marchfourth marching band by andy batt

A Little Night Orgy: Kim Fowley once famously recommended Hollywood as a place for the cynical who’ve fouled their nests elsewhere. While it’s impossible not to marvel at the agglomeration of shitheels hoofing it in this basin, few can remain cynical around the fellow’s female entourage, most of which were running rampant at his Lipstick Orgy extravaganza at the Knit last Wednesday, the 20th. The tall and glowering host, father of a hundred chart hits across the decades and busy these days as ever, left briefing details to Christie Blood, the entirely delightful mistress-of-ceremonies for further cozening. Fowley’s shows always remind me of mid-1960s A.I. P. joint Dr. Goldfoot & the Bikini Machine, in which Vincent Price attempts to conquer the world with an elite force of pulchritudinous chickbots molded to every kink in ruling-class chauvinistic taste. On the bill were Beat Killers, the Fabulous Miss Wendy and Zombelle, the latter a lone gothgirl performing “blasphemous doo-wop.” Scattered around the venue were scene-folk I’ve been tripping over for years in one likely venue or other, names less familiar than the same old faces grinning atop ever-gaudier hipster-wear. Anon came Fowley, laying on a little of his Crazy White Man improvisatory chant-rock, followed by lots of lascivious q&a with a nubile self-admitted virgin. I left before the lesbian slave auction, chary of taking on yet another commitment known to be wearing in the extreme.

Another Friday, Another Raid: Aesthetes of the post-noir hardboiled crime movie show too little love for Michael Winner’s The Mechanic, a nifty 1972 bit of hitman agonistes featuring an uneasy male bond between Charlie Bronson and Jan-Michael Vincent —the verbose likes of David Mamet might well have given both nuts to author. This marvel was somewhere into its fourth reel at the New Bev the following Friday night when a text bade me meet various L.A. RECORDers at a downtown speakeasy. I hauled myself away from Mr. Majestyk and passed on a planned after-movie inquiry into just how the pluperfect fuck a tiny storefront like Echo Curio was going to get away with a performance by killer hodads Double Naught Spy Car with anything short of structural damage. (Accounts from survivors are welcome and should be appended below.) While we await reports, I can only relate this upstairs eyrie throbbed with some stupendously DJ’d hip-hop in the very few minutes my arrival preceded that of the Fire Department and grim-looking LAPD officers. Sight of the taxpayer-funded mold and spit of Kevin Tighe, Randolph Mantooth and the two zombies from Adam-12 putting an end to my night was anything but new to me. I thought the full helmeted regalia on the firemen a bit hammy, as was the big red LAFD engine flashing and howling down Broadway. As we left, cops were detaining the doorman. It had the exact feel of a clownshow staged for tourists, like Yakov Smirnoff’s run in The Producers, still with two weeks left at the William Castle Dinner Theatre in scenic East WeHo.

Red Lightning: Cynics might ask what anyone expects might come of running an unlicensed party in more-or-less plain sight downtown. Well, the habits of J.Q. Law are scarcely inscrutable either and his minions insert themselves into the damnedest contexts, like in the form of Sheriff’s deputies answering a noise call at the Red Lightning Temple fundraiser last Saturday night. The cause for jollification is construction of a huge and stupefying interactive art project for Burning Man 2009 involving the Tesla coil that merrily spat at passersby in the chill space. Things were just as frisky on the dance floor and in the Jacuzzi (where you really get to know your neighbor), as both were wracked by the action-adventure DJ pulsations of FatFinger, Jesse Wright and many more. Held at a onetime cowboy-music recording studio nestled high in some remote Malibu canyon, this marathon event was all but over by the time the noise complaint hastened on the chill portion of the program. That’s as far as the bad vibes went, Burner point-people being arch conflict-resolutionists. The near-impossibility of getting a fire engine out that way on a night not illumined by total incineration no doubt figured into their calculations. Needless to say, it was a first-rate party.

March Fourth into Memorial Day: Sunday was for sleeping late and a bit of the old groan-and-creak as my morning pot of coffee stretched into the late afternoon. The evening was already far advanced by the time I wandered onto a rowdy Whittier Boulevard, spiffy in purple ruffles and black velvet, to totter in an oncoming cubensis haze to Soto Street, where I met a number of chummy fellows eager to sell me cigarettes or buy my lighter. The 251 bus dropped me a fine stretch of the legs from SmashLabs, a longtime underground partypad situated in a neighborhood with close to no bipedal activity at this hour. The soundproofing is so good I didn’t hear the blistering hullabaloo that is March Fourth Marching Band. This Portland mishigas has been a favorite of mine since their lunatic Fellini parade through the campgrounds on Saturday afternoon of Lightning in a Boittle 2007. They’ve matured into a kind of Romilar-based version of the Bar-Kays, all loopy soul-horns and disco-squawk. It went on and on, the band up way into afterhours before some fairgrounds gig or other. DJ Wolfie led the dancefloor capers and I dallied long, chatting with charming ladies in this bastion of the old pre-hassle days, when a lone hillbilly had room to maneuver.

—Ron Garmon