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.

Valentine's Day without the Cheese

I was wearing a white empire-waist dress covered in little red hearts, not so much because it's Valentine's Day, but because we're going to a goth club and I figured this was so not-goth, it was totally goth. We went to the goth club because it seemed fun and it was right next to Philippe's and we had to go to Philippe's because it was the least romantic place you could go on Valentine's Day. My dad said that we should get eat the pig's feet, so he could live vicariously through us. I couldn't handle the thought of that. Carlos probably could, but the pig's feet are pretty massive, so he didn't. We took a picture instead.



Outside on Ord, we could see the lights of a building maybe a quarter-mile away, lit up like a heart. I took a picture, as best as I could until I figure out how to deal with night time pictures on my new camera.



And then we went to Severance over at Roberto's.

Siouxsie and the Banshee's have a song called "Red Light." If you were ever a goth, ever went to a club with some sort of dark element, you probably heard it at some point. Every time I go into a goth club well before midnight and I see the red club lights penetrate the dry ice-induced fog, I think of that song.



The DJs didn't play "Red Light." Instead, one dropped "Tattoo," b-side of "Dear Prudence" and best Siouxsie and the Banshees song ever laid to record. Carlos was taken by the dub-like production and killer beat. DJ Baron seemed more than willing to play my request for Sixth Comm's cover of the Death in June song "The Calling," which was a pleasant surprise considering that it's a freakin' obscure request. Where else can you go and say, could you play this record that is barely in existence, it's a cover of the only thing resembling a hit from a band that's never had anything resembling a hit, and actually hear said song? Nowhere, I tell you. Hence I recommend that anyone reading this blog head out to Roberto's on Thursday nights for Severance.

And so we did Valentine's Day without the cheese, well, except for the bleu kind that was on my sandwich.