Since seeing Kawaiietly Please for the first time last summer, I have been wanting to write about the Lolita noise project. Last weekend, I had the chance. The story went live over at the LA Weekly last Monday and so far, the response has been tremendous. Please take the chance to read it when you have the chance.
If you're reading this because you like my stories about weird music, American otaku goodness and other slightly geeky (just slightly) interests, check out my Twitter page, as I tend to update there first.
Last summer, I hosted a segment for Locals, a travel TV show told by, um, locals.
Tomorrow, Locals will be screening at 2 p.m. as part of the Independent Television Festival. Another screening will take place Monday night at 7 p.m. You can pick up tickets here.
Also, Saturday night is M/R/X-Wolfpak. I wrote a preview for Play over that the LA Weekly.
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.
On June 16, local noise group SWFT WNGS, who were featured in my piece on the ongoing influence of Rozz Williams in Los Angeles, announced its split.
I had the chance to see SWFT WNGS at M/R/X when the band opened for Nervous Gender and it was one massive wall of noise. Thought we were going to go deaf in the most punk rock way possible. The band will be missed, but fortunately, the music will continue. Abraham Jay has gone on to form White Breath, which you can hear via the following link. Meanwhile, I have it under good authority that Chris and Lynette will be revealing a new musical endeavor soon.
And so I quote the dad rock classic "Hot town, summer in the city/Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty."-- The Lovin' Spoonful "Summer in the City"
We're in the midst of a heat wave right now with temperatures reaching record highs for June (112 in the deathtrap I call home, the Valley, and not much better anywhere else in the city). Whenever we have a heat wave in L.A., all conversations eventually center around the scorching weather and are peppered with lethargic moans of, "Oh my God, I just can't take this heat anymore." It's as though none of us can remember the previous Labor Day Weekend (because the last holiday of the summer is always gruesome) when we were wilting in nightclubs whilst wondering if maybe Al Gore is onto something.
The hardest part about going out in Los Angeles during the summer months is getting out of the house. At home, there is air conditioning, a supply of tap water and a freezer in which one can insert one's head if all else fails. At home, you can sit around in underwear or, at the very least, a pair of cut-off jeans that have since developed ventilation holes in publicly inappropriate places. Inside nightclubs, the air conditioning stops working once the club fills, water will cost you and you will spend much of your night fighting with someone over a spot in front of a rinky-dink fan. Plus, you kind of have to wear clothes. Well, maybe you don't need much in the clothing department if you're a looker, but for us ordinary people with flabby arms and legs that haven't seen a razor in a few days, shit needs to be covered.
At 10 p.m. or so, right after One Life to Live ended, we headed out to the Echo Curio in Echo Park to see the Tleilaxu Music Machine and friends. It was ninety-five degrees in the car and far worse inside the tiny art gallery. When we arrived at the venue, there was a massive crowd gathered on the sidewalk, leading us to believe that perhaps the show had sold out. In fact, it was simply a matter of the fans' inability to cool down the venue that resulted in the crowd hanging out on Sunset Blvd. in between the live sets. We caught Winners, a local electro-punk with a penchant for singing in falsetto and doing the macarena to songs of patriotism. Tleilaxu followed with a short that was heavy on the gabber beats. Dude's a madman, essentially turning this curiosity shop/art gallery into a sweaty mosh pit filled with PLUR. After he finished, the room was schvitz-dank and smelled unsurprisingly like Sunday afternoon following the afterhours club.
We headed over to the Mountain Bar in Chinatown afterward, where our friend Cromdre co-promotes and DJs the party Pinche Way. We got there just in time to catch Laco$te play and I think it's just better for everyone involved if we don't mention that performance again. In the downstairs area, Icy Lytes played a live set that was glow-stick madness in the best way possible.
And so the night ended with this pointless tale's two protagonists wandering around Chinatown until they ended up at Hop Woo, home of tasty steamed buns and massive bowls of duck soup.
By 3 a.m., when I finally laid down to catch up on the sleep that has eluded me this past week, I thought about how a night that almost ended with me falling asleep in front of the TV turned out to be an evening of thrills, good and bad. The hardest part of surviving summer in the city is getting out of the house.
I was really excited to cover BIRTH! and Jellowaste's set on Hollywood and Highland for the LA Weekly, even though I am now going on three hours sleep (which is mostly because I had two stories to finish last night). These two dudes are the real thing, simultaneously experimental and entertaining.
Right now, I'm far too tired to say anything more about it. I'll probably make up a Flickr set of the gig over the weekend. In the meantime, you can check out some shots from their April gig on the Walk of Fame over here.
Liz Ohanesian is a Los Angeles-based journalist covering music, media and club culture. She is a staff writer for Club World and her work regularly appears in such publications as the L.A. Weekly, Razorcake and Outburn. She has written for such publications as Punk Planet, PopMatters, Santa Monica Mirror and others. She recently completed her graduate thesis "Modern Roq: The Oral Histories of Former KROQ DJs Dusty Street and 'Swedish' Egil Aalvik" at California State University Northridge.
Before entering the world of journalism, Liz worked steadily as a club DJ, playing a mix of new and classic electronic styles across Los Angeles. Her past residencies include Coven 13, Bang!, Beat It and Transmission. She spent four years DJing at Loyola Marymount University's radio station, KXLU 88.9 F.M.
