was handed over to the daughter. All was settled and so I sent a verification of location and time to our other friends via text messages.
(The six hours or so that the above planning unfolded over made me feel like I was living in the aftermath of “2012” or in the middle of “Book of Eli” or “The Road.” Technology had taken a step back and I was at a total loss on how to function without it. If the post-apocalyptic world ends up anyway like “The Road” you surely don’t want to travel along side me because we’ll be fresh meat for the cannibals.)
I got to my friend’s house and was immediately offered something to eat. Do you want some dinner? – no, really, I think we should just head off to Spaceland. Have a brownie? – which was promptly put into a sandwich bag. How about some Korean candy? – I was given a handful and decided to have one. Nasty, and promptly returned the additional candies back into the bag, sorry for offending. Have some sweet bread? –no, seriously, we should go.
We got to Spaceland and a couple of our friends were already there. (more…)
Out to See…ZAZA
I like to take random individual day-offs throughout the year. In mid-December, I took my last random day off of 2009. What did I do on this day?
I started off doing some typical holiday shopping. I spent the morning shopping at the Citadel Outlet Mall, bought some clothes. I spent the longest amount of time looking at running shoes. I try to exercise four times a week. My current (old) running shoes were long past their replacement date so I looked around a handful of stores, looking at various pairs of shoes.
From there I headed off to Hollywood Park for horse racing. I’ve always been intrigued by horse racing. I grew up reading the Black Stallion books. Someday I’d love to see all the Triple Crown races in person. I placed some bets. I bet rather conservatively, at least in my opinion, attempting to keep losses/gains in a low range of plus or minus $20. During the first three races I didn’t place any winning bets. I decided to develop an on the fly mathematical formula to make future bets. It wasn’t anything exotic, just adding variables together. And amazingly my luck turned around. I’m convinced I’ve found the mathematical horse racing formula equivalent to card counting in Vegas. Okay, so this over-confidence is how the next time I head off to the tracks I’ll lose $50 dollars versus winning $10 this time around.
After all that fun, I got stuck in traffic for about an hour, which drained all my excitement about my winning $10 at the races. As soon as I got home I took an hour nap.
I wasted some time doing who knows what and then it was Spaceland time. ZAZA, a band from NY, was playing at Spaceland. I previously saw ZAZA opening up for IO Echo at the Echoplex in early 2009. (more…)
OUT TO SEE: The Pixies
The First No. Before tickets went on sale, I learned via Facebook that many of my friends were excited about heading to the Palladium to see The Pixies. A friend asked me if I wanted to go to one of the shows. I declined. I feared that I wouldn’t be able to go, because I had an important work deadline scheduled for the first week of November.
The Second No. With a couple days before the Palladium dates, another friend asked if I was going to see The Pixies. I responded in the negative. I stated that I just didn’t want to spend the money purchasing a ticket to an event I wasn’t sure I’d get to attend.
Maybe. Of course, with the date closing in, I was starting to feel this urge to just go. Perhaps if I just got ahead of my work, it would work out, I thought. Around this time frame, I sent an e-mail to a friend asking how Monday night at the El Rey went. She responded back by saying that she didn’t know why I was asking that question. I was a little bewildered as she had told me how excited she was to head out to the El Rey to see the White Rabbits. It dawned on her that she’d totally forgotten about the concert and demanded to know why I hadn’t reminded her about it. I was like, Is it my responsibility to remind you about a concert you were planning on attending? After our brief e-mail argument about who was responsible for remembering that Monday date, she asked if I wanted an extra ticket to see The Pixies.
The Answer is Yes. (more…)
The Eagle Rock Music Festival
by Notes from Vivace
Eagle Rock Music Festival. I came across the Eagle Rock Music Festival three years ago. Since that time, I’ve placed it on my calendar as one of those yearly Los Angeles events I like to attend – such as the LA Times Book Festival and the International Tamale Festival (November 13-15, 2009, by the way). This year, I had a heightened excitement for the festival, because last year I skipped it. If I recall correctly, I thought it was going to rain and so I discounted it as a possible evening outing. When the weather turned out to be perfect a sense of disappointment swept over me, because I’d already made other plans with some friends – I know, somewhat pathetic since it is just a music festival.
When the band list came out on myspace I immediately took a look. I quickly realized that I was going to have a different experience this year versus my first year at the festival. This year was going to be fabulous, because I knew so many of the bands playing. The first time I’d gone, I hadn’t heard of any of the bands and it was a night of exploration. Exploration versus familiarity.
As the night of the festival came closer, I checked in with one of my friends to see if she planned on going. She was a go and gave me the name of the first band to see: Leslie and the Badgers. They were on at 6 p.m.
I spent Saturday afternoon hanging with some friends at Barnsdall Park. When 5 p.m. rolled around I said my good-byes and told a handful of them where I’d be if they wanted to hang out later in the day. All declined except for two friends who seemed rather excited about heading out. I told them where to find me and off I headed to Eagle Rock. (I never ran into them at the festival so I just assumed that they had decided not to come, but a week later one of them came up and told me how awesome the night was.) I parked at the Eagle Rock Shopping Mall where there was a free shuttle to the festival. Being a bit naïve about this since I’d always just parked closer to the event in previous years, I stood near the bus stop looking for a shuttle. I didn’t see anyone else hanging around for a shuttle so I just took off on foot.
I arrived at the Emerging Stage a little after 6 p.m., but the bands were a tad behind schedule so I got to see Leslie and the Badgers’ full set. I ran into my friend as well as a couple other friends during the set. After Leslie and the Badgers ended their set, we roamed around for awhile. During our roaming, we ran into another couple friends. This was suddenly becoming an awesome night of not only listening to bands, but also getting to hang with friends. A smaller group of us decided that we needed to get something to eat so the group split up with some of us crossing the street to Oinkster. Oinkster was crowded and I was concerned that we’d miss seeing some bands that we wanted to see, but the service was fast and the Oinkster staff was great.
We next headed over to the Razorcake Stage, but got sidetracked briefly at the Pep Boys stage where French Semester was playing. They sounded great, but we didn’t stick around too long as we wanted to continue up to the Razorcake Stage. (I have to say that I want to catch the French Semester sometime, because they really did sound good.) We then got sidetracked a second time at the Welcome Inn where Bonne Musique Zydeco played on the second floor walkway of the inn. There was a nice dance crowd in the parking lot. This is also where I found myself temporarily separated from my friends. I sent off a text message. I figured that perhaps they had continued on over to the Razorcake Stage, but when I got there none of them were there. I checked my phone and still hadn’t gotten a response back. So I circled back down and found them at the Welcome Inn. They were dancing away. Stupid me for not doing a full exploration of the Welcome Inn parking lot before heading off to the Razorcake Stage. (more…)
NO DOUBT
No Doubt. Verizon Wireless Amphitheater. August 2nd.
Distant memory. A friend suggested that we all take a road trip to see his friends play a gig. He tells us that they’re called No Doubt and that they’re really cool. He adds that we’d get to hang out with them. I decided not to take him up on the offer. A few months later; however, I decided to listen to their album. They’re quirky, I thought. Then they became famous. So I tell another friend, “Can you believe how this band became so big.” He responded, “They’ll go back to being nobodies soon enough.”
Fast forward to the present and No Doubt’s reunion tour. It is early March. “Are we going to see No Doubt?” “Yes.” “Let’s go get some tickets.” “Oh no, they’re all sold out, and I was on the phone for like 30 minutes . . . wait, they’ve added a date . . . I’ve got tickets.”
The pre-planning for August 2nd and the result. Our one pre-planning move was to determine when we should leave Los Angeles. Now, of course, this is all pre-determined by when the bands start playing. I personally wanted to see the opening acts. This is how it worked out. I sent an e-mail to my friend, who still had the tickets, never having given me my ticket, “When should we head down to Irvine.” She replied back, “When do you want to leave?” I asked back, “When does it start?” I wasn’t getting a response so I started to search the Internet and saw a 6:15 p.m. time. I figured that was when the gates opened so I sent an e-mail saying, “You’re not even giving me any details so I had to do some look up on my own. It looks like gates open at 6:15 p.m. So first band up at 7 p.m.? Maybe we should leave at 5:15 p.m.?” (more…)