big star: back of a car

Cops and Unpaid Bills: Though his likeness still haunts everywhere you look, the King of Pop was finally laid away. Meanwhile, Los Angeles has spent the rest of the month looking for someone to slap with the bill for the king’s Nebuchadnezzarian sendoff. Though unattended by me, his funeral orgies fetched hundreds of thousands and that the LAPD was out in massive force didn’t need my eyeball confirmation since there was scarcely a cop to be seen anywhere else. All Jackson’s shove into Eternity meant to rockers and the party set downtown was that J.Q. Law was occupied in heroically overpolicing one event instead of the usual twenty. That the city attempted to hand fans and the (sore-bereaved) Jackson family a $1.4 million bill for its twitchy, long-running, and surreal policy of cop-overkill at every public gathering is bad enough. Add the fact that more police were around Staples Center for Jacko’s last appearance than for the entire 1984 Olympics and the public gets a broad hint of what underground parties and live music now face on a weekly basis. Thin blue line or no, there was little change in Angelenos’ customary sheeplike behavior after dark—even the very muggers did as told when directed to fuck off, I’m happy to report. Perhaps the city will know similar rebuffs while rattling its tin cup.

The Great Kim F.’s Lesbian Hunt and the Silver Lining on Mateo Street: Straight and Frankenstein tall stood Kim Fowley in the low-roofed Redwood Lounge last weekend. Presiding over another installment of “Hollywood Sexual Underground”, the legendary songwriter-producer-impresario was haranguing a roomful of sweating freaks and lovelies when I clambered in off the street on another boiling hot Friday night. “Are there any lesbians or drunks in the house tonight?” he intoned from somewhere near the ceiling, glowering about the narrow room like a rock ‘n’ roll Vincent Price. There were no confessed Sapphics, but that the place was packed with lushers was discernible by the naked nose, yet nary had a peep arose from the bar. Amateurs, I snorted. Just wait ‘til L.A. Decom. Impossible to rattle, Fowley breezed through the intro to Trophy Wives, who let out as deafening a caterwaul as I’ve ever heard loosed in the place. The lead singer’s mic died, but the drummer went off like a long string of M-80s and the narrow bar began to suitably rock. Grinning, I left, loping south through Little Tokyo and the Arts District as the floating parties and nuzzling lovers heralding the start of another off-the-hook weekend. I toked a buzz all the way down a dark slit of Mateo Street to Silver Factory Studios. This (literally underground) rock venue likewise surged, only this time with friendly indie rockers and the bent-neon psychedelia of 60 Watt Kid. This local trio went on at senatorial length, sculpting a too-big-for-the-room groove out of reverb and pleasantly unnerving electronic soundscapes. Their Women rez ends on the 27th, and I urge you to buy the ticket and take the inner-space ride.

Rock Around the Block: My run the following Saturday night was more of a downtown dogtrot, begun at the Smell with a fusillade of heavy noise from Christmas Island. This San Diego three-piece served up the blare with minimalist brio, as a double handful of spritzing kids capered crazily. Around the corner at the Five Star Bar, Anaheim’s Thee Makeout Party was doing the same to an older crowd, far gone in beer. TMP is power pop done the populist way, their raveups eschewing all Alex Chiltonian subtlety in favor of Cheap Trick-style detonation gratification. Out in the street, gaudy rockers mixed easily with the tranny ladies and street vendors, the whole gladsome magilla distancing themselves from the overflow crowd at the Edison just up the block. Smiling miniskirted ladies and glowering beaux greeted me at the Ed’s alleyway entrance, their attentions further warming an already sweltering night all the way back to the Smell. Bipolar Bear was just then going off inside, their horror-movie hodad rock blistering away as stylishly as ever. Anyone who can imagine mutant descendants of the Trashmen shooting the curves eleven toes over off a post-apocalyptic San Onofre already loves these guys whether they’ve heard them or not. I faded into the heat-glazed night with ears blistered by more better rockin’ than any half-block in Los Angeles.

The Glazed Daisies of Alex Chilton: The long bake of last week made grim my writerly slog through speculative fiction and reportorial fact. One of the consolations of a rock writer’s life is the vast haul of incoming schwag suited to every facet of one’s weirdo tastes. My latest audio bauble is Fantasy Records’ single-CD remaster of two longtime power-pop cult artifacts —#1 Record and Radio City by wildly influential Memphis maudits Big Star, an act blessed with far more talent than luck. Alex Chilton’s post-Box Tops comeback attempt zigged when the rest of rock zagged, despite first-rate collaborators like Chris Bell and Andy Hummel, but their sound lingers on in pretty much every four-piece Beatle-inflected rock band since. The sound is fully up to the standard set on Fantasy’s Isaac Hayes reissues earlier this year, with classics like “Don’t Lie to Me” and “September Gurls” packing an intensified wallop and lending a gorgeous Southern context to SoCal’s yearly spate of Dixie-like heat.

—Ron Garmon