I was anxious to see Weave! because I hadn’t seen them since like their fourth show—they’re fun! They were wearing awesome ’90s tribal hip-hop costumes that left singer Ivory Lee’s bikini line and butt cheeks exposed, much to the crowd’s delight.  Oh yeah, and their music: dancey 70’s pop punk to the max! Rough and tumble parking lot party drums set a creepy groove upon which sexily snarling bass lines and slowly ascending and descending keyboard melodies build off-color scales while a biting guitar and cleverly arranged vocal interplay between Ivory Lee and Jenny Sayaka beg your foot to stomp your hip to twitch your shoulder to twist your jaw to drop as you sham shimmy into the night time.

I went inside to warm up and became utterly entranced by a 10-year-old boy who looked like a girl and played piano like a genius, exuberantly performing the motions of a virtuosic concert clearly with no idea which note was which, resulting in a cacophonous play only a 10-year-old kid in a desert bar could make.  So I didn’t see Corridor but Sarah said he was “epic.”

The first time I heard the name Rainbow Arabia, I imagined a gaggle of lesbians from Yemen—so I was a bit disappointed when I found out that they were a white married couple, a habitus I don’t particularly connect to either of the words in their band name.  But they got a GOOD THING goin on!  Tiffany Preston’s larynx is a trans-Atlantic bridge—she channels at once the post-punk yelper and the Hindustani Taranist as she navigates nonchalance and sargam with enviable ease.  Her guitar transcribes sitar through fuzz and distortion, ripping a cozy hole in the space-time continuum like the guitar-pick-shaped center of a Venn diagram where nostalgic American ’90s, the Islamic Mughal empire, and the Gulf of Guinea intersect.  Danny’s melting pot percussion and micro-tonal synth phrases draft the blueprints and hang the drapes on the house that is Rainbow Arabia—an equatorial palace that Tiffany and Danny erected and deconstructed in under an hour as the Manimal herd tickled tiger whiskers on its tapestried daybeds and gamboled across its onyx balconies only to disperse into the darkness at set’s end, fingering imaginary tassles and humming “Holiday in Congo” into the wind.

Everybody told me not to get too fucked up before We Are the World so I stopped drinking whiskey and got my giggles out before I bundled up to brave the wind.  More costumes—these ones samurai-like and scary in a good way!  We Are the World celebrates the visual as much as the sonic—incorporating into their performance as much dance and design as music with fantastically spooky effects.  We Are the World’s brand of macabre is delightfully eerie!  We ate acid laced sugar cubes about half way through the show and the anticipation mixed with their hypnotic world beat electro-goth itched my feet to jumping and set my eyes to ogling the precision with which this band performs—as aesthetically dynamic and scrupulous as a Julie Taymor production.

We Are the World raised the bar for the rest of the night, then Fool’s Gold picked the party up off the sand where everyone was melting.  I’d heard them described as the “first Afro-Hebrew jam band”—which left me a bit skeptical, worried they’d be just another group of dudes haphazardly co-opting ethnic associations as if thousand year old artistic traditions could be justifiably reduced into a year-long trend like fringy vests or high-waisted jeans or the term “boho chic.”  Ugh, but that’s a different story because Fool’s Gold totally won me over!  The most eccentric family band I’ve ever seen—their bounteous line-up included an exuberant epicene percussionist, a child wearing a shirt that read “I Am On A Boat,” and a mysteriously disheveled guitarist who did not open his eyes once during the entire set.  Fool’s Gold zigzags the globe between and within songs that manage to both honor and experiment with African rhythms and Klezmer consciousness, with Hebrew lyrics that seem to communicate the most joyful celebration of existence that I’ve experienced since seeing Os Mutantes live.

I drank some more sugar water, ate a pot cookie, and settled into an old wooden chair stage-right inside Pappy and Harriet’s to watch my buddies Jonesin’ celebrate their own joyful existence by bouncing around the stage, cheekily relating tales of their meeting, their love, and their propensity to get so stoned that they are unable to fornicate.  Their audience featured a five-year-old kid and a man in a bear suit.  The two seemed unaware of the fact that their mutual presence was causing people on acid to laugh until they peed their pants.  Jonesin’ is almost too adorable, but they save themselves by being downright friendly folks who sincerely believe in extra-terrestrials and make songs that are catchier than the fuckin’ swine flu.  Their song “Bummer Summer” was the only thing that had the power to rouse me from the cozy chair in the corner that later became a part of my body.

I passed up Edward Sharpe to see Amanda Jo Williams, who put on a show that mashed the South and the West into a blissfully psychedelic folk opus that highlighted Amanda’s unbelievable voice—at times a tiny craggly mountain child, and at other times a Goddess—as well as her badass band: Crooked Cowboy, Feather, and 5-track.  There should be an illustration of 5-track next to the word “guitarist” in the dictionary!  His luscious bush of hair, his chillaxed grin, his gnarly licks, and his all around good vibes makes him an absolute pleasure to listen to and watch.  Crooked Cowboy manhandled the bass like a real cowboy rounds up dawgies—courageous but patient, fearlessly meticulous.  And then there’s Feather, the percussive siren.  She hops and shakes and jangles, commanding silver dangling anklets, an assortment of drums, and sometimes two tambourines at once.  Feather’s performance is a modern mating display, and I’m sure she’s credited in the fantasies of many men and ladies who attended Manimal festival.  Amanda Jo Williams’ combination of personalities and skills results in the most compelling roller coaster I’ve ridden in years—from the depths of a miniscule cracking whisper weaving tales of trauma, to the soaring heights of elongated elated instrumental breaks, Amanda Jo Williams will stop your heart, show you the light, then bring you right back again…

So there was light.  And then there was Hecuba. It took approximately 40 years for Hecuba to set up but, as the dense chemical fog filled Pappy and Harriet’s and Isabelle Albuquerque and Jon Beasley rose from the mist like two aliens beaming in from a starship, I knew it was going to be worth the wait.  They had me by the first refrain—Hecuba’s set erupted at the outset with the most ominous pop I’ve ever experienced.  Isabelle squirmed, half-ballerina-half-Kraken, while her voice pierced the fog and filled the room like silken gelatin mix, quickly congealing around and inside each and every audience member, leaving no thought or movement outside her control.  If Isabelle’s voice is the bullet, Jon Beasley’s synthesizer voodoo is the gun.  But it’s the lyrics that killed me—that first refrain found me singing along to a song I’d never heard before, a diabolical catchiness I didn’t question until I realized what I was singing: “I got beat up but I’m laughing now/I got beat up but I’m laughing now”—to the most deviant meter this side of the prime meridian.  Hecuba is like Sparks meets Depeche Mode no wait ’50s R&B no wait, fuck it, Hecuba is like nothing else.  After recently shaving their eyebrows and cropping their locks, Isabelle and Jon became visual synonyms, elevating androgyny from charade to brilliance… Forget trying to figure out which gender you’re attracted to—Hecuba makes you wonder which gender you IS.  Like their mythological namesake, Hecuba begets heroes.  Listen to their songs, and you’ll know what I mean.

And like a miniature pony or a talking camel, Har Mar Superstar was the best surprise a girl on drugs could ask for!  He stomped on top of the speakers and crooned and schmoozed and blubbered, telling two adoring fans, “You don’t exist,” and alerting one overzealous audience member, “You aren’t a part of this.”  Grinding on tables and waltzing ‘cross the floor, Har Mar Superstar does for celebrity sex appeal what Paula Dean does for rich Southern food: shows you all the ingredients so you realize how gross and unhealthy it is but also how easy it can be to make.  Delicious!

Laco$te turned what could have been a bizarre and noisy piece of performance art into the rather uncomfortable realization that it was time to get the fuck out of the bar and wander around the desert for a bit.  After Hecuba, watching Laco$te’s lead singer X writhe on the floor and jump off a chair (hitting her head on the ceiling) was downright anti-climactic (like following Andy Kaufman with amateur strippers).  I mean, I know they are young and that, like the band that opened the festival, they experienced unfortunate technical difficulties—but those are the times to make jokes, not to squabble and literally push each other around.  An ornery static and the fact that the dwindling crowd was coming down off acid probably didn’t help… I mean I do really like their song “La Laitier”!

Anyway, I pried my ass from my dear old chair ready to head home to the Yucca Inn when Jen from Jonesin’ frantically explained that Matt, her band-mate and fiancé, had disappeared to go to a teepee party. We were on a mission!  We re-parked the car for no apparent reason, scarfed and hooded ourselves, and stormed out across the desert, winding between Joshua trees in the bright blue light of the full moon.  Finding the teepee involved receiving intentionally vague directions from two groups of kids, navigating a sudden neighborhood with way too many lawn ornaments, and sneaking into someone’s backyard via a labyrinthine system of wooden gates I opened by tugging on bits of fishing wire tied into little loops.  Inside the teepee we found Matt as well as Ed Sharpe (“Has anyone seen my metal flute?!!  Who took my magical flute?!”) and a pack of orgasmic chickies in face paint.  I realized quickly that I’d rather be howling with my own pack, so we blew kisses to our ecstatic new friends and rambled back through the Joshua trees towards the car—but perhaps not towards it enough because we somehow ended up in a sandy lot of retired farm equipment on the brink of a camp full of guffawing men drinkin’ round a campfire.  “Oh shit,” I thought, “it’s gang rape time”—but then Daiana exclaimed, “We’re in jail!” and led us through a creaky wooden structure that smelled like splinters and ghosts ’til we came out the other side and realized that we had just been on the wrong side of the movie set.  Once oriented in Pioneertown, we found the car and hit the trail snaking our way round the hills to the motel where the party rose and fell like a sine wave whose amplitude could be measured as the distance between a cheerful group jam session and a room full of people who can’t fall asleep even under the influence of codeine cough syrup watching a sharpshooter blast aspirin tablets and split playing cards at thirty paces on the History Channel.  Good night!

—Drew Denny

Download: Crystal Antlers “Dust”

(from Tentacles out now on Touch and Go)

L.A. RECORD interviewed Crystal Antlers back before they’d even made their first EP and popularized the legend of Long Beach’s psychedelic chimneysweeps. Now Crystal Antlers’ Tentacles will be the final new release on Touch and Go, and the band is working on a surreal film about bassist Jonny Bell going insane and killing everyone. Founders Bell and guitarist Errol Davis—who has recently rejoined the band—meet for chicken and waffles.

What happened to the bank robber who put out your first 45?
Errol Davis (guitar): He became a chimney sweep—has his own company. He does pretty well.
Jonny Bell (bass/vocals): He’s still our guru. He robbed three banks in fifteen minutes. They were right across the street from each other.
What did Crystal Antlers learn from that?
E: We’re fast.
Errol, how does it feel to step back into a band you helped start?
E: It’s crazy to see people into the band, rather than playing to people who weren’t as responsive. It feels pretty natural.
J: We always wanted a bunch of people in the band. Now that we’re there, it’s a little chaotic. But all these people are Crystal Antlers—they define Crystal Antlers. But there can be all different versions. Kevin [Stuart] and Errol and I, or Andrew [King] and me and Damian [Edwards.]. We’ve done stuff in Europe—acoustic-type things where we didn’t do the entire band. Just pieces of it. There’s much more space.
Do you still feel like you’re a soul band at heart?
J: I feel like we’re trying to be something honest and trying to put our whole selves into it, which to me feels a lot like soul. And I like the feeling of old soul music. I feel we have a lot in common.
E: It’s not trying to recreate that sound as much as try to do it how they did it—a lot of passion.
How do you feel your first album came out? Did you get to do everything you wanted?
J: I’m ready to start the next thing! I wish we had more time on that. There was a lot of pressure from Touch and Go—now I understand why! I wish we would have been able to spend more time recording and mixing. In the end, all we set out to do was make an honest record, and sort of through sleep deprivation and other things we were able to do that. And basically it was all recorded and mixed in a week.
When you signed to Touch and Go, you said one of the things they liked was that you were from a different place than the rest of the L.A. bands who were getting signed then—what was important about that?
J: They didn’t really look at a lot of bands that were super-hyped up. They’re in the business of helping bring bands up. And at that time when we signed, we didn’t feel like a big hyped-up band. We’re a hard-working band playing for a while and they’d been talking to us for a long time. They bought the 7”s and the EP through mailorder, so I mailed it. It didn’t say Touch and Go—it was just their names. They were really excited I’d sent it personally—it had my home address as the return address. I’d always try and throw things in. A set list or something interesting. I included a piece of pizza with every order of the EP!
Do you know what their idea or vision for you was?
J: The cool thing is they didn’t have a vision. All they wanted to do was help us do what we were doing already. Almost to like a fault. I always expected when you sign, they warp you into something to make you big. But they totally trusted everything about us. Even to a point—the original art for the EP was a Max Ernst painting I cropped and put on, and I didn’t get the rights, and they started printing it and then were like, ‘Wait, you guys don’t own the rights?’ And they had to have another guy make the cover. They really turned out to be the best label we could have imagined. They helped us so much. They’re really like a family.
How did it feel to be the last band they’d have?
J: Actually, we found out when we were in Berlin. And a week later, we were in Amsterdam, filming a thing for FAB TV—a huge television and net webcast in the Netherlands. And they came in and told us—‘We just found out this is gonna be the last episode—they’re cutting our funding!’ We’re like the grim reaper. But with Touch and Go, we talked to Corey—it has to do with the record industry. They’re the only big indie that was left—no major involvement. Totally independent. And people aren’t buying records. It’s been that way for a long time. It really predated us signing them. We didn’t have anything to do with it. Or that’s what we tell ourselves.
The last time we talked to you, the EP wasn’t even recorded—now it’s 18 months later and the album is out. How are you able to move so fast?
J: This is the only thing we do. The first thing I do every morning when I wake up is just start working on songs, work on email, work on art, silkscreen, start making phone calls—and that’s all I do every day. I put everything I possibly could into this. We’re learning how to be a real functioning band, instead of kids playing in a garage—because that’s what we really are.
What was the point of no return?
J: For me it was a long time ago. For everyone else, fairly recently. Maybe the F Yeah tour. I think after that, Andrew sold his car to buy a new guitar. And we all started basically putting in everything we had.
Henry Rollins says ‘art leaves marks.’ What has it done to you?
J: I was going to college before. I gave that up. I wanted to be a history professor. And relationships. It takes a lot for me to be able to keep my friends I grew up with—I lost a lot of friends. Just because I’m gone and I can’t communicate all the time. Some people don’t like that. I try to take a lot of time to focus on the people who have supported me and make sure they understand I still care about them. It’s really stressful on relationships to be gone all the time. It takes a while to learn to navigate that. When you’re with somebody, you have to really focus on them. And don’t think about anything you’re doing—nobody wants to hear about anything your band is doing. They don’t care.
How does Damien feel about his cult following?
J: He’s always had that. I don’t think he can tell the difference between the people now and when he was playing Koo’s Café. He’s always been that way.
Why are you making a movie where you go crazy and kill the rest of your band? Are you actualizing something there?
J: Maybe when we kill each other. It’s sort of a postmodern documentary. Kind of loosely scripted. We wrote scenes along the way with people. Sort of in the style of Easy Rider. Michael from Videothing wrote the script, and we’re going to be doing a score for the film, which we’ve already started working on. We’re working on that and a new record and a new 7”.
Who’s going to put them out?
J: I don’t know what we’re going to do. It doesn’t matter. We’re gonna keep making stuff. We’ve been on the same trajectory all this time—before Touch and Go. So it doesn’t matter. It’s like some aspects of Black Flag—how they were all militant about their band. Although I wouldn’t want all the member changes and things. I hope we can have longevity—be productive. I like No Age—they’re really productive, even though they’re obviously pretty different stylistically. Maybe like Beefheart, too.
Maybe you should tell people how you scooped out that fish head.
J: I went to seventy different stores looking for all the pieces of the outfit for the cover, and I went to Chinatown and I was pointing to a picture I had of the cover. And the guy grabbed a salmon out of the tank—a live one—and clubbed it with a baseball bat. An Easton aluminum bat. I remember—‘I used to have that bat when I was in Little League.’ And he cut the head off and threw it in a plastic bag and handed it to me. Four dollars and fifty-six cents. I kept the receipt!
Where do you get your work ethic?
J: Partially the way we were raised, although everybody’s different.
E: Everybody was in a punk band—all different punk bands. We played together—helped each other out.
J: Andrew and I were in Boy Scouts. I was a Sea Scout. I worked on a ship—delivering cargo to the Channel Islands.
What’s your favorite knot?
J: Definitely the bowline or sheepshank. The bowline is the strongest. It can save your life—that’s what they tell you. You can tie it real quick. If you fall off a cliff with a rope in your hand for some reason, you have time to tie a bowline.
Have you ever saved someone’s life?
J: I saved my cousin from falling into a blowhole in Hawaii—a spot near the ocean with volcanic rocks where water comes underneath and shoots in the air like two hundred feet. When it comes down, it washes everything in. My cousin was younger and he fell and was getting washed into the hole, which would have dropped him like a thousand feet into the rocks. I dove in and grabbed him. And Victor [Rodriguez] saved some guy at a party in San Francisco. Errol and I were in the studio recording and everyone else was at a party on a roof, and some drunk guy fell through a skylight and caught himself with his elbows and was holding himself there with a beer—he wouldn’t drop his beer! And Victor grabbed him and saved him.
So at least one life was saved during the recording of Tentacles?
J: At least one.

L.A. RECORD PRESENTS CRYSTAL ANTLERS WITH HAR MAR SUPERSTAR, THE SLANG CHICKENS AND MORE ON THUR., APR. 16, AT THE RELEASE PARTY FOR TENTACLES AT THE EAGLE ROCK CENTER FOR THE ARTS, 2225 COLORADO BLVD., EAGLE ROCK. 8 PM / $6 / ALL AGES. MYSPACE.COM/CRYSTAL ANTLERS. AND ON SAT., APR. 18, AT FINGERPRINTS, 4612-B E. 2ND ST., LONG BEACH. CONTACT VENUE FOR TIME / FREE / ALL AGES. INDIERECORDSHOP.COM. CRYSTAL ANTLERS’ TENTACLES IS OUT NOW ON TOUCH AND GO. VISIT CRYSTAL ANTLERS AT MYSPACE.COM/CRYSTALANTLERS.