While their free party at Freak City might have lessened the attendance at Spaceland a little, Ninjasonik never fail to draw a bunch of crazy-dancing lunatics to their shows. The fact that the crowd wasn’t as tightly packed as usual only gave them a bit more room to jump around—and lessened the injuries to bystanders when a girlfight briefly broke out on the dance floor. From sex-life advice to imaginary laser guns (and redos of songs by their friends Matt & Kim and Team Robespierre), the Brooklyn boys gleefully brought it. Weave! opened the night.

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Download: The Slits “Ask Ma”

(from Trapped Animal out now on Narnack)

The Slits came up in a man’s world, overshadowed by their sloppy, destructive guy peers—but nevertheless they’ve left an imprint on the minds of many since the 1970s. We tried to break down reality with Ari Up & Tessa Pollitt. We went for full-on girl talk about boys, love, technology, the future, knitting, and girls pooping into each other’s mouths on the internet. This interview by Daiana Feuer.

Who initiated getting the Slits back together?
Tessa Pollitt (bass): It was very strange because I went to see Ari with her solo group, Ari Up & the True Warriors. And we had both been thinking that we would like to get the Slits back together at the same time. It was kind of quite spooky really. I saw her and I got really itchy to get back on stage again. We were both really thinking of the same thing at the same time.
What is the tie that binds you?
Tessa Pollitt: We grew up like sisters. I lived with her when she was 15. I left home when I was 16. I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to have a roof over my head! We’ve lived quite parallel lives. Similar things have happened to us, even though we were apart for twenty years. We both lost the fathers of our children. We’re quite seriously linked. We both like the same music instinctively. There’s very few people I get on with. Me and Ari have a conflict sometimes and we’re quite opposite people in character but opposites attract, right? We both grew up with a strong Jamaican culture in England. In the ’70s, there was a lot of Jamaican culture in England because many Jamaicans came here in the ’50s to do all the jobs that English people were too lazy to do. We both admire the talent that comes from this one little island. And it’s not even the music, I swear, it’s the poetry, the dancing—it’s totally unique, Jamaica. There’s something about Jamaica that makes it like no other Caribbean island.
Me and a million girls learned to be non-‘typical girls’ from the Slits and all the lady punk groups. Do you feel that impact? Do you feel like a good example?
Tessa Pollitt: I would hope so. I have a daughter who is 25 now, and I think people from her generation are really inspired by us. Obviously they didn’t live through the time that we went through, and I think things have changed quite dramatically in a lot of ways—not just for women, but things have moved on. I do think we did change things slowly. Things have changed—not enough—but things have changed.
What has changed or what has not changed?
Tessa Pollitt: Good and bad things have changed for women. In England we’ve had this ladder culture where young girls feel like they’re in competition with men and that they have to act like men and that annoys me because that wasn’t really what it was about. We’re not in competition with men. I think we need to look back to—this sounds silly—but to old wives’ tales, all these things that are getting lost. Women need to embrace good things about the old ways; even when women were held back there were good things. Old-fashioned things. Women shouldn’t lose these skills. It sounds silly, but knitting and cooking are great. On an artistic level it’s been very tough. I think maybe it’s different in England from America but there’s a lot of work left to be done. Men and women, we’re just so different. We’re different creatures. It makes it work. The whole world is based on opposites. Hopefully the two things can meet somewhere. A bit of conflict is good.
Ari Up (vocals): Men and women are very, very, verrrry different. And that’s by nature and so it is, and that’s good. I think it’s good differences. If people could work together then it’s a really good balance. Right now, the indifference between men and women is growing and relationships are crumbling because they can’t meet eye-to-eye. Nobody seems to be able to relate anymore. It’s one of the biggest tragedies in the world. People of all ages. It’s heavy for me to see. I’ve got tons of kids around me all the time. They’re all different ages and I can see in my niece and son, who are teenagers, how hopeless it seems. They seem to have no hope of getting a relationship. The generation now that’s coming up has given up already on relationships. We’re so different and instead of trying to unite in our differences and make something of it, we’re separating and segregated. There’s no tolerance. My niece is like, ‘Oh, I’m going on a date with my boyfriend on Sunday.’ And she’s all excited. I call the next week and I say, ‘How’s it going?’ And she’s like, ‘No, no, that’s finished already. I can’t be bothered.’ No patience. The minute one little thing goes wrong. It can be a simple little thing, and there’s just no tolerance anymore.
Why do you think that is?
Ari Up: It’s the times. It’s the generations we’re in. It’s the old world crumbling. We have to make a unity now between souls and spirits instead of being less tolerant with character and personality differences—which we have as women among women and guys among guys as well—but especially with guys and women when they get together, it’s like they can’t even understand language anymore. If we could only be more tolerant and make compromises. The people who are together and making it, it’s not because they have a smooth relationship. It’s not all love and glossy. It’s about hard work and compromise and understanding each other, making the most of each other. Most guys and women who are together accept each other’s weird personalities and that you’re just never going to totally get along. You just have to make up your mind about how much you love that person. You’re not going to really get along with any man at this time. Every man for a woman right now is a problem. BUT, if you really love the guy, then you’re going to make compromises and exceptions to the rule. Oh yeah, I can overlook that he’s really fucked up when it comes to ‘such and such.’
So fuck-ups aren’t the reason to stop loving them?
Ari Up: That’s an objective thing. If the things they do are so bad that it throws off the balance, if it’s more bad than good, then you can’t tolerate it no matter how much you love the person. You can love the person but if they keep doing shit and you can’t keep up with it, then you can still say, yeah, you love them but can’t work with it. It’s like a science. The science of a relationship: can you work with it or not? You know you love them because you’re going with your feeling. You can’t deny it unless you’re in self-denial. But can you live with that you love the person or can you live with working on the relationship? If the person keeps doing shit all the time you know doesn’t fit into your life, then it doesn’t matter that you love the person anymore. Then you should just know that you love the person but you can’t live with the person.
What about the world crumbling?
Ari Up: It’s not we the people falling in 2012, it’s not like that. I think there’s this old system we’re living in. Like the Slits was the Dark Ages. I can’t even imagine how much the world has changed! It’s changed a lot since then. It was really the Dark Ages back then. Now we’re the leftover of the Dark Ages. We’re still not in the New World. The Dark Ages are crumbling. Medicine for instance—pharmaceuticals—that’s the Dark Ages. Now there’s a new world of medicine—Space Age, you know? That hasn’t come yet. In the same way that medicine is old, that’s how I see it with a lot of things. Education is old-fashioned, everything crumbling there with school systems. The music to me is more pushing the Dark Ages of total mainstream—nothing wrong with mainstream, I think it’s good for the Slits to be mainstream—but I think that it shouldn’t be just gimmick-type of image-making. The world of music right now is not so much about music as it is about image-making. The old-world system of Babylon, I call it, is falling. We’re seeing what’s happening in every way: the wars, politics, the system, religion, all these organized religions—it’s old Dark Ages.
In America, if a man kills a woman in a moment of anger, he is tried more leniently than if a woman waits until he falls asleep or goes to the kitchen for a knife.
Tessa Pollitt: Wow. That is different! Oh, wow. We don’t have the death penalty here. That’s really shocking. But at the same time I have compassion for men because men don’t have as much rights for children. If there’s a split-up in a family, then the rights immediately go to the women. So a lot of men are suffering because they don’t get to see their children legally. I don’t think that’s right. The children suffer and it’s a real mix-up and so many entanglements need to be sorted out. The Slits got labeled as feminists or lesbians but we weren’t that. It’s very hard to pinpoint what we were trying to do or what we’re still trying to do, but we are not man-haters or lesbians or feminists. I appreciate the struggle of the suffragettes and when women didn’t have the right to vote, but this is a different age we’re living in. Men and women need to have compassion for each other.
If you could go back in history and spend time with a woman from any era, who would you go hang out with for a day?
Ari Up: Growing up, I was never really inspired by any women really. Or any men! That was sort of the whole point of the Slits. We didn’t have any heroes or people to look up to. I love Billie Holiday. Great blues singer but very self-destructive. I’m not really into drugs and alcohol. Who would it be? I wrote a song about Cleopatra once. I like the idea that she could have many guys with no problem. Not that I want many guys, but the idea is so taboo. Guys can have many women and it’s nothing, and they can cheat all the time and it’s OK, no big deal. A woman is a whore or a slut, but Cleopatra had men at her feet—poof poof poof, give me a hot milk bath and have her guys around her massaging her. I don’t really want that but I’m just thinking about the equality for men and women, equal rights. You know Cleopatra was a murderer too. I think I’d like to talk to Patsy Cline. Those country and western girls went through so much shit of being the housewife in the ’50s. For Patsy Cline to break out like she did—I would have liked to talk to her or do a song with her! But for men I would like to talk to Beethoven or Tchaikovsky.
Tessa Pollitt: There’s a woman artist I really admire called Leonora Carrington who was I think a lover of Max Ernst. She was never really recognized as a female artist until she was a senior. I’d like to hang out with her. We’re still suffering the same problem as her. We’ve been written out of the history books as far as the punk story goes. It’s all about the male groups. And it’s gone on throughout history. You’re just swept under the carpet and you’re invisible. I don’t think we’ll be recognized until we’re dead. In England it’s problematic. They don’t get it. We constantly get bad press. We do a lot better in America. We’re far more suited for America to be quite frank.
What do you think of technology? Would you touch a digitizer?
Tessa Pollitt: I really do not like it. I think Ari’s a bit more open to it than me, but this is what slightly annoys me about our album. I’m much more organic, I much prefer the live feeling of music. I’ve noticed with our record, I didn’t number the tracks to be like that. On the A-side it’s the more programmed stuff and on the B-side it’s the more organic stuff. I would have preferred to mix up the numbering of the tracks, personally. I don’t use a computer, I don’t use a mobile phone. I’m a very down-to-earth person. I’ve chosen not to get involved with the future. I do not like the computer world at all.
Ari Up: That’s a love-hate relationship. I hate it in one way and love it in another way. It’s very practical and benefitting for people. In another way, it’s dramatically horrific. From a radiation perspective, it’s terrible. We’re all very radiated. Laptops, cell phones—it’s horrifying. Mentally as well, because I have kids, there are terrible things on the computer. It’s a mother’s worst nightmare for computers to exist. You have no protection. Have you heard about ‘One Cup’? All the kids know about it. Luckily my son is close to me and he showed me and I’ve never been the same. I’m mentally disturbed by what he showed me. It’s two women shitting and eating the shit and throwing up the shit and eating the vomit. It’s fucking disgusting. Two women sharing a cup of shit. We’re not protected! The children find this, think it’s hilarious and then mothers think they’re in touch with their kids. One mother I know thinks she’s in touch with her kids—we talked about it, and she was shocked. Her children didn’t want to tell her about this video on YouTube. The reason it got so famous is because everyone made video reactions, even ‘Family Guy’ made one. You’ll never be the same after seeing it. It wouldn’t be that bad if it was just adults seeing it, but kids—I really hate computers for this. I don’t have a computer either. I can do without it. Maybe I will have one eventually to check some e-mail or emergency thing. But the kids are on it all day, watching Japanese anime, heavy pornographic animation. You can’t monitor your children 24 hours a day. Their friends will show them. There are good things about the internet, but people go to extremes and let it control their minds. There are good things too. Someone made a video matching our song ‘Ask Ma’ to the Jungle Book cartoon, and it fit so well. You can do great stuff with the computer. But I don’t like the drug addiction to it.
Do you think there’s a chance this kind of world can explode and we can restart?
Tessa Pollitt: I hope so. I hope it all crashes and everyone loses all their information. I’m very old-fashioned like that. I like to hold a book. I like paper and string and earth. I’m a bit peculiar. I suppose you can call me a Luddite, I’m a bit anti-technology. I do have a TV.
What will be the organizing principle of the New World? What will be its main value?
Ari Up: Probably a book I have to write! I believe it’s a combination of ancient living and Space Age. It’s ‘Star Trek’ meets people 300 to 500 years ago. Not the civilized world, but the ancient tribal ethnic groups, like the Celtic world or the African tribal times or the Native American tribal times. It will be a tribal way of living mixed with ‘Star Trek’! Knowing that the earth is resilient and strong and people are strong, we’ll probably survive, but the world is going to completely change. I don’t think of it being all gone in 2012, I’m not one of those.
When you’re an old lady, what do you want to do all day?
Tessa Pollitt: I would like to have a lot of animals and do some gardening. I’d like to touch the earth. I’d like to play music and draw and paint and travel. I love to draw and paint. I like the feel, I like to touch things with my hands. I’m tactile. I did knit in the past. I’d like to get back to it in the future.

THE SLITS WITH WEAVE! ON SUN., DEC. 13, AT PART TIME PUNKS AT THE ECHO, 1822 SUNSET BLVD., ECHO PARK. 10 PM / $10-$12 / 18+. ATTHEECHO.COM. THE SLITS’ TRAPPED ANIMAL IS OUT NOW ON NARNACK. VISIT THE SLITS AT THESLITS.CO.UK OR MYSPACE.COM/THESLITS.

Alex Ebert + Har Mar Superstar

Pizza!, the latest addition to Manimal Vinyl’s roster, opened festivities with upbeat songs about skulls and the recession. “Did that boy just say the N-word?!” exclaimed a leather vested motorcycle man.

Pizza!

Weave’s outfits—surfer dudes on Venus, splattered with braille. The band beamed energy from their instruments that formed a constellation of Siouxie Sioux and tropical animals above people’s heads. A nod goes to Ivory’s commitment to a high bikini line.

Weave

Corridor, aka Michael Quinn, comes on epic—like leaping from a building but not hitting the ground. His music belongs to the ethereal realization you won’t crash. The wind whipped his hair wildly as he drummed on his cello. He shares alternacoustic mystique with Kurt Vile, except Quinn’s more metal. Bill & Ted might arrive and whisk him away to the future.

Corridor

Tiffany Preston beats the cowbell like it’s a drum pad and vice versa. As the biting wind trapped Rainbow Arabia‘s notes in the air for a second, it became appealing to sew a thread passing back and forth between cowbell, pad, Danny’s keys, congas, and back to guitar. The wind disentangled Tiffany’s voice from the mic effects—noticing her natural sound’s ornaments.

Rainbow Arabia

Prolonged exposure to We Are The World nears brain-washing. People think Ed Sharpe has a cultish power? I’m more likely to join We Are The World—their costumes as monk habits, and prayer as a Ryan Heffington dance routine. Beneath the sensory aerobics, I noticed, they all wear different shoes.

We Are The World

Respite from the World’s immaculate vision was found inside Pappy & Harriet’s, hopping and twisting around a shiny ghettoblaster’s pixie stick, midi karaoke beats. Matt Jones has Sonny Bono hair. His Jonesin’ partner, Jen Jones, crosses Debbie Harry and Tifffany—the latter accentuated by shoulder pads. The couple resides in San Francisco, exchanging romantic one-liners with distortion set on 11.

Jonesin’

New band members appear with Fool’s Gold all the time. But here’s hoping a rosy-cheeked preteen playing percussion tonight makes the permanent roster. Six chickens, seventeen marbles, and two helicopters also squeezed in on stage. The intro to “Suprise Hotel” lasted for miles—teasing that tropical guitar line between Lewis Pesacov and Matt Popieluch until the audience fully surrendered—before Luke Top uttered the song’s first word.

Fool’s Gold (*see the kid in the back right!)

With instruments and band members protruding in all directions, Ed Sharpe & Magnetic Zeros swooned on stage like an amoeba. The audience was sucked in. Alex Ebert suggested a volunteer get even closer and suck his ________. I imagined Ebert pulling a bathplug out of his pants and the whole audience slipping into a glowing light between his legs.

Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros

A fifteen-minute jam during Amanda Jo Williams’ last song put the country butter in psychedelic. Having a full band lay into her songs slowed things down so the rhythms could crack their joints. Amanda’s kooky voice usually whisks the audience away on horse rides after bunnies, but tonight the spread-out sound kept the audience stomping within these four walls.

Amanda Jo Williams

When both members of Hecuba collapsed on the floor, their heads touched the way Lady And The Tramp share a noodle. Fog gathered. Keeping a hand playing the keyboard, Jon Beasley rubbed his face on Isabelle Albuquerque’s cheek while she hunched over her knees. The audience huddled around as its ship reached the heart of outer space.

Hecuba

Laco$te’s X rolled around, climbed tables, and bent backwards during a short, electric set—so high charged it blew some fuses, including the band members’. Most people believed the sound splitting was a deliberate trippy effect. Laco$te could’ve mimed their remaining songs and kept the audience bobbing along.

Laco$te

Cold did not care much that the sun wanted to shine on Sunday. Voice On Tape’s echoing moans and romantic guitar strumming made me want scotch and a gambler’s ring.

Voice On Tape

He’s My Brother She’s My Sister performed when the air was white. You could barely see them when looking at the musicians straight on. This band’s day-after-glamorous-debauchery plus a banjo felt so right—considering the far-out night many people were still living. The audience slapped its knee and sloppily clapped along to what might have been Manimal’s theme song.

He’s My Brother She’s My Sister

Shivering, lacking vitamins and sleep, the audience sat cross-legged on Pappy’s dancefloor during Ariana Delawari. Gentle detailed guitar was punctuated when she struck hard chords or sincere moments—her eyebrows pleated like a sea for rain. Lulled, you forget she might be singing about politics and terrorism.

Adriana Delawari

Voices Voices was the last thing I could see before the boogie-man chased me home. For a finale to the melting rainbow they stirred until dissolved, the girls should have ridden off on motorcycles across the darkening desert—trenchcoats flapping behind them.

Voices Voices

Lips chapped the minute they tasted the air at Pappy & Harriet’s—those allergic to Chapstick have since cracked and ripped every time a smile recollects the Manimal Fest journey.

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—Daiana Feuer (words and photo)

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

Low expectations both shield you from disappointment and make way for pleasant surprises, the first one being openers and beloved B52 worshippers WEAVE! A friend of mine once incorrectly observed that our generation—through fashion, music and art—is reliving the ’70s. Not true, we’re reliving the pre-Reagan ’80s, if anything, and WEAVE! are a fine band to help us plod our way through Carter’s malaise.

Next up was James Pants, who also surprised because A) he’s from Spokane (my family’s desolate eastern Washington hometown) and B) he was totally content channeling Gary Wilson’s spirit as he performed songs designed to—as he said—make you feel alternately good and creepy about yourself.
By far the night’s biggest surprise, though, was seeing James Pants and co transform into the backing band for Gary Wilson himself! Gary didn’t seem to mind—he was decked in red and green capes, packing tape, baby powder and blow-up dolls as usual—but the magic wasn’t there. Even Mary—frequent collaborator and friend of Gary—seemed incapable of making the night shine no matter how many times she recited spoken word and sprinkled baby powder over Gary. Something was missing. Perhaps it was the real Blind Dates from Endicott who are normally a fixture for Gary but tonight were nowhere to be seen—or even Gary himself. Maybe he saw through our air-conditioned bodies and into our souls and realized that we’d just paid $12 to get into a venue nowhere near as purifying as the roof where his last Los Angeles show took place. Maybe we betrayed ourselves, and Gary was in no mood to forgive us. We’re animals, after all.

—Kevin Ferguson

15 Twenty’s Blogger Shop Day 2 took place on a Sunday, the time when bloggers religiously shop. Tents, providing shade and merchandise, were set up at the parking lot nearest to Urban Outfitters. The uncrowded event was present with the ultra violent sun rays, but in the afternoon, DJ Heather Gram and bands Puppy Dog and WEAVE! came to play. Their noise intrigued out-of-place farmer’s market regulars to the stage.

Puppy Dog’s xylophone, Fox n’ Wolf vocals, and minimalist lyrics brought a sugar-coated performance that lasted less than ten minutes. Even their stage set-up took longer to execute.

WEAVE!, composed of Alex Black (Drums), Ivory Lee Carlson (Bass), Bryan Terrell Lasley (Guitar), Jenny Sayaka Norris (Keys/Percussion) was up next. On arrival, a crazy truck driver almost drove through the parking lot, possibly crashing the event. However, the show did go on. I first met up with Bryan as we both carried instruments to the stage. He confessed how early an 11:30 a.m. performance was, especially in a hungover state.

WEAVE!’s afrobeat music fuses repetitive phrases with ’60s woman empowering, “Oh’s” and “Ah’s.” Before playing “Bravery,” Ivory jokingly said that it reflected the band because they were performing out in the scorching heat. Even during intervals, they kept the crowd entertained, while Bryan tuned his guitar. However, no matter how powerful their music was, it helped the heat none. They played two-minute songs like a band, all working together as vocalists under an invisible force field. Overall, WEAVE! comes at you like an extension to your head, but natural.

—Katrina Guevara (words and photo)

Download: A Certain Ratio “Shack Up”

Part Time Punks‘ Mike Stock texts us that A Certain Ratio have confirmed to headline the Part Time Punks fest on Sun., Nov. 16! They will be joining an already really impressive line-up and pushing it toward the legendary! If you don’t know them, they were one of Manchester’s best and are a perfect embodiment of the Part Time Punks playlist! Tickets are still on sale for only $13 here and full line-up is below!

PART TIME PUNKS FEST
SUNDAY, NOV. 16
THE ECHO AND THE ECHOPLEX

A CERTAIN RATIO

with

PYLON
THE SLITS
LOVE IS ALL
VIVIAN GIRLS—[INTERVIEW]
THE NIGHTENGALES
NERVOUS GENDER
SAVAGE REPUBLIC
THE URINALS
THE WILD STARES
ARIEL PINK’S HAUNTED GRAFFITI
TUSSLE
MAGIC BULLETS
THE MUSLIMS—[INTERVIEW]
GRIMBLE GRUMBLE
THE SOFTBOILED EGGIES
WARPAINT
WEAVE
NODZZZ

GUEST DJs
CHUCK WARNER (of the excellent HYPED 2 DEATH and MESSTHETICS comps!)
DAN SELZER (Acute Records!)

AND SCREENINGS OF RARE VIDEOS INCLUDING PERFORMANCES BY…

THROBBING GRISTLE, EINSTURZENDE NEUBATEN, SAVAGE REPUBLIC, SUBURBAN LAWNS, WILLIAM BURROUGHS, TALK TALK, SOFT CELL, GENESIS P-ORRIDGE and MORE!

Tickets are now on sale—link here! Only $13 for the whole show on Sunday, Nov. 16, presented by L.A. RECORD and KXLU and featuring the bands below and more!

PART TIME PUNKS FEST
SUNDAY, NOV. 16
THE ECHO AND THE ECHOPLEX

with

PYLON
THE SLITS
LOVE IS ALL
VIVIAN GIRLS—[INTERVIEW]
THE NIGHTENGALES
NERVOUS GENDER
SAVAGE REPUBLIC
THE URINALS
THE WILD STARES
ARIEL PINK’S HAUNTED GRAFFITI
TUSSLE
MAGIC BULLETS
THE MUSLIMS—[INTERVIEW]
GRIMBLE GRUMBLE
THE SOFTBOILED EGGIES
WARPAINT
WEAVE
NODZZZ

GUEST DJs
CHUCK WARNER (of the excellent HYPED 2 DEATH and MESSTHETICS comps!)
DAN SELZER (Acute Records!)

AND SCREENINGS OF RARE VIDEOS INCLUDING PERFORMANCES BY…

THROBBING GRISTLE, EINSTURZENDE NEUBATEN, SAVAGE REPUBLIC, SUBURBAN LAWNS, WILLIAM BURROUGHS, TALK TALK, SOFT CELL, GENESIS P-ORRIDGE and MORE!