This Week's Work

Information Society "Running," uploaded by Danny 729

Information Society had a huge hit in the late 1980s with the song "What's on Your Mind (Pure Energy)," but the band also released some lesser-known and even more killer dance tracks like "Running." The band is still around today and I had the chance to meet up with Paul Robb for the Santa Monica Mirror.

Also, check out the lead story on the SM Mirror website, penned by moi. Santa Monica High School's Team Marine just won a Statewide marine science competition with a project involving plastics in the ocean.

Absolutely Nothing, Say It Again

We were on the phone talking about war. I don't know how we got on the subject, but it pops up a lot. And we were talking about five years of non-stop battles and the public having forgotten why we're there in the first place, because why would you remember when celebrity scandals and celebrity deaths are more newsworthy than militaristic policy and soldiers' deaths?

He said that there will be a generation who can't remember not being at war in the Middle East. And I mentioned my cousin, who is 11, which made him five when 9/11 happened, which means that he will never remember a time without this cloud over us.

"But think about it," he added. "Can you remember when we weren't at war?"

And I told him the truth, that the first thing I remember seeing on the news had to do with the hostages in Iran. I must have been three. Maybe I had just turned four. Regardless, I can't remember life without at least the threat of war looming overhead. Well, maybe. How long was that respite between the end of the Cold War and the beginning of Desert Storm?

And then I can't help but think of this song:

Edwin Starr "War"

The Ron Paul Underground

For the new issue of Razorcake, I followed the Ron Paul underground in Los Angeles. It's not so much about the candidate himself, but the grassroots aspect of the campaign, how people can make noise without big bucks and why they might want to raise their voices.

Late Bird Special

T. was in the 'hood today, so we decided to meet up for lunch at DuPar's, not because Adam Corolla loves it, but because it's a Valley institution.

It was 3 p.m., and there were all of ten people in the restaurant, staff included. We were also the only patrons under the age of eighty. We were eating lunch. The others were eating dinner. I always associated DuPar's with old people, maybe in part because my late great-aunt swore by the restaurant, maybe because it's always old women inside the joint.

"So Golden Girls," I said to T. on the phone before we met.

"So camp," he said in the restaurant while eying the oversized white plates with the name of the eatery etched around the edges in brown.

Our waitress had dyed red hair even though she was at an age where she probably shouldn't be dying her hair red anymore. (To paraphrase my mother, when your hair is so gray that color fades after a week, you need to either let it go or force it blond.) She wasn't surly, but had this weariness about her, like she hated being stuck in this restaurant during the afternoon dry spell. The other waitress on call, the one who rung up our tab, was younger than us and almost too happy.

"I hope your food was delicious," she said.

It certainly was. That mushroom and jack cheese burger melted in my mouth.

T. is the second person I met when I started college. We liked to drink and smoke while watching movies like Pink Flamingos and tv shows like Absolutely Fabulous and we liked to drive into Hollywood and West Hollywood while listening to the B-52s or anything else that screamed 1982. Sometimes, we would go out to Beverly Hills so that we could get drinks at the martini bar inside Neiman Marcus and play Spot the Nose Job or Spot the Boob Job or both. Then, during summer vacations, we would retreat to the Valley and hang out at one of the million Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf spots on Ventura Blvd.

Back then, T. said "I'm so 310 and you're so 323."

And then one of us said, "And we're so stuck in the 818."

I was thinking about this as we sat in the restaurant and chatted. Twelve years have passed since we first met and we're still meeting up on Ventura Blvd, still bonding over John Waters and still watching the retirees who all seem to live spitting distance from the Valley's main drag.

New Stories

This week in the Santa Monica Mirror, I profiled Bullet for Dali. I really dig this band and was so happy that they are set to play 14 Below if only for the fact that it gave me the opportunity to write about them (I do, however, much prefer to catch the band at the Scene in Glendale.)

Then I did a piece on the mega-crafting event that's going on at New Roads school in Santa Monica tomorrow. I think that using recycled fabric to turn the fence into a big ol' art piece is really creative idea.

Josh Vietti

Josh Vietti performing alongside One Republic "Apologize." Video by Peace Want Love.

In case you haven't seen it already, my story on Josh Vietti is online now via Santa Monica Mirror.

I'm in awe of street performers. These are the ballsiest of all musicians. Think about it. When a musician and/or band plays at a club, they may or may not have a decent turnout and response, but there's a better shot of things going well because a) people might actually be going to see them; b) people who aren't going to see them are probably drunk and having a good time anyhow and c) there are probably at least a few friends that the musicians have conned into attending the show for support. Street performers are all alone, save for the little girls who are accompanied by guardians when performing Rihanna covers. They are all alone and they are playing in a venue as horrid as Third Street Promenade, which is essentially the same thing as playing at a mall except that it's outside and there are more tourists because somewhere, somehow someone has convinced the British and the Japanese that Third Street Promenade is not a mall featuring the exact same corporate stores that you can find in Northridge, Santa Clarita, Glendale, Fullerton or any other non-cool place in the vicinity of Los Angeles. And they play their two hour or so alloted set and thousands will pass them, but few will stop and even fewer will tip, let alone buy a CD. Maybe I'm exaggerating. I have a feeling that street performers sell more CDs than your typical band playing the Echo or Spaceland, but they also have to put up with more people who just don't care.

I dislike the fact that street performers are almost solely limited to hideous tourist traps like the Promenade and Universal City Walk. I want to see folk musicians playing on street corners in Echo Park and mimes performing on Ventura Boulevard. After all, Los Angeles is a city, shouldn't we start acting like one?

Payne of Gold

Freda Payne "Bring the Boys Home" posted by thunderbird1958

The video isn't much to watch, it's just a spinning record, but the song is something else.

Freda Payne is perhaps best remembered for classic soul cut "Band of Gold," which was covered recently in half-naked-dudes-dancing-somewhere-around-Santa Monica-and-Robertson mode by Kimberly Locke (it's also quite the hit at my gym). Per her bio, Payne began her career by winning a contest at a local radio station in her native Detroit. (Is everyone talented in Detroit?) She was 13. The bio on her website cuts off abruptly at age 17 (must be Mozilla), so I have supplemented with info retrieved from Disco Museum (I have incorporated my own commentary). Earlier on in her career, Payne worked in jazz and toured with the likes of Sammy Davis Jr., Bill Cosby and Quincy Jones. By the end of the 1960s, she hooked up with Holland, Dozier, Holland (the ultimate hitmakers). "Band of Gold," her signature tune (which she re-recorded with Belinda Carlisle in 1986), rose to #3 in the U.S. and #1 in the U.K., probably on account of the fact that British often (not always, see Girls Aloud) have better taste. Payne's follow-up album, Contact, was banned from U.S. military radio thanks to the brilliant song posted at the top of this post. According to Wikipedia, "Bring the Boys Home" reached #12 on the top 40 and #3 on the R& B charts. Payne jumped around labels throughout the '70s and continued to release albums with varying receptions. By the end of the decade, she had a bit of a career revival with a slew of disco singles. Since then, she has continued to release albums and perform on stage, film and television. Recently, she has been performing A Tribute to Ella Fitzgerald. The title should be self-explanatory.

I'm drawn to this song because it's so simple, yet effective in conveying the message and it is as relevant now, in 2008, as it was in 1971. For the past few years, I have felt ill at ease on account of the lack of good anti-war songs. Sure, there were a few songs here and there that tried to make a statement, but I humbly submit that those songs (Green Day, I'm looking at you) were too annoying make a huge difference (which, I must add, is different than selling a crapload of albums, something at which Green Day excels). I hope that, at some point, "Bring the Boys Home" sees a re-release. The song deserves it.

Are There Any Valley People at the LA Times?

As you may know, LA Times' Calendar Weekend section was replaced with The Guide, which runs in the Thursday edition and maintains its own spot online. Now, go to The Guide's page and look at the sidebar where it reads "Browse Neighborhoods." You might notice that the last entry in this section is called Sepulveda. Now, you might believe that this is in reference to the boulevard that runs from the north San Fernando Valley through the South Bay, but it isn't. Click on the link and you will see that this is the section for the West San Fernando Valley.

Huh?

But, wait, it gets better. Look at the neighborhoods included in the West SFV and you'll see both North Hills and Sepulveda. The thing is, Sepulveda, as a neighborhood, doesn't exist.

Many years ago, the neighborhood known as North Hills was called Sepulveda. (If I remember correctly from my childhood habit of eavesdropping on adults, the nicer part of Sepulveda decided to go by North Hills, which might have something to do with the hills topped by LA Baptist High School and the VA, respectively. Not too long after that the whole of Sepulveda followed suit, which I suppose defeated the initial purpose.)

Per Wikipedia, the name change occurred in 1992. That's 16 years ago. So, either the people setting up The Guide's website have not been to the Valley since 1991, or have never been to the Valley and haven't even bothered to look at a map.

I know what you're thinking, Oh, Liz is just making a big deal out of this because she's a Val and she always gets pissed when people slight the 818. This is true to an extent. After all, no matter where I have lived in my adult life and where I will live in the future, I'm always going to be a native of the Valley. But, more importantly, a major, corporate-run paper serving the entire Los Angeles area should at least attempt to accurately document the areas it covers. You can't claim to be "the" guide and let stuff like that slide.

From the Try Something New Files

Today, I was a guest speaker at a high school. For real, dude.

Now, I have spoken in public before, but never to teenagers (excluding my own high school class presentations) and, if I can recall correctly to my own youth, the 18 and under set is a tough audience. Even though I was talking to them about the teenage-friendly topic of music journalism, I was still a little nervous that perhaps no one would know any of the bands I mentioned. Apparently, everyone knows Justice so citing that band as an example of something that is covered everywhere in virtually the exact same way worked well.

I spoke inside a very small classroom at very small private school (seriously, the school covers grades 7 through 12 and has the same amount of kids that were in my graduating class at an apparently not-that-small private school). The desks were all filled with students and a handful even sat on the floor. I was pleasantly surprised by the turnout.

The students were exceptionally hip. They knew about places like the Smell and Pehrspace and one asked, "So what do you think of Cinespace?" meaning, of course, the Tuesday night party that draws in celebrities who think that they are really cool. I was brutally honest. I went to Cinespace once on a Tuesday night only because Editors played and outside of the band's set, I hated it and vowed to never return. I have, in fact, made good on that promise.

They seemed impressed when I mentioned that I interviewed Grandmaster Flash (hell, I'm still impressed by the fact that I was able to get that interview considering how long it took me to set it up and that it almost didn't happen) and the stories about Ozzfest (one of those "Everything That Can Go Wrong Will" tales) and Coachella (aka, how I accidentally met Tony Wilson, aka how I almost got kicked out of Coachella, the story is in Razorcake, available here).

There is a rush to public speaking, like the knowledge that people are actually listening to you works like a drug. It's interesting because, as a writer, I never really know how many people actually pay attention to my work, so, I suppose this was an interesting way to understand the whole concept of an audience.

I must say though, that the standout moment of the day happened before my presentation. I was standing in the school library and this girl was sitting down reading. I saw her out of the corner of my eye and noticed that she was wearing silver glitter tights and green Dr. Marten boots. This was interesting because I often wore the exact same thing with my uniform twelve years ago. (And, as I pointed out to the deans back then, it technically wasn't a uniform violation.) I guess some things don't change.

Sigur Ros on YouTube

Make sure you go to YouTube today and check out Sigur Ros' film, Heima. The band has taken over the site's front page. Awesome. (Thanks, sickmodboy)

What George Michael's Shirt Really Meant

Perhaps this is an advertisement for something, but I don't know what. Regardless, this Wham! reference can be spotted on the light post in front of DuPar's on Ventura Boulevard in Studio City.

A Civilized Evening

The thing about Monday night shows is that they always start early. Maybe this wouldn't be problematic in any other city, but it's hell on the L.A. music fan given that, at any physical point in the city, it can take half an hour just to travel half a mile at 6 p.m. Traffic was how we started our evening. My usual fifteen minute drive to the Henry Fonda Music Box Theater had at least doubled. Then I spent another twenty minutes driving in circles until I saw Amy B., my cohort for the evening, run towards the curb from the box office holding our tickets.

We were supposed to eat dinner at Carousel, which we love on account of the fact baba ghanoush helps maintain our Armenian good looks. We must have driven past the restaurant four times, always searching for the signage in the wrong strip mall, never looking across the street for the signifier, Jumbo's Clown Room. Once we drove as far as Vermont, turned right and, at the corner of Vermont and Sunset, got stuck at an extremely long light made entertaining by the one man political band on the corner. His signs were barely legible, all I could read were "Hilary" [sic] and "Huckabee" in what looked like a single sentence. Was he a Hillary Clinton supporter who wanted Mike Huckabee to be her running mate? Was he freakin' nuts? Dude ranted through a megaphone in Arabic, the only decipherable for the non-Arabic speaker being "Allah." Then, in the middle of his rant, he shouted "Islam isn't un-American." Dude was taking to the streets, showing Angelenos that religious proclamations made on Hollywood street corners in the middle of rush hour traffic isn't solely the domain of Christians.

I pulled my phone out of my purse and turned on the camera.

"Amy, take of picture of him."

"How do I do that?"

"Just press the center button."

Amy pointed and shot right as the light turned green.



At some point, we found Carousel, only to notice the sign on the window that read "Closed on Mondays." And so we continued to drive through Thai Town until we hit the corner of Hollywood and Edgemont and spotted Bamboo House.

"I could go for some pad Thai," said Amy.

I was so hungry, I could eat anything.

Bamboo House has the best Thai food I have ever tasted. I'm pretty sure that is not just the hunger talking. Amy and I split some fried rice (yummy), she got the pad Thai and I got a macaroni dish, the full name of which I can't recall right now. I tasted Amy's pad Thai and was impressed. I never really cared for the dish before because, at most of the restaurants I have visited, it's too sweet and leaves a sickly aftertaste that lingers in the base of my throat. This pad Thai, though, was flavorful and savory. My own dish was a scrumptious mix of macaroni, tofu, tomatoes, basil, red pepper and chili pepper. The heat didn't hit until after a minute of tofu-chomping. Then my nose started to run and my sinus headache dissipated.

After dinner, we headed back to the Fonda to see the Magnetic Fields. We arrived roughly five minutes before the main attraction.

When I first saw Magnetic Fields, in 1998, it was at a place called Threadwaxing Space in New York, which looked like it was also an art gallery. It was this small, white space with wood floors. At least, I think that it was a wood floor. Whatever it was though, everyone was sitting on it. Now, 10 years later in Los Angeles, there were cheap white chairs lined up across the bottom level of the theater.

This is how you know you are getting to be an old hipster-- when you go to seated events in venues that don't have seating to see a band that performs with an intermission alongside guys who think that they are classing it up by wearing a blazer with their jeans and stupid Urban Outfitter t-shirts, not realizing that they wore the same outfit when they screened their theses in film school.

When the band came out, Claudia Gonson, who plays the piano and sings, asked that we not applaud. Meanwhile, Stephin Merritt was motioning "cut" to the audience. Gonson tried to explain why we weren't supposed to applaud, but it was impossible to hear her over the cheers. I think something must be up with Merritt's ear because every time the crowd clapped, which was often, he would tilt his head towards his left shoulder and pull on his earlobe.

Regardless the band played at least two hours (I lost track), working in old and new songs plus pieces from the Gothic Archies and the 6ths. They were, as Amy noted, "way unplugged," which meant that they did not play my personal favorite "Long-Forgotten Fairytale," which I used to play a lot when I DJed, usually with Pulp or Pet Shop Boys. The band did, however, play some choice tracks, including "Grand Canyon," "Papa Was a Rodeo," "Take Ecstasy with Me" and "Smoke and Mirrors." The band also played two of the Gothic Archies tracks from The Tragic Treasury: Songs from a Series of Unfortunate Events and were joined by Mr. Lemony Snicket himself on accordion. The highlight was during "Scream and Run Away," when we were told to scurry our feet whenever Snicket said run and and slump in whatever position we wish to find ourself deceased in when he said die.

"It works better with second graders," he said.

Oh, but it was a loud crowd at that moment. Louder than one could imagine for a show where much of the night we felt burdened by the pressure to act like civilized music fans.

The Coldwave Hits Chinatown

There are clubs that I like and clubs that I love. M/R/X-Wolfpack, which goes down the first Saturday of every month at Roberto's, falls into the latter category for three simple reasons. First, the dudes in the M/R/X room play things that I manage to completely stump me (and I'm actually a pretty good trainspotter). Second, the dudes in the Wolfpack room play things that I know but haven't heard in years (like "Giddy Giddy Carousel" last night). Third, the selection of performing bands is always excellent.

I should also mention that the promoters create a nice ambiance inside goth sports bar Roberto's.

This was the Wolfpack room before people arrived.



This was the M/R/X room, also taken shortly after doors opened. (We went to Philippe's for French dip sandwiches, so we got to the club unusually early.)





Last night, the club hosted an event for Wierd Records, a New York label whose only band that rang familiar to me was Blacklist (I found them through Rich Girls Are Weeping and the name stuck in my head because it's a Legendary Pink Dots song). Apparently, Wierd is also an NYC club that looks far more interesting than all of the trite-sounding NYC clubs I read about in magazines.

Since this was a Wierd party, DJ Pieter Schoolwerth of the minimal electro and coldwave club/label played a lengthy and interesting DJ set. I'll be honest, I had no idea what he was playing, but the music prompted three most-likely-straight guys to strike homoerotic poses on the dance floor. Additionally, the two bands scheduled for the evening were from the Wierd family.

Xeno & Oaklander were the first to play. This is a Brooklyn based duo that sounds a bit like Depeche Mode in that phase between the loss of Vince Clarke and the full-time gain of Alan Wilder. I imagine that sentiment means nothing to people who are not Modies and, yet, I feel no need to explain further.






Martial Canterel played well after Xeno & Oaklander finished. In fact, Canterel went on so late that we were all effectively kicked out of the club as he hit the last note of his last song. Like his Wierd Record cohorts, there is a dearth of biographic information on Canterel. I will just say that he is one man with a keyboard setup that plays in a minimal fashion similar to Fad Gadget sans the nutty stage show.







At some point, Don Bolles spun in the Wolfpack room. This must have been while one of the bands played because we missed the set. I'm sure their were some darkly psychedelic and totally obscure jams involved.

Alan Vega: Post-Punk Provocateur

Alan Vega live at Volksbuhne in Berlin, 4/23/07, originally uploaded by samulj.

Last year, I sort of happened into an interview with Alan Vega of Suicide. The interview became one of my favorites, one of those that was actually hard to write because it meant cutting up pieces of a very exciting transcript. You can read the article below.

Alan Vega: Post-Punk Provocateur

By: Liz Ohanesian

Published: November, 2007, The Rockit

Everything changed for Alan Vega sometime during the summer of 1978. He and Martin Rev had just finished "the tour from hell" opening for the Clash in the U.K. and returned to the country as headliners. They made it to Edinburgh, where Suicide was booked to play a "huge disco room" to a crowd of roughly 1000 people. The club was dark and the stage was low to the ground. Suicide played with the ferocity for which it was known and, somewhere around the fourth song of the set, something happened. Vega detected motion. He turned to his partner and said "Watch out, Marty, because here it comes. They're starting to move."

Vega prepared himself for the deluge of foreign objects he had anticipated would be thrown at the stage. Bottles, knives, these were the things that were often heaved at "the band that everyone loved to hate." Vega and Rev had been playing around New York to varying degrees of notoriety for a few years at this point and were used to this. The scene in Edinburgh, however, was different. Vega looked up at the oversized disco ball hanging from the ceiling with its light refracting throughout the club and noticed that people were dancing.

"I think we're finished," Vega said to Rev.

Vega recalls that he wondered what he would do next. He wanted to "cause riots and do all this confrontational stuff" and people were dancing like they actually enjoyed the set. For the rest of the tour, Suicide's post-show dressing rooms were packed with young people "crushed up against the wall in the corner." Things had changed for the band.

"From a guerilla warfare provocateur to an entertainer overnight," Vega says of that pivotal moment in his career.

Almost 30 years have passed since that fateful tour and, since then, Vega has become something of a legend, both for his work as half of Suicide and as a solo artist. On his latest solo effort, Station, released by Mute Records last summer, the sculptor and musician continues to craft a sound of visceral beauty. Vega claims that this is one of the best albums he has created and, as a listener, it is hard to disagree with those sentiments. The follow-up to his 1999 album, coincidentally titled 2007, Station is classic Vega, with its repetitive phrases building up around sharp waves of noise and pummeling rhythms. Here, though, the ferocity of his voice and the complete havoc depicted in his lyrics are perhaps more relevant than ever.

"It's just the thing with this war, it just kept going on and on and on and on and it feels like it's never going to end," says Vega.

"How can you let go of something like that?" he asks. "It's just everywhere. It's everything."

Compounding the cloud of war that hangs over Station is the fact that Vega is now the father of a young son.

"Now, I'm not just caring for myself, I'm caring for my boy," he says. "It's made me crazier in a sense. Now I really care. In a way, I never cared before. That's what started really scaring me. That's why I couldn't stop doing this thing."

And so, songs like "Freedom's Smashed" and "Devastated" are not simply about the war in Iraq, but about all war, including those the future holds.

Vega acknowledges, though, that music does help him find some semblance of hope in the mire.

"That's probably why I do it," he says, although he adds that, with the passage of time, it has become more difficult for him to find hope in the music.

"I'm not sure if it's because I'm getting old and I've seen so much of my life and wondered if it's ever going to change," he says.

Station was recorded over the course of five years in the same studio that he has been using since 1987, and Vega took care not to rush the process. Throughout the time period, the album evolved into different shapes before settling into its permanent form.

"It takes over," says Vega of the artistic process. "It's like something from outer space or something from out of my hands, something larger than me…you become a puppet of your own thing."

In letting his art consume him, Vega has gone on to influence three generations of musicians and seems quite comfortable with his place in the post-punk pantheon.

"The first time I saw Iggy Pop, I was like, 'Holy shit!' My life changed right before my eyes," he admits. "I'm forever grateful for that, so when kids tell me [about changing their lives], it's great. It's the greatest compliment in a way. It's what you live for. Money can't buy that."

Here are a few more videos:


DJ Hell feat. Alan Vega "Listen to the Hiss"


Suicide "Dream Baby Dream"