Kim Grant alerts us: Redwood bartender Laura Ann Masura was involved in a serious motorcycle accident in September and is facing thousands of dollars worth of medical bills, so Josiah from Light FM has put together a benefit including performances by Billy Corgan with members of the Electric Prunes and Ancient Chinese Secret plus Syd Straw, the Pity Party, the Happy Stars (Posies + Fountains of Wayne) and tons more—even fortune-telling by the Grammy-nominated Madame Pamita! Corgan will also be auctioning off the drum set used on Gish and the bass used at the first Smashing Pumpkins show. Show is at 4:30 PM on Sun., Nov. 8, at the Echoplex and tickets are $12. More info below and best wishes to Laura!

LOS ANGELES, CA—Dozens of musicians will perform a benefit concert Sunday November 8 at the Echoplex in Echo Park for fellow musician Laura Ann Masura. Masura, a former member of Evil Beaver, Motorhome, the Prescriptions and Dime Box Band, suffered a motorcycle accident in September that almost resulted in the amputation of her foot. As she heals at her Echo Park home, friends and fellow musicians have banded together to raise money for costs that Masura’s health insurance doesn’t cover.

Josiah Mazzaschi of the band Light FM has organized an impressive line up for the concert, which starts at 5 PM and costs a mere $12 per ticket. (ALL proceeds go to Laura Ann. This ain’t UNICEF. The Echoplex’s Liz Garo has generously donated use of the venue.) To appear: The Happy Stars (Brian Young from Fountains of Wayne and Joe Skyward from The Posies), The Pulsars (Dave and Harry Trumfio), Tim Rutili (Red Red Meat, Califone), Syd Straw (Golden Palominos) Pity Party, Light FM, and The Backward Clock Society, featuring Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins, Kerry Brown of Ancient Chinese Secrets and Mark Tulin of the Electric Prunes. Rotary Rachel (Rachel Lichtman of luxuriamusic.com) will emcee and DJ between band sets.

JAM FOR LAURA ANN is more than a concert. There will be items raffled all evening long; a fortune teller (none other than Madame Pamita from cult all-girl surf band the Neptunas); and a BBQ in back of the venue. Jars of Laura Ann’s Jams, made artisanally by Laura Ann this past summer, will be for sale. (In fact Laura Ann was on her motorcycle, en route to a farm for strawberries for the jams, when a car hit her.)

Laura Ann Masura, a respected drummer and founding member of the bands Evil Beaver, the Prescriptions and Motorhome was a major presence on the Chicago music scene. Moving to Los Angeles several years ago, she quickly became a favorite personality on the East Side. A lifelong gourmet, she began making artisanal jams from local ingredients for friends and a few local restaurants. Word got out, and customers at the Redwood, the downtown bar where she worked, would ask to buy jars. The hobby was growing into a business (see lauraannsjams.com) until the accident put a hold on everything.

Leading up to the November 8 event, two very special items from the early days of the Smashing Pumpkins will be auctioned off starting this Wednesday without reserve via Ebay to help defray Laura’s medical bills from her accident. The first item up for auction is the drum kit that Jimmy Chamberlin used on the Smashing Pumpkins’ influential and platinum Gish album in 1991 and subsequent tour. The kit will be signed by both Jimmy and Billy. Billy will also be auctioning off the original Smashing Pumpkins bass guitar that he played at the band’s very first show (it is also the bass that he used for the early demos). Both items will be available for bidding via the official Smashing Pumpkins memorabilia ebay site: http://shop.ebay.com/officialspmemorabilia/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=&_trksid=p3686.

Despite surgery scheduled for October 29th, Laura Ann will attend the benefit show—“Even if we have to wheel a bed in!” she says. People unable to attend the event may donate to Laura Ann’s recovery fund (no amount too small!) at lauraannsjams.com.

PLEASE NOTE: JAM FOR LAURA ANN IS AN EARLY SHOW!
Sunday, November 8th
Doors: 4:30 Showtime 5:00 Tickets: $12
purchase in advance: http://www.ticketweb.com
The Echoplex, 1154 Glendale Blvd. Los Angeles, CA, 90026

[ed. note — apologies to all of planet Earth for delay in posting this!]

As I pulled fifteen bucks from my now-empty wallet, I wondered what Sky Saxon would have done if he’d brought a hot date with him to a show on Saturday night and been told he had “no plus one.” The young lady with the clipboard at the VIP entrance even spent five minutes ID’ing Rodney Bingenheimer. Good God, gal, do you not see Sunset Boulevard up yonder? Is he not the Mayor of Sunset Strip!?! Now that Sky’s gone, Rodney’s the biggest flower punk left!

“Sky Saxon is the father of garage rock! He’s one of the very first people I met when I came to Hollywood. I’ve been a really close friend with him. I even put one of his songs on one of my Rodney on the Rock albums. He used to call me from Hawaii, and I’d put him on the air.” —Rodney Bingenheimer (KROQ DJ)

Thank God—or should I say YaHoWha?—that the show started with a cathartic bang in the form of Ya Ho Wa 13’s Djin Aquarian. A thin spry Santa Claus in a white robe, Djin Aquarian (along with violinist Ysanne Spevack) gave perhaps the most amazing performance of the night right out of the gate: a song done half live and half with Sky Saxon’s recorded voice itself, a la the Beatles’ “Real Love.” This was not to be a wake. For musicians, death means nothing, not even your last live show.

“He’s the ultimate teenager. He’s going to live forever. He didn’t really die!” – Kari French (performance artist, Luxuria Music DJ, go-go girl)

Djin followed the tunes with some hippy calisthenics—something called the “Star Exercise” that required us to stand with hands outstretched, breathe in and out 120 times in rapid succession, and visualize a white star in our heads that we could then shoot through the chakras in our body. This was supposed to shake loose any negative vibes we might have carried about Sky Saxon when he was alive. And the room did seem to brighten. Folks even stuck around for Djin’s short lecture on “The Name of God.” (Surprise: it’s “YaHoWha.”) Djin explained how the Hebrew letters for God look like a gender-neutral person standing upright and got into the last day of the Mayan Calendar and Sirius the Dog Star and goddamn it—if that’s not the perfect benediction for Sky Saxon, then Jason Voorhees wears a catcher’s mask.

“When I joined the Source family in 1972, at that point I met Arelick Aquarian. Arelick Aquarian had a long brown beard, and long dark brown hair, and he was Sky Saxon. We lived by the same teachings that Father Yod, YaHoWha taught, so our relationship is an eternal, spiritual blood relationship. I’ve shared my blood with him when he was leaving the body in ‘77 because of a bleeding ulcer. He wouldn’t take anyone else’s blood. He’d rather die than have a non-vegetarian, non-Aquarian person’s blood.” — Djin Aquarian (musician, spiritualist, carpenter)

Next up, the young tykes in the audience swooned as a the super group Spirits in the Sky assembled on stage, headed by that most Smashing of Pumpkins, Billy Corgan. You could almost hear the audience rumble like tectonic plates as a wedge of grungy adulation nearly forced itself across the trenches of hip disdain. I didn’t know what I’d make of Corgan, that former Courtney Love boy-toy whose recorded history could best be described as “spotty.” He and his smooth bald head sauntered onto the stage covered in a military cap, baggy pants and a ratty red and black striped sweatshirt—it was like if John Malkovich from Empire of the Sun was simultaneously playing the role of Freddy Krueger.

“The last time I saw Sky was at Billy Corgan’s house. They were recording music together in his studio, and me and Don Bolles and his girlfriend and my dad James went to another part of the house, which happened to have Billy sitting there, eating his raw food. And Sky was stoned out of his mind, and Sky immediately just says out of nowhere, ‘Everybody stop looking at Billy! Stop watching him eat, man!’ And we were not even looking at him! It was so hilarious, but uncomfortable at the same time, making it seem like we were these super fans. So to get Sky out of his weird mood, I go, ‘Hey, Sky, what about that time you kicked Kim Fowley’s ass?’ And he goes, ‘Yeah, man, I fucking kicked Kim Fowley’s ass, man! I fucking kicked him in the back of the knees. I brought him down in Vegas!’” – Giddle Partridge (singer)

Corgan may have dressed down and dirty, but the band was a celestial mind fuck: Mark Tulin of the Electric Prunes on bass, Mark Weitz from the Strawberry Alarm Clock on keys (looking exactly like my dad if you threw a Nehru jacket on him), members of Ancient Chinese Secret and even the first live appearance of Smashing Pumpkins’ new 19-year old drummer, Mike Byrne. Sounding neither like an oldies revival nor like some watered-down Pumpkin Seeds, their cover of the obscure Saxon classic “900 Million People Daily” was an almost tropical psychedelic delight. Though Corgan looked nervous about playing for us fickle Echo Park patrons, his guitar-god licks and David Byrne awkwardness won over anyone paying attention. They even premiered a new Corgan ditty called “Freak” that made far more sense at a Sky Saxon tribute night than a grungy version of “Pushin’ Too Hard” ever could have.

“He was a magician. He’d appear and disappear. One day he’d be on your couch, and the next day, he’d be gone!” — Billy Corgan (musician)

“Sky Saxon took on life and music on his own terms. Unlike many of us who went through the ’60s Sky remained true to the peace and love mantra of those electric years. He was truly a free spirit unbound by societal norms. He was the shaman, the jester, the philosopher and the fool. He performed his music, his way, right up to his death. No musician can ask more than that.” — Mark Tulin (musician)

Up next were back-to-back sets by the Alarm Clock and the Prunes, both with far more original members than, say, that recent Zombies show you jerked off over a few weeks back. The Prunes seemed a little tired—far less magical than they’d been in the early 2000s when they’d toured with their old keyboardist’s son and gave the BJM/Warlocks crew a serious run for their money. Tired or not, though, they still rocked it on out, and their Strawberry Alarm Clock brethren proved to be even more balls-out now than they had been on album back in the day. It kind of floored me thinking that some of these guys had fucking appeared in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and still could play guitar dressed in a Caligula throw-over and make kids one fourth their ages groove on a hot night that technically—technically!—was somebody’s funeral.

“I always tell people—Gram Parsons died one day before Jim Croce died. In those days, nobody cared about Gram Parsons, and all people could talk about was Jim Croce passing away. Sky Saxon died right when Michael Jackson died. But at the end of the day, Gram Parsons is a lot larger now in his legacy than Jim Croce is, and I think we’ll see the same thing with Sky Saxon in the future because the Jackson 5 only made about seven or eight good songs, and the Seeds had three really fucking amazing albums. You hear ‘Scarecrow’ by the Pink Floyd and you hear ‘Mr. Farmer’ by the Seeds about a year earlier and you go, “Oh, so that’s where that came from!’” – Dominic Priore (author of Riot on Sunset Strip)

So many friends, historians, and musical well-wishers! I was overwhelmed. The next act—Simon Stokes and friends—should have been killer. How often do you get to see a sixties garage punk turned Elektra recording artist show-off turned black-leather grandpa play on stage with the Knitting Factory’s Bruce Duff and a Fleshtone or two? But under the circumstances, I found things far too aggressive and serious, and headed out on the smoke pit’s bleachers. Here the Star Exercise from earlier had clearly made an impression on folks—the vibe was full of remembrances and good will towards Sky Saxon, even warmer than the summer air.

“He was always very positive. Jealous was something you couldn’t feel around that guy. Jealous is a mad, dark feeling… there’s no need to feel anything dark around Sky!” – Lee Joseph (Dionysus Records)

“When I first heard Sky’s vocals on ‘No Escape,’ I knew that this was something beyond anything I’d ever heard before. This would essentially become an obsession with raw 60′s garage rock that I can ultimately blame on Sky Saxon. I’m sure there’s plenty of other people that feel the same way about Sky, and this memorial proves it. I wonder if any of the dudes from Axe body spray are here?” – Rick Barzell (bassist, Thee Living Sickness)

“He’s going to be dancing with the dogs in heaven. He loves dogs more than people. His spirit will be mingling with the dogs.” – Kari French

A solo singer-songwriter chanteuse named “SofizeL” hit the stage next. A Frenchwoman who now hailed from England, I’d like to believe she was jetlagged or grieving. Her performance was a bit lethargic and more than a little nervous, like she knew she didn’t belong. Of course, she truly didn’t, having only barely ever known or performed with Sky as part of “The Europe Seeds” for some tiny portion of 2005. But hell, it wouldn’t be a true tribute to Sky if everything made sense and professionalism ran rampant. And hey, I doubt my death will cause singer-songwriters to spend a day on a plane each way to come to L.A. for a three-song set.

“I met him at this gig in London. I was the only one who brought a record to be signed that wasn’t a bootleg. He said, ‘Brother, I love you!’ He stayed about eight months at my house, partying and partying and partying, and bringing back young girls every other night. I would lend him money, and he used to buy knick-knacks all the time! Like lighters, or things from a 99 cent store, coming back and saying, ‘Michael, look at this, can you believe it? This is so cool! Isn’t it great?’ But on the other hand, he was a very bright character. Often he was just listening to music, getting high, but when he said something, it was really brilliant. He had visions all the time, not to make a million dollars, but to make a billion!” – Michael Wolf (designer)

This was one of those tributes where truly everybody from all walks of life is getting up on stage in support, and it was hard to keep up—for example, who was that random vintage-looking woman between 35 and 40 who was occasionally announcing bands? And who was Sunny Sun-downer? Did I miss the Woolly Bandits’ set entirely? And was that really the Fleshtones guy I saw earlier? And why was a strange girl go-go dancing on the side of the stage with the flimsy tube-top dress that she had to keep tugging upwards? How many people had Sky touched, and in what ways?

“When Spindrift first moved to L.A. in 2002, we were lucky enough to open for the Seeds at our first show at Spaceland. Shortly after that I got a call from Sky to join his band. I refused though, figuring I wasn’t up to speed with a psychedelic legend. He was—is—a big influence. I’m more a Saxon than a Jackson.” – Kirpatrick Thomas (singer, guitarist)

But there was no mistaking Sky’s ever-patient widow, Sabrina Sherry Smith Saxon. I’d recognized her from years ago, when a friend had banged his head against my van’s door after a Seeds show at the Bigfoot Lodge, and Sabrina had made Sky give him a healing benediction. This night, sadly, there was no healing that could lighten the mood, and her thank-yous to countless friends and relatives in attendance (Sky had how many grandchildren?) and obituaries from those who could not attend reminded us all that there was more to Sky than just music and colorful scarves.

“Every morning a screwdriver. Vodka and orange. I gave him the money, but most of the time he spent the money for the screwdriver on knick-knacks and lighters and lollipops and toys, and then I had to give him another five pounds to get a screwdriver. But that made him happy and that made me happy, too.” – Michael Wolf

Nels Cline, L.A. RECORD favorite and a man seemingly too somber for flower power, played maybe the most sorrowful Seeds cover of the night: “Flower Lady and her Assistant.” It’s my favorite Seeds song, and last time I had heard Nels play it, it was alongside Sky Saxon himself in the downstairs lounge at Zen Sushi a few years ago, when Nels’ beautiful cacophony of notes and effects pedals shimmied all around Sky as he huffed and puffed his way back and forth through the song for about five people. Now Nels played to a packed room, including some bona-fide flower ladies, but there was no Sky to assist.

“It’s really weird. I grew up listening to not just the Seeds, but also the Strawberry Alarm Clock and the Electric Prunes. Sky rocked out with the Seeds for two hours for like ten people two months ago. It’s like, how long are we here for? We don’t even know.” — Nels Cline

Too bad I drowned my sorrow in an extra Jameson or two, because suddenly a new super group emerged on stage, with Djin Aquarian and Billy Corgan on bass! This was “YaHoWha 33” and suddenly the calm, meditative breather from before must have recharged his chakras! Djin rocked and cooed and smiled from behind his beard like nothing I’ve seen since the Soggy Bottom Boys appeared on screen a few years back. No hippie love jam this, unless by “jams,” you meant things to Kick Out. There was rock and sweat and vitality, screaming dudes in robes, and man, I just could not believe Sky Saxon was dead, because I felt so alive!

“It calls for a change, and I just turned the knob up to 11! And then I can make my ascension at 11, and then I go to 12 which is bringing down the consciousness, and then I go up to 13, which is take the consciousness up beyond death, beyond the spectrum of the third dimensional density.” – Djin Aquarian

I didn’t have much mental density left when the Seeds took the stage. Of course, it’s hard to call them the Seeds without Sky out front, but this was definitely more authentic than a Misfits or Dead Kennedys reunion. Leighton Koizumi of the Morlocks and Don Bolles took turns screaming out the vocals, and my favorite Seeds/Love/Kind Hearts/Red Hearts alumnus, Justino Polimeni, was rat-tat-tatting out the drums of their greatest garage hits like he wanted Sky to hear him in heaven. Well played, sirs, especially Leighton’s turn on “Mr. Farmer,” which would make even his NA sponsor want to smoke weed.

“Sky was the kind of guy where you could drop him off in the street in any town, and in two hours, he’d come back with a new band and a new album that’s ‘going to be bigger than the Rolling Stones!’” – Justino Polimeni (drummer)

“I think the music says it all. The music’s going to live on forever. I can see from all these fans that are here, I’m thankful for everyone who came out. God bless Sky, and wherever you’re at, I know you’re having a great time, and your legacy lives on.” — dude from the Seeds

The whole thing ended with virtually everybody and their dad on stage, Alarm Clocks mingling with Pumpkins mingling with Germs and Prunes and Woolly Bandits and, yeah, by this time, I was happily working my way through some vegan slices at Two Boots Pizzeria, next to the Echo. We’d all had a great time celebrating Sky Saxon, but funerals make me hungry. In honor of Sky’s love for canines, I took my leftovers home in a doggy bag.

“His music is going to live forever. He’s definitely a legend.” — Rodney Bingenheimer

“On one side, he was the Father of Punk Rock. On the other side, he was the Father of Love!” — Lee Joseph

I’m very sad that he’s gone, but I believe he is here with us. He always said he was eternal.” — Giddle Partridge

“Have you been checking out the vibe, here? This is the legacy. The legacy is loooove, establishing a quality of psychedelic music that speaks wisdom and love and teaches the holy name, the sacred name of God, Ya Ho Wa, and stands up for the children and the dogs and wolves and human rights and medical marijuana, and just free marijuana!” — Djin Aquarian

“I think Sky Saxon’s legacy will ‘mushroom’ in ten years time.” — Dominic Priore

“He left us with the battle cry, ‘I choose love!’” — Isis Aquarian

—Dan Collins

“Let Us Sit Upon the Ground and Tell Sad Stories of the Death of Kings”: I hadn’t been back in L.A. more than a couple of days when the King of Pop exceeded all expectations of his upcoming tour by dying in advance of it. The Vine Street star of the Other Michael Jackson, legendary local DJ (now on KGIL), was the scene of a tastefully-done spillover memorial I viewed mid-afternoon Thursday, a few hours after the K of P keeled over. Leaflets reading “STOOPID! His star is in front of Graumann’s! Do you think the real Michael Jackson would have such a shitty location?” added just the right soupcon of ratwit Boulevard irony. A onetime rock hater, the (still-living) OMJ graciously gave the gaffe his blessing, adding “[I]f it would bring him back, he can have it. He was a real star. Sinatra, Presley, The Beatles and Michael Jackson.” The LAPD chopper buzzing overhead mooted any other directions and the propwash echoing off buildings gave a nice tension as I walked hillbilly-slow down the Avenue of the Stars toward Highland. It was like Day of the Locust as performed by C.W. McCall- a sullen mob scene presided over by more cops than Dog Day Afternoon. Swamped amid this flashmob of mourners was detritus from some upcoming TV-op for Bruno, a new comedy which may well go down in history as Sacha Baron Cohen’s karmic blowback. A disheveled, starveling street preacher climbed up on some rigging near me and set to bellowing about death, damnation and Jesus. It was a poorly-done crackhead busker’s version of a tune I know very well indeed, so, at his peroration, I loudly offered “O death, where is thy sting?” The fellow blinked in surprise, peering owlishly down at me as a distant voice intoned, “Grave, where is thy victory?” There was laughter and the brother went back into his spiel, plainly a broken man.

EDC = TKO: A miss-the-memo blunder of the kind fatigue inevitably brings got me no closer to the Saturday night closing of Electric Daisy Carnival than nearly the entire circumference of the Coliseum. Shunted in a left-landed circle around the place in search of a presslist event staff swore was at just the next gate got me a jogger’s-eye view of another overpoliced pop-clusterfuck. The atmosphere was much more alluring, as acres of friendly girls in boy-shorts and angel wings crammed every egress, even the mid-evening shuttle management graciously offered to take me to Staples Center (some miles away) to get accredited. A sightly mother-daughter kitty-kat team made the ride diverting and I was beginning to feel the event when I learned the presslist had already departed. Bloodied by fortune, I bowed to the ladies and padded downtown in my velvet clothes (past the spot on Sixth Street where, about twenty-four hours before, I nearly had to pepper-spray some strapping asshole trying to muscle a woman in a minidress) and caught the 18 Metro to the Warehouse District. Walking into the monthly Plump party on S. Santa Fe was like attaining the very bower of Underground Paradise. DJs Patrico, Jacques the Ripper, Todd Spero and FatFinger vied for beaty honors as a delightful lady of mystic bent drew the big-city pizen from me, one nuzzle at a time. Sweet home L.A., at last.

“Will The Real Jerry Lewis Please Sit Down?”: By three the next afternoon, I was slumped exhausted in the back row of the Silent Movie Theater, as the last night of L.A.’s first-ever Jerry Lewis retrospective flickered to giddy life. The three hours of clips shown before the main feature were like a curated tour through a vast and quirky comic universe roughly the scope of those of James Joyce or Flann O’Brien, and (in America at least), about as little understood. The last living heir to the great line of Buster Keaton and Stan Laurel, Lewis remains problematic to American critics and I think I know why. Those clips showed he has the founding shuck of American masculinity down cold, with his smooth ciggie-chuffing characters pointing up the fraud even as his geeky dolts tear it down one squeal and triple-take at a time. This is caricature the Roger Eberts and Rex Reeds of filmchat might find more than a little discomfiting. Even Cracking Up (Jerry’s 1983 directorial swansong, which had trouble getting released in the U.S.) shows lightning flashes of surreal brilliance, as Lewis does his own Brechtian variation on theAirplane! movies. The result is a W.C. Fields-peculiar opus at once too vulgar and too highbrow-brilliant for anyone outside his (gigantic) fanbase to get. The crowd was overwhelmingly young film buffs roaring in unironic glee at the temporary shrine of a neglected master. A few questions from the audience about Lewis’ unreleased The Day the Clown Cried made me keen to actually see it, instead of relying on the oft-cited displeasure of some few who actually have. These include the screenwriter –a breed of artist familiar with discontent- and Spinal Tap’s own Harry Shearer, whose last comedy album ought to disqualify him from criticism, even helpful hints.

Choke Point: The Women is housed at an elegant old house on Crenshaw and kicks up the occasional stylish indie-rock rumpus right under the snouts of the LAPD. The last Monday in June was yet another installment of Sean Carnage’s traveling rock medicine show and NYC punks the Choke were about to wreak fury in the front parlor when I walked in. Fronted by blonde whirlwind Cameron Eve, this quartet claims inspiration from the Kinks, the Buzzcocks and the Shangri-Las, but none of these worthies ever flung their pretty selves into a houseparty moshpit, at least not at me. The Choke’s set is tight and lithe, with most of the power held pragmatically in reserve, as a contrast to the sloe-eyed dreaminess of Dalmachio Von Diamond & the Enochian Keys, a six-man karass of Echo Park aesthetes with a moody streak. Von D.’s vocals come on like one of those mood-drenched charisma-rock acts Elektra signed in the wake of the Doors. Imagine a whimsical Scott Walker fronting the Electric Prunes and you get the general idea. I left as the house began to fill with seemingly every rocker south of Hancock Park and east of Koreatown, with most arriving on foot. While it lasts, this is a cozy and first-rate quasi-underground encampment without a MySpace page and without a lot of hassles either.