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