Bucket Day @ The Cocaine, 7/19/08

If you go to enough noisy shows in L.A., then you probably recognize the dude with the fez. His name is Monkey Bucket and, in addition to being an ardent supporter of DIY L.A., he promotes shows, generally monthly and in connection with The Cocaine's Saturday night events at Second Street Jazz in Little Tokyo.

This weekend was Monkey Bucket's birthday bash and the kids dressed in their finest homemade Harajuku outfits-- puffy, Lolita-style dresses, mismatched layers of post-raver craziness. I felt quite plain in my girly Pete Doherty outfit when I noticed someone adjusting a pink tutu as we stood on the sidewalk.



As it turned out, the person in the tutu was Jellowaste, whose set we unfortunately missed on account of our own tardiness. The non-tutu wearing dude in the photo is Hal, a photographer with whom we became acquainted that night. Hal tipped us off to Second Street Jazz's house specialty, the Dirty Whore. It is, essentially, a White Russian, but made with horchata and sprinkled with cinnamon. It tastes like rice pudding. Yum.



You know things are going to get out of control when the artist set to perform starts to walk across the tables lining the club while holding a microphone that caught ever bit of feedback available in the venue. Even though I knew next-to-nothing about Kawaiietly Please before this night, I immediately gathered that this would be a memorable performance. And anytime an artist proceeds to invoke a silly string riot highlighted by ample use of chocolate as fake blood and doesn't get kicked out of the club in the middle of the performance, it will be a night that no one will soon forget.

I decided to edge towards the middle of the crowd and shoot some video.



This, of course, led to a glob of "blood" striking my eye (smelled good, felt awful) and sprinkling my sweater. But, as the bartender and I soon learned, club soda really does remove tiny stains.

But the question remained, how do you follow a set like that? If you're end.user, then you just make everyone dance hard, fast and to a beat that is nothing like a four-four. Carlos played along to the beat in the back of the club.



More photos on Flickr.