Ima Dancin’ Wit Mice El-Elf: This past week was like the glory daze at CityBeat, what with sitting at the computer besieged as deadlines explode overhead like the Ninth Battle of the Marne. This phase of la vie litteraire imposes a hermitlike—if not actively cranky—solitude that seldom fails to make sallies out of Boyle Heights all the more surreal. That I got out of the house on the last Friday in May at all was largely due to L.A. Record’s own Daiana Feuer, whose friendly ping piqued interest in seeing Black Love at the Smell. Arriving early, I slowly paced the length of Harvard Pl. (the city’s name for the stretch of alley fronting the venue), huffing a traveler’s ration of marihooch before rounding the corner to the Downtown Independent for their 9:30 showing of The Harder They Come. The Indy is a single-screen art box of pleasing design, so sinking into a plush seat way in the back for an hour’s flicker was a soothing experience, even with the noisy brats up front and the fury of oppression and shooting onscreen. At about the point where Jimmy Cliff sells his song for a pittance to the slimy record producer, the wall adjoining the Smell began to faintly throb and so slipped back the way I came, passing some wiseacre who yelled “Look! It’s Billy Idol!” just before his buds burst into “In the midnight hour/More, more, more”. This happens so often I’ve come to regard “Rebel Yell” as my personal “Hooray for Captain Spaulding”—but the din inside the Smell was a chorus of constipated jaybirds by comparison. Black Love features former members of Gang Wizard and Saccharine Trust winding all the brontosaur-stomp elements of postpunk and kosmische together into a single brick-bulging roar. Fans of esoteric earshred from Galaxie 500 to Upsilon Acrux will stand as one mandrill and howl for more, just as the small posse rooted there did. David Cotner smiled, lit a wad of flash paper and intoned, “We’re all Black Lovers now.” Yes; all some dozen of us now proudly earbent. Back I went through the alley and ‘round the corner into the movie, just in time to see further injustice meted out over an achingly beautiful classic-reggae soundtrack before Jimmy expired in yet another bullet rodeo. This time after the Billy Idol crack, one cute and cougarish blonde, old enough to know better, purred “No. Definitely John Lydon.” Thanks, sweet lady.

Keep on Rockin’ in the Unfree World: The upside of houseboundedness is finally getting to hear some of the vast sonic haul that accumulated for months on my desk at CityBeat. One, American Beat Records’ reissue of Blue Öyster Cult’s 1985 “comeback” Club Ninja, a release that directly addresses one of rock’s Great Imponderables- when do great acts begin to suck? One provisional answer is when a band starts phoning in by-the-numbers knockoffs of the same glory-daze platter to the point where you can’t remember if you’ve ever heard an album or not after you’ve just finished it. Except for “Shadow Warrior” and “Dancin’ in the Ruins” (the latter their last hit of any heft), it sounds as if a gang of clever extra-dimensional lizards thought they could pull off a BÖC forgery after repeated hearings of Cultosaurus Erectus. Fans will want it- indeed, I want it -but any non-Cultists who hasn’t should bend an ear to Oh No Not Stereo’s 003, a mean little DIY buzzbomb of an album that’s a likely candidate for my year end Top Ten already. Best yet is Collectors Choice Music’s CD reissue of the 1966 self-titled collection of singles the Dynamic Duo released on Roulette, before the Stax-based songwriting team of Isaac Hayes and David Porter made them immortal. Mr. Moore and Mr. Prater are, of course, stupendous even with lesser material.

Clubbed: I eventually did get out of the house by Thursday night, touring both floors of Amoeba Music prior to fading down Vine St. to 3 Clubs. Briefly fashionable after the 1997 movie Swingers, this venue I’ve long associated with dreadful music and gave the place up entirely after I quit martinis. Still, the Rumble’s night of indie-squawk sounded promising enough outside muffled through the walls. Both light and prospects were considerable dimmer inside, as French Miami- a trio of Bay Area collegians beloved of NME -was onstage thrashing around inside a math rock that was obviously failing to carry its twos and decimal points. I bore it as long as possible before slipping out, past a street lunatic who glared at me and emphatically maintained, “Every day, you see the same behavior. Nothing ever changes.” There was a time when such fellows cried up the end of the world, instead of going the safe route of prophesying boredom.

—Ron Garmon