Every once in a while, though, there are nights that serve as reminders of why we all started coming out in the first place. On Monday, Sean hosted a birthday rager for Kyle Mabson, his roommate and the official party engine of Pehrspace. A double-sized crowd appeared to celebrate Kyle’s special day and check out a solid-from-top-to-bottom lineup of performers that was headlined by Abe Vigoda. Sure, there were still people in the parking lot—but that’s only because the venue was too sweaty and insane for their sensibilities.

After watching the Lots o’ Crap show at Tribal Cafe, I got to Pehr about halfway through Signals. I realize that it’s a silly metaphor, but they sounded like a space shuttle in mid-takeoff, their roar only punctured by stops between every song to wish Kyle a happy birthday. Guitarist Bill Gray growled and rumbled throughout the whole show as his cousin Jon hunched over a microphone singing in a tone that at times reminded me of… Henry Rollins? Jacob Cooper, the drummer, bounced from hard-core to calypso-like with the aid of some recorded beats. All of it came together really well.

Somebody standing by me said, “This shit reminds me of Chicago,” but I didn’t really know what he meant by that. I’m not an expert, but I doubt that Chicago was ever this jittery, this manic, or this sing-songy.

Next was Breezee One, a rapper from Detroit via San Francisco who made an incredible splash on her first night in LA. Anyone at this show who missed Breezee missed something spectacular. I couldn’t take notes on the show because by the second song I’d been turned into a slobbering, lurching, possessed dance zombie. I wasn’t the only one, either—the rapper spent most of the show colliding with grinding fools who kept shedding overcoats as the beat pulsed. I guess she was like Peaches, but mostly because she was confidently sexual. Maybe she was a bit like Hawnay Troof, but only because she was funny. Perhaps she was like Juiceboxxx, although in reality it’s just her energy that makes that comparison sensical.

Oh… I guess she was just Breezee. Go see her next time, you’ll understand.

I was convinced that she’d stolen the show, but I was wrong: there was more madness to come. The Birthday Boy Himself sat at the drums for the next band, another chapter in a seemingly endless parade of absurdly-named supergroups that Kyle throws together every month or so. XBoXRoX, fronted by Vice Cooler, was awesome. They were heavy as all hell, and they drove the audience absolutely nuts. People were beating the shit out of each other and moshing like teenagers—including the band’s leather-clad singer, who was a blur for most of the performance. A friend of mine described Kyle’s drumming as having a “machine gun” sound, and I agree partially. The difference is that machine gunners reload sometimes. Kyle, on the other hand, never stops.

After them came the headliners. It says a lot about a crowd when it sticks around late on a Monday, but Sean’s isn’t an ordinary crowd (despite my previous observations) and this wasn’t an ordinary band (even by his standards). They finally took the stage at around one o’clock in front of an audience that was hardly diminished. I was stoked because hadn’t seen them in a while. Yet after the frenzy of the last three acts, the audience relaxed a bit for Abe Vigoda. Pleased by the relative calm, I stood in the back for the first part of their show and jotted down notes about how they had mastered their formula and, like U2 or Springsteen or any other institution band, had refined a signature sound into an epic distillation of itself.

I thought they were excellent, but I honestly didn’t have too much new to say about them. It was Abe Vigoda. They’re great- duh. Cool, right?

Then came the disco.

A synth in Abe Vigoda! What a perfect fit! The guys seemed a little embarrassed about it for some reason, but amongst the audience there was no question that this was a revelation. Newly-crowned keyboardist Juan Velasquez looked like he was about to die of a joy attack whilst weaving pop arpeggios and sweeping melodies into the band’s patented rolling lilt. Abe Vigoda has no shortage of pre-existing anthems (“All Night and Day,” “Skeleton,” “House”), but the new dance songs are anthemic in an altogether different way: they sparkle.

Man, this band is on to something.

—Geoff Geis

Oh, but that’s not to say that the Raincoats were not ON FIRE Sunday night. This was indeed a dream come true, one of those special moments that can’t be described as a “dream come true” because none of us would have ever even imagined that we’d get to see the Raincoats until those trusty little Part Time Punks posters started telling us we would. The most miraculous thing about the show was watching the dynamic between founding members Ana de Silva and Gina Birch. It must have been absolutely strange, thirty years after releasing a mostly-ignored record on Rough Trade, to find themselves playing a packed basement in Los Angeles for an audience made up mostly of people who weren’t even around then. But here they were, with personalities beaming!  Ana carried herself like a wisened journeywoman, arching over her guitar and occasionally staring coldly into the crowd, her wrinkled face looking like it came off the cover of a Johnny Cash record. Gina, on the other hand, was all ebullient joy as she buzzed through not only the set but between-song banter about her Ebay obsession and other cute idosyncracies. I apologize for using a cliche here, but watching the two interact was special in the same way as it’s special to go to a dinner party with a long-married couple. Ana’s eye-rolling was visible during Birch’s monologues, but it conveyed not a sense of annoyance but of sisterhood and an abiding and resilent friendship. I told Gina about my observation after the show and she wrote the following in a little speech bubble above her head on the back cover of the LP I bought: “We broke up after every record, but we love each other!”

The show was electric and beautiful. They opened up with my favorite, “No Side to Fall In.” I embarassingly stopped my full-throated sing-along about halfway through the first verse when I realized no one else was singing along. It just wasn’t that kind of an audience—everyone wanted to hear THE RAINCOATS sing those songs and seemed pretty content to sing along silently in their own heads and occasionally fist-pump on hits like “The Void.” The set was, understandably, skewed towards earlier material that fit more within the “punk” aesthetic of the festival. For all of the moments that the Raincoats bounced along messily, there were enough spot-on performances to keep the set moving along solidly. For me, the highlights were Gina’s opener from Moving, “No One’s Little Girl” (my only complaint is that this was the only song from Moving they played), Ana’s achingly frustrated “No Looking,” and encore-closer “Fairytale in the Supermarket”—which somehow raged even harder than it did thirty years ago. “Lola,” their heralded Kinks cover, was spot-on and powerful in a genuine, chunky-rock kind of way. Gina also offered up what seemed to be two new songs—a heart-wrenching number about having a dog instead of a baby, and a cheery and drunken manifesto about feminism, happiness, and being a “City Girl.” To be sure, they were both a bit longer and more repetitive than the early material through which the band was rifling—but they provided a stunningly honest portrait of their author, one that I think we were all grateful to see.

—Geoff Geis

(from Islands of Ayle on Retard Disco)

Vice Cooler is a verbose man. This is only a small portion of an interview I did with Vice in his home in Oakland, California. We wanted to talk about his upcoming world tour and his incredible new album, Islands of Ayle, but we got a little sidetracked. From a none-to-surprising disassociation to Brittany Spears to the perils of the Dubai airport. Anyway, the meat and potatoes still remain as the self described ‘positive-energy spreader—not always successful” Vice Cooler lays down some musician etiquette. (This interview by Jen Snyder.)

Number one, I am actually not talking to Vice Cooler right now, am I? What is your name? How did you come up with that?
Vincent C. Onuparko. It’s just based on nicknames and transformation closer to the vision that I identify myself with… I never identified with my birth name, so I kinda felt foreign and more nonexistent before I changed it, and then I felt like I existed.
I wanted to ask you why you’ve stayed in the Bay Area for so long. New York is a lot closer to your hometown of Alabama than San Francisco is.
I’ve never liked New York that much. I like visiting it. It would have been a better career move but I don’t really look at it like that. What I do is a necessity for me of expression that I can make a living off of, right now at least. I was never interested in making it the ultimate career… I moved out here because I had a lot of friends. The first time I ever toured the West Coast was with Deerhoof with XBXRX. We did shows with Jenny from Erase Errata and there was a really strong community that my brother and I identified with. We wanted to get out of the South because it’s really psychologically bad. The whole environment was negative and we needed to get away. My touring was starting to die down and my brother Steve was touring with Japanther out here anyway. We decided to move here after spending a summer here and everyone was overly encouraging and hospitable. If we were living in Alabama now, we’d move to L.A. because what’s happening in L.A. now is [like] what was happening in S.F. back then. It’s where a lot of our friends live.
I think the Bay Area is an interesting place to make art because it’s ignored by a lot of TV and Media—has that been a blessing or a curse for you when making music?
It’s really ignored by a lot of people. When I go to Europe, someone’s always like, ‘Oh you have a San Francisco sound,’ so people [there] are aware…[here] if someone’s making something, it’s usually based on what they’d naturally be doing, which comes out better than if something is career or money fueled. When I’m in Brooklyn, I see a lot of bands that are like, ‘OK, let’s start a band and be in SPIN next week’ and it’s not based on natural growth. It’s like an organic food as opposed to a genetically modified mutant chemical ball. It’s more organic for people to be making stuff because it’s what’s naturally coming out of them. I mean, there are bands in Brooklyn that don’t care totally about the press and it’s not on their to-do list. But overall, to generalize, L.A. and Brooklyn are places where you could go there and end up in the media, but then it’s like—well, is that putting a shelf-life on yourself?
Tell me about playing in Egypt—what’s that like?
There’s not really a scene in Egypt. It was mostly Americans at the show who live there. There’s not a huge punk background with BYOFL or MRR or Black Flag so it’s a different viewpoint on music and creativity. Going over there and doing Hawnay Troof, it’s always shocking to them to see a guy in a suit rolling on the floor and yelling. In the U.S. it’s not really weird anymore to do anything. You could be GG Allin now and it wouldn’t be shocking. What I do isn’t meant to shock, so when it does, it’s a surprise to me. It’s a double shock. They’re weirded out, so then I’m weirded out that they think what I do is abnormal.
Let’s talk about ‘Islands of Ayle’ specifically. I had to look up ‘Ayle’ in the dictionary. It means grandfather. What’s that about?
Well, originally it was ‘Island of Ayler’ after Albert Ayler, the old free-jazz saxophonist. What I do is really hard on me and time-consuming and recently I ran into Aaron Rose [of ANP Quarterly] at a RVCA opening and I was like, ‘Hey, I’m finally doing ok with money!’ And then Aaron was like, ‘Yeah, now add up all the hours you spent working and you’ve been making a penny an hour.’ I hadn’t ever thought of that. It’s cool, I like it, but I’m not making a ton of money off of it. Sometimes I think about if this record is going to be just like the last record—like a tree that falls in the forest? It makes me wonder if the effort I put in will be worth it ten years from now. So then I saw the Ayler documentary, and I’d been listening to him a lot and I felt like musically what he was doing, even though it sounds different, is really similar to me. He was always talking about unity, which I really identified with. He was working really hard and was really naive and thought no one understood what he was doing, which was trying to create something that brought people together, but it wasn’t acknowledged until after he died. I saw that movie and I totally felt the same thing and then the end was like, ‘He jumped off a boat and killed himself.’ Man, I don’t wanna jump off a boat… but I didn’t want to come across as cheapening him or trying to compare myself to him too much. I thought it would be more interesting sound-wise to have it be ‘Islands of Ayle.’
So it’s pronounced ‘isle’? I thought it appropriate—thinking of you as a grandfather in the music scene. You’ve definitely seen a few different generations of music. Like Mika Miko and No Age recently…it’s like the way to make it big is to open up for Hawnay Troof! You’re a magic portal!
Well, the grandfather thing isn’t that inaccurate. But the portal thing… I don’t know about that. I’m just really curious about new ideas and new music and the curiosity leads to an awareness of good bands. And usually because they’re good they end up popular. There’s just certain people who have a strong desire to know what’s going on, like Dean from No Age or Brendan Fowler—we exchange information. and if I hear something that’s really cool, I’m going to send it to them and a bunch of people. It just so happens that a lot of these bands, [like] High Places and the others have just skyrocketed in a short period of time. I don’t really think that has much to do with me.
You called yourself ‘damaged electronic pop’ earlier. I liked a description I read of Hawnay Troof I read that called it, ‘completely fucked-up pop music’ which I thought was awesome and appropriate. The new album is definitely more poppy sounding, and definitely fucked up.
Ideally it wouldn’t be fucked up at all (laughs). I’m really tone deaf is one thing, [which] makes it sound accidentally messed up or wrong. I want to make something that is interesting and usually that leads to something more difficult for some people. Something as simple as raising the volume—it can make a song a lot more interesting.
How about the song ‘Front My Hope’? It has a chipmunk-y lyric thing going on, which I think of as a Vice Cooler trademark. Your voice sounds chipmunk-y on its own sometimes—where’d you get this excellent idea? It reminds me of Lightning Bolt, and how high tones, instead of being grueling and intense, can be really quite pleasing and comforting.
I’m really into the Chipmunks and pitching things up. My ear naturally doesn’t hear high frequencies. Maybe I have hearing damage, but I overcompensate for high mids. I always feel like I could go higher and I have to keep myself in check. None of my records have even had low ends until this one.
Any words of wisdom for bands planning to tour soon? You’ve done it a lot.
I hope people realize that touring isn’t going to exist unless you have a lot of money. We are witnessing the extinction of our entertainment. People want to go to a party and see a band play and prefer to spend money on beer rather than on the band. To expect to see music for free right now is unrealistic and self centered. You also used to have to fight for shows when you toured because there was no Myspace. It’s almost like music isn’t a valued art form here in the US. What I do is supposed to be a struggle to make things better. I guess my advice is, ‘don’t get caught up in something unless you really feel it spiritually.’

VISIT HAWNAY TROOF AT HAWNAYTROOF.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/HAWNAYTROOF. HAWNAY TROOF’S ISLANDS OF AYLE IS OUT NOW ON RETARD DISCO.