I like Marilyn Manson.

After Redemer, I sat awkwardly by while the residents of the Vermont House asked my friend Rudy to leave. He tried to charm his way out of the ejection, puckishly asking the dude who was kicking him out, “Is it because I made fun of your eyebrows?,” but that wasn’t why he was asked to get out of there. He was kicked out because he was touching girls and making them uncomfortable. Rudy: you’ve got to chill out, dude! Just because you’re using a mannequin’s arm doesn’t mean you can lift people’s skirts!

After that debacle, it was time for the star of the show: Michael Nhat. Fuck, this dude is a total hip-hop star! He was about to start the show when he realized that he’d left his beats outside, so there was this five minute stretch of time where everyone in the hallway was chanting “Michael Nhat! Michael Nhat!” Kyle from Narwhal Party hyped the crowd while we waited, asking us about our drug preferences (“Do you like shrooms?!” “YEAH!!!” “Do you like to shoot heroin?!” “YEAH!!!”), and eventually Nhat got there with his jams and started
bumping them. The crowd immediately raged and surrounded the rapper, a short Vietnamese dude with a very-Vietnamese beard and impeccable taste in sweaters. It was pretty great to watch him bounce around in the midst of his fans, clutching onto his microphone and once getting thrown so hard into his CD player that he inadvertently shut off his backing track. I saw part of his show last week at Environmentaland, and he was sitting down in a chair during that. This was very different indeed.

I didn’t hear a word that he had to say. It wasn’t really that kind of show, and I’m not even sure that he’s that kind of a performer. But some spark shines through in his performance—even if the words are distorted by a shitty mic, through a shitty PA, in a shitty room. And he has sick beats, and I really like the sing-songy nature of his flow. But to be honest, I’m having a hard time figuring out why exactly I thought he was special—was it the music itself, or was it the fact that it came out of this particular guy? I bought his record, so maybe I’ll figure it out later.

The next band was Narwhal Party. I walked out, because it was apparent from the first few notes that they were going to be way too loud. Maybe I should have stayed around to write a complete review, but I didn’t have earplugs—and my hearing is important to me! I don’t understand why bands do that. Seriously—do they really need an amp that big for a fucking hallway?

While Narwhal Party played, I lived it up and partied hard! First, I smoked weed out on Vermont with Sarah and Bob, who broke his pipe by dropping it on the sidewalk—oops! Then, I drank a beer out at Lou’s car, and explained to him why he should stop buying Coors Light (“fuck that family, man!”). Finally, I ducked into the Vermont House’s “hidden” bathroom to take a pee and had a really important moment.

There was a time in my life when I romanticized the punk rock lifestyle typified by a house like this one, but the secret bathroom smelled like shitty cat litter and I came close to puking. All I could think of was how glad I was that I was visiting and didn’t live there. All I could think of was how grateful I was that my house is not a venue and that my roommates are clean. Thanks, Vermont House, for giving me a spot to make realizations like that one.

The last act I saw was Voice on Tape. I’ve seen Lou so many times, but this one sticks out as the most crucial. He had this guy Isaac (from the house, I think) playing drums for him, and it was unlike any Voice on Tape performance I’d ever seen. Compared to the normal reverb-drenched, dense vibe of a Voice on Tape show, this was open and percussive. Normally Lou’s acoustic guitar is drenched with effects, but this time it was clean. In the past, his music has sometimes made me sleepy. I was pumped after this, though—I’ve never described Voice on Tape this way, but it literally rocked! I like this direction.

One of cool things about Lou is the fluidity of his performances. He knows these songs so well—it’s like they’re etched into him—so he can play them differently each time by just feeling them in the moment. It’s so impressive that he can adapt his sound to accommodate different backing musicians. In doing so for this show in particular, he invited a more tribal and aggressive feeling that fit the night perfectly.

The girls after the show told me that Lou was “our Elvis.”

And his was the last show I saw. Dylan Doren played after, but I was tired of live music and went on an adventure to buy doughnuts across the street. After that, the vibe at the party took a crummy turn. I realized it was time to go when this very small and very cute—yet obviously crazy—girl decided to try and seduce me by sexily singing along to the Steve Miller Band’s “Stuck in the Middle.” It was pretty awkward—I blushed, but I didn’t have the heart to tell her that it was probably my least favorite song in the whole world (well, at least it was for that moment; I guess that song “The Joker” is even worse). I took that as my cue to leave.

A really fun night, though.

—Geoff Geis

Download: American Gil and the Major Dudes f. John Thill and Golden Boots “Lunchtime Riverside (Tucson Version)”

(from What Is Happening… available now from Big Whup Industries)

If you just rolled out of a bus and wanted to immerse yourself in the newest funnest music playing at artsy dives like Pehrspace and the Vermont House, you’d do well to start by dipping your toes into these tunes, curated by the kids at Cal Arts (way cheerier than those dicks at Otis) and full of mirth and humor and wonderment and lo-fi gung-ho do-it-yourselfitude. Not all of these songs seem to be world premieres, and only a few of these groups actually attend Cal Arts, but with small-band dynamite like Pizza! and Voice on Tape, you just can’t go wrong. My favorite songs on here were the new ones, and some of the most interesting are the ones labeled as actual CalArts bands. The warped barbershop quartet of Adrian the Mighty’s “How Long” is mesmerizing, in a Manson-girls sort of way. And Big Whup themselves turn in perhaps the best tune on the album, a slightly orchestrated celebration with fantastic ethereal gal vocals that by turn evoke Les Calamites and the Centimeters, with “heartbreak makes my heart grow old” seemingly the only English phrase amongst what could just be Esperanto lyrics. It’s as if Dexy’s Midnight Runners met Amazulu on the set of The Young Ones and formed a super group. This album gives me hope for the future, even as it makes me curse my youthful choice to attend USC.

—Dan Collins

Daiana Feuer

“What the fuck is Women?” I thought as I drove, very late and alone, away from civilization as I know it and south on the 110 towards the 10, where I hooked a right and started in the dangerous direction of West.  I’d gotten this assignment at the last moment, and the only thing I knew about the night was that 60 Watt Kid was awesome, and Pehrspace was no longer the venue.  Google Maps had shown me that Women’s address was something that looked like a frat house, which scared me. I had no idea there was a college anywhere near Crenshaw and Washington.

It was a house, a big ol’ thing, but when I got there, it weren’t no frat-type deal. Scraggly-looking twenty-somethings mobbed the front porch, my wristband for entry was a hand-woven lavender friendship bracelet, art and various trash messes covered the walls and counter space inside, and what seemed like confetti was spread all over the floor—but on further inspection, it was handmade.  Shreds of every kind of paper imaginable, including dollar bills, had been sliced up seemingly to bedazzle and bewilder aging hipsters like myself.

It wasn’t easy to comb the floor for further clues, because while 60 Watt Kid massaged their mic stands and drum kits into being, fuckable curly-haired young ‘uns in shorts and tee shirts grooved out, dancing to P.M. Dawn’s “Set Adrift on Memory Bliss.”  I fell in love immediately.  It was like the Pit in PCU!  Houses like this, like the Vermont House or Ellis Island near USC, are so important to true lovers of music.  This is why San Francisco in the sixties happened.  When a home becomes one big playroom, it means somebody is book-ending every day with magic.  “Yay to Sean Carnage for finding this place,” I thought, as he stood in the doorway, clapping his hands to the beat.

60 Watt Kid started their set beautifully and sweetly, samples of a woman “intrigued by the idea of virtual plastic surgery” lending themselves somehow to the build-up of a wondrous tune.  Then they got into a second tune, Dylan Wood looping some “Wipeout” style drums into beautiful, fragile song structures.  I realized that I was the only one sitting down.  The rousing crescendos that suddenly dissipated into atmospheric delicacy, and the punctuation by guitarist Derek Thomas of what sounded like a child’s xylophone all kept the audience on their toes and quiet as sweaty church mice, even when front-man Kevin Litrow ended a song with “God Bless Patrick Swayze!”

Cutting the set much too short, they wrapped up with their Willy Alexander-esque “American Standard,” an against-type rockabilly tune, wherein Litrow meandered through the audience shouting things at people.  They plunked the last few echoey notes, and sadly, the hip-hop CD started its thing once more.  As the audience made its way to the lawn, I caught one young man with a Misfits tattoo on his neck tell his girlfriend “These guys were siiiiick!”
It would be a tough act to follow.  But Th’Mole definitely started things right by coming out wearing a full-on super-hero costume made out of plastic goggles, wrestling boots, and some kind of Junior Birdman side-visor helmet deal.  His one-man hip-hop act over tinny beats reminded me of about a hundred similar acts that have shown up on Sean Carnage bills, but aside from the originality of his costume, he set himself apart by pulling off rhymes about nerdy bravado and heartbreak that made the Streets seem contrived and sterile.

And like Jonathan Richman, the real-ness of Th’Mole’s delivery was punctuated by constant explanations of his songs’ lyrical meaning.  Before one song, titled simply “I Hate You,” he told us flat-out that the song was directed against an ex-girlfriend, then proceeded to drop a narrative plea for justice: “I baked you a cake—I don’t even cook!”  Nothing warms my heart more than seeing other hearts laid out on superhero sleeves.  It’s to Sean Carnage’s credit that he has an eye for this stuff and can put together such disparate acts who flow so magically one to the next.

Or, at least I assume that he continued the flow.  For embarrassing cubicle-related reasons, I had to head home around the 1 a.m. mark, missing all the acts that followed.  I won’t make the same mistake next week, when Sean celebrates his four year anniversary, and 60 Watt Kid gets another chance to sweetly lift us to our feet.

—Dan Collins