CONTROL is Avalon Hollywood’s weekly Friday event, when the spacious asymmetrical muti-level venue turns into an all-out club.  By eleven the place was packed with an interesting mix of fancy feminine (heels, short dresses, big earrings, small shirts), hippy trippys (dreadlocks, woven yarn hats, embroidered purses), and people in black, all swarming, dancing, prancing, making eye-contact contact, and then, not so much. It was my first time “clubbing” in a while. I forgot my Molly and colorful lit fingertip gloves but there were enough people with both of these items that the crowd didn’t feel the lack. Mr. White, in his Fedora and skinny tie, was the highlight for me, moving my body and the crowd’s body in all directions.  I was amused/disturbed/impressed with how smoothly this dapper hipster blended everything from David Guetta’s “Sexy Bitch” to Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing In the Name Of.” We would have sweated profusely, had it not been for the magical breeze that flowed across the floor every once in a great while. Mr. White lifted his arms, moved his lips, picked up the pace, mellowed things out, at all the right spots. The set felt both improvised and mapped out, a very different set than the headliners, The Crystal Method, Ken Jordan and Scott Kirklan, who followed, both men matching in khaki blazers over tightish black t-shirts with jeans. They spread themselves out with synthesizers/keyboards/utensils on the bigger “front” stage (I put quotations around front because it’s more based on the way the majority ends up facing isn’t it?) for their first live L.A. performance in six years. They played some older recognizable beats to begin with, and announced the shift over into songs from their latest album Divided By Night, up for a grammy for “best electronic/dance music album” of 2009. I recognize that I like what I like, and what I like is bits of everything, and these two guys live weren’t necessarily it for me, though I’ve listened to the album and like a lot of it a lot. The repetition, the stage presence, it was different, and is it wrong that I’m into the white mac laptop DJs who sticker their names to the front of the computer? During the Crystal Method, the crowded crowd had loads of a good time, dancing, swooning, jumping, and so did I, with my eyes closed, body moving and then as a body wandering around. What I like about Avalon is its nooks and crannies. Over the evening’s course I got hit with a few elbow feels, grabbed a few foreign hands, and towards the end of everything found myself sitting on a leather seat in a small side room absorbing an ebony haired bruja DJ called Napoleon, and watching eclectic sparkly boys and girls move to the bruja’s intimately loud metal mixed flirt funk grooves. I got up, danced my leggings off, got approached for E twice, to the approacher’s disappointment, and almost caught a flying boa. —Beth McNamara