Dream come true news of the week: Cha Cha Lounge will be celebrating the launch of shop.chachalounge.com (and Suspect zine!) with a live silkscreening party on Tuesday, Sept. 21, and for one night only you’ll be able to get L.A. RECORD pint glasses! Come by and either buy one of several custom new shirts or bring your own shirts-or hoodies or tableclothes or wedding dresses or anything!-and get them screened while-u-drink! And yes, that is the eagle from the city seal eating a street dog while hanging out on a boom box above the lizard people who live underneath the downtown library.

Download: The Soft Pack “Answer To Yourself”

(from the self-titled LP out now on Kemado)

New issue! See you at the release party tomorrow at the Cha Cha Lounge! Find print issues here, buy back issues here and obtain a print subscription here. Please contact us if you’d like to advertise in the next one!

Inside you’ll find…

THE SOFT PACK
MAYO THOMPSON of THE RED KRAYOLA
HARLEM
THE MAGNETIC FIELDS
SAINT VITUS
PIT PER PAT
PRINCETON
ANCESTORS
BIG FREEDIA
FULGEANCE
SCOTT H. BIRAM
RAY WYLIE HUBBARD
CLOROX GIRLS
WILDBIRDS & PEACEDRUMS
INFINITE BODY
RECLAMATION’S ‘AQUARIUM’

AND MORE!

Time again for L.A. RECORD‘s release party—this time with Piper from Pearl Harbor (as seen on the cover of the new issue) and Cole from Haunted Graffiti (UPDATE: Cole can’t make it but don’t worry, we got plans…) joining us in the back booth with the turntables plus who knows what other special guests? Free as always and starts at 9 PM—21+ since it’s a bar but come out and visit and grab a new issue!

This month we have Jared Swilley from Black Lips conducting his first interview ever—with Seattle’s the Dutchess and the Duke, whose new LP (produced by longtime L.A. RECORD hero Greg Ashley) is out now and very killer, too. We’ve also got the first part of the deepest Kim Fowley interview since Ugly Things, in which the Satan of Silverlake discusses the secrets of love, control, wealth and reality itself. (He has two new compilations with award-deserving liner notes out now on Norton.) Then we’ve got vital locals Zero Film Fest and Echo Curio plus Tom Brosseau checking in from Europe and the Pop Noir twins issuing their first vinyl, as well as interviews with the Flaming Lips, Waajeed, Richard Thompson, Rose Melberg, Jack Oblivian, Neon Indian and Cold Cave, who frankly discuss human skulls and the genitals of hopeful strangers. All this and more! Free all over town or from us tonight! Thanks for your support and hope to see you,

L.A. RECORD

Up next, the Comedy Stage North presented short, dry delights by L.A. genius Matt Braunger and Todd Barry, Mr. “Crazy Dogs” from Flight of the Conchords, who spent a good portion of his set making fun of Matthew McConaughey. Comedian Reggie Watts really tore the house down, rambling between different accents, a sampler and an electric piano. His sideways slant on comedy with short musical distractions evoked classic Steve Martin in a fresh way, albeit bigger and hairier and possibly funnier. I tried in vain over the next couple days to snag an interview with him, but no dice. Hope he doesn’t wind up making movies with Hilary Duff.

Os Mutantes were next, with Sergio Dias dressed up like Richard Pryor at a late sixties wedding. I got a good look at him as I sat waiting for the show to start—in L.A. I’m not used to the ground being wet, so I basically gave myself a through-the-pants bidet treatment while simultaneously casting an attractive set of cheek prints in the grass. The other kind of grass made its impression on my section of the audience, rolled by some middle-aged Patagonia-wearing Seattleites, one of whom asked me if I was “from Brazil,” since I seemed to know the songs so well. Actually I was just mesmerized by the beauty of spoken Portuguese punctuated by English comments about Dias’s love of Obama and his apology to Argentina for Brazil’s crushing 3-1 victory in that day’s football match. It was good, though I missed the vintage fuzz sound from their original recordings, and wished I had the vantage point of my photographer, who got great shots of the fun and footlights and the four-year-old girl bopping around on the stage.

Later, after some rain, a delicious falafel and a couple gross beers, De La Soul hit the same stage with a full band—horns and all—called the Rhythm Root All-Stars. It was cool, maybe even “fresh,” in both senses of the word. But man, what is up with outdoor concerts and loud-as-fuck snare drums? Every outdoor show sounds like “a boogedy boogedy THOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOCK, a boom clap boom-boom THOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOCK, doo bee doo bee THOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOCK,” with the crowd at the back hearing basically nothing but a giant chasm of boxy backbeat. No slight on the band, but De La Soul sounded better with just Maseo DJing, and the crowd responded by going apeshit for “Me, Myself, and I”—hands in the air and the party people over there saying yeah right after the party people over here had just said the same. The encore was their 2004 hit with the Gorillaz, “Feels Good Inc.” And we did feel good as we headed out—security jackals nipping at our heels, away from the Space Needle and bad memories of Flo and Eddie and towards the dimly-lit joys of post-concert blitzkrieg beverages in Seattle’s subterranean Cha Cha Lounge.

—Dan Collins

Hello to all! Tonight we celebrate the release of Vol. 4 Issue 4—Pasadena country singer DAVID SERBY on the cover and the much-touted NOSAJ THING decked out on the poster, and then inside you’ll find BRUCE LaBRUCE discussing love and romance and STEVE ALBINI of SHELLAC discussing fish, food and forest fires! Plus the mighty SONICS, the almost-Angeleno ART BRUT, the formidable FEMI KUTI, the unstoppable SHARON JONES (who did her interview immediately after returning from the hospital!) and the legendary LEROY SIBBLES of Studio One’s HEPTONES and much more than we could courteously insert in just one simple email! (THE SHINS, CHAIRLIFT, BUSDRIVER, HANDSOME FURS, YA HO WHA 13, THE HUNCHES discussing their last show ever, Grandaddy’s JASON LYTLE and still yet more…) Issues available at the Cha Cha tonight—free to visit and copies of the new L.A. RECORD free as always! Hope to see you there and many thanks for all support!

VIA: FISHBOWL L.A.

We dunno if L.A. Record has a party every time they release a new issue, but given that they’re one of the few publications out there that is managing to grow, we wouldn’t blame them if they did. The celebratory event on Monday night at the Cha Cha Lounge not only had fruity drinks and great DJs, but some of the most cheerful journalists we’ve hung out with in a very, very long time.

To check out more photos click here.

(from 59:59 out now on Social Registry)

We are happy to report that Rupert and Ben from Sian Alice Group (who are opening for A Place To Bury Strangers this weekend at Troubadour) will be stopping by Pretty Sh!t at the Cha Cha in Silverlake tonight to help dish out extra beauty! It’s free and starts at 9 PM, and we will of course be providing the usual visuals/atmosphere.

We are DJing at Cha Cha Wednesday night for the next installment of our acclaimed “Something Sh!t” series and we are following up last month’s Heavy Sh!t with the logical next step: Pretty Sh!t. (Let’s also call this an Eagle Rock Music Fest pre-party!) It’s free to everyone to come see us and guests from Gangi and hopefully Sian Alice Group (if they’re in town) DJ the most purtiest lovelies we can pry out of our library. A little sniff above.

Tracklist:

01. Os Mutantes “Panis Et Circenses”
02. Stone Poneys “Different Drum”
03. Sid Selvidge “Miss Eleana”
04. Nirvana “Rainbow Chaser”
05. The Bee Gees “Red Chair, Fade Away”
06. Daughters of Albion “Hey, You, Wait, Stay”
07. JK & Co. “Fly”
08. The Millennium “The Island”
09. Rogerio Duprat “Honey / Summer Rain”
10. Bonnie Dobson “I Got Stung”
11. Soft Boys “Positive Vibrations”
12. Os Mutantes “Panis Et Circenses” (Reprise)