Sifting through the Darkmatter

Baseck live at Darkmatter.

Saturday night, we headed out to Darkmatter, which I was set to cover for the LA Weekly. We thought it would be a very cool event, but nothing out of the ordinary. Then Venetian Snares showed up for a surprise gig. You can read about it in the LA Weekly music blog, West Coast Sound.

I woke up Sunday morning convinced that I was going deaf. I could hear and there was no ringing or buzz, but my right ear, the ear that was pointed towards the speaker for a bit the night before, was massively plugged. After some Advil and countless sticks of gum, the pressure alleviated slightly. Fortunately, this morning I'm back to normal.

I'm still exhausted from the weekend, but it was incredible fun.

Related: "Weird Ripper: Baseck redefines dance music with two turntables and two Game Boys"

Kawaiietly Please

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.

Franz Ferdinand

Last Friday, I went to Amoeba to check out Franz Ferdinand's free show. You can read the recap over at the LA Weekly.

A Tale of Two Shins *

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, Liz, what the hell are you doing looking totally unmetal and posing with Beefcake the Mighty. We'll get to that in a minute.

It was an eventful weekend filled with excitement and brutal physical pain, the latter occurring completely as a result of the former. Take Friday night, when I was so busy dancing to Dinky's set in the balcony of Boardner's that I turned around and banged right into a footstool/chair, thus bruising my left shin. The following day, in an attempt to race through the crowd towards the entrance of the Anaheim Convention Center, I walked straight into a fire hydrant, subsequently bruising my right shin.

Yes, Anaheim. Much as I hate ever having to travel across the county line, there are times when it must be done. For example, NAMM. I covered the event for the LA Weekly, with a focus on the DJ gear. There was a lot of it, so I zoomed in on three pieces. Go read the story when you are finished with this.

If you're in the market to see musicians, NAMM is definitely the place to be. I can't even tell you how many people we recognized, let alone the amount of unrecognizable faces with recognizable names that probably passed us. At some point in time, I practically screamed, "Oh, my God, GWAR!" That's when Carlos took my picture with Beefcake the Mighty.

We also caught Roger O'Donnell, the great keyboardist for The Cure (need I remind you of that truthful quote from South Park "Disintegration is the best album ever"), from back when the band had a keyboardist, playing over at the Moog booth.



The members of Shiny Toy Guns were there and I had the chance to talk to Sisely Treasure for a little bit. Like me, she was keen on checking out the new Serato systems.



As far as Serato madness goes, I'm intrigued by both Vestax and Numark's work, but I think I'll stick with my turntables for now. As I said to my friend Robert on the phone today, it seems to be less of a pain to carry a few crates of records to a gig than to have to import my entire collection into my computer.

* The title this entry might also be the title of an episode of Shin Chan. If it isn't, it should be.

In Brief from the LA Weekly Files

Wednesday Night, I headed down to the Toy Factory Lofts with my friends Roo and Melissa to check out the new UK-centric piano night from Adam Unknown (Cute Phase). It's eclectic and fun. You can read more about it here. The post ends with a few Britpop videos I love and I'm encouraging everyone who reads the piece to leave their comments regarding the genre, including their recommendations.

In print (and online), you can read my profile of Chilean DJ/producer Dinky, who played her first ever LA show last night. I completed this story in precisely 24 hours, so it holds the record for my print pieces.

Indie 103.1 went off the air for good last night. Randall Roberts (one of my editors at the Weekly) and Lina Lecaro have updates.

And, also over on the play blog, Jeff Weiss has an interview with Samuel L. Jackson about Afro Samurai.

Anime Los Angeles

By the second day of Anime Los Angeles, it was clear that the angle for my LA Weekly coverage had to be the amount of incredibly talented, young artists are emerging from the convention scene. In some ways, it reminds me of the goth and klub kid scenes of the mid-1990s, the creativity knows no boundaries. In terms of fashion, clothing isn't determined by gender and the more fantastical (and impractical, by the standards of our unfortunately casual society) the outfit, the better.

The dresses above were created by Megan Amo. The hat are by her sister Cecilia. I loved the steampunk elements in top Lolita look (the mechanical clock parts and the use of brown and cream). The model, Michele McArthy launched her accessory line Cute Land at the convention. It consists of little clay candy and cakes that you can wear on your fingers or in your hair. Since I wasn't photographing the event, I forgot to get some pictures of her table (bad, Liz).



I loved the back of Jonelle Abitong's samurai princess dress. If I didn't hate my upper arms and fear leaving the house without a bra, I would wear this to M/R/X. It's so cool.

Oh, and the dolls were amazing too. Check out this unicorn boy.



And these are pretty amazing too.

Automatico Outakes

Saturday night, we headed out in the freezing cold (well, near-freezing, it was 39 degrees) to Automatico. You can read all about it in the good ol' LA Weekly.

But, because there isn't enough room to post all of the pictures online, here's the rest of the usable footage.


Raggedy Threads had a booth at the club. I thought her selection was super cool and am now game to check out the Downtown store, once I'm in the mood to shop for clothes again.


You can read more about Da Perv in the story, but I wanted to add that I really, really dug his set. I would have posted photos of the performance, but I tried the whole no flash thing and they kept coming out too dark.


Ran into Scarlett Casanova of Hang the DJs and Frank from The Nightbirds on the patio.


We were pleasantly surprised to run into our friend Kristen (the shorter one) at Automatico. Kristen used to write for The Rockit and now contributes to Razorcake. She's a fantastic writer and is one of very few people who can look so cute in a sweatshirt and jeans.


I met this girl, Erica, in line for the bathroom and thought her dress was beautiful. I wish I took the photo from the other side, though, as she was wearing a great black flower hair clip.


I have no idea who these kids are, but when I asked if I could take a picture, they started making out with each other.


I loved their outfits.


I don't think these two knew each other, I just made them pose together.


This is how cold it was on Saturday night. Veronica and Evelyn from Club Neon shivering.


Here's another one of the Club Neon crew. My jacket caught his attention, so I decided to grab his picture.


Here's the jacket in question, it's a Christmas gift from my parents and quite awesome. Makes me feel like Agent 99. The cloche (which also has a flower that you can't see) was a Christmas gift from my sister. I've been wearing both constantly.

Don't Stop the Jrock

I've been sick all week, my head growing cloudier with each day until it hit its zenith yesterday. Trying to write has been discombobulating at best. Trying to sleep is even worse. Last night, I attempted to clean my room at 2 a.m. just because every time I tried to fall asleep, I would sneeze or cough. Despite feeling as though my sinuses might explode, I headed down to Little Tokyo last Thursday night with Carlos and my friend Ms. Penny Pop so that we could check out Tune in Tokyo. You can read more about the event over at the LA Weekly.



There was para para action at Tune in Tokyo, which made me scream, "Just like The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya," which you really must see if you haven't already. I explained to Penny Pop about how I relate to the show's heroine, when I am bored, there is bound to be trouble.

But, back to the event. This was new terrain for me as my knowledge of contemporary Japanese music is based mostly on the Shibuya-kei sound of the 1990s (Pizzicato Five, Fantastic Plastic Machine, Cornelius) and a few other assorted indie-ish things like Guitar Wolf and Melt-Banana. Despite watching tons of anime, I never really paid attention to the bands who do the opening and closing credits, mostly because in my mind, the themes rarely match the show. It was quite interesting to hear what is going on now in the Jpop and Jrock world. I kind of like Perfume, capsule and Aural Vampire. I'm terribly interested in the sound of the visual kei bands, but I appreciate their attention to appearance.

After so many years of dissheveled hipsters, it was refreshing to see a club where everyone seemed to put forth some sort of effort into getting dressed. Even the more casual looks appeared weren't quite sloppy. I do, however, lament the lack of guro Lolitas in Los Angeles. Below are a few more of the looks spotted at the club.

Space Cowboys

Forgot to post this earlier (well, if you're on my MySpace, Facebook or Twitter lists, then, I did already post it), but here's my top five Space Cowboys for the LA Weekly.

I came up with the idea after this on-again, off-again debate in my head concerning Firefly and Cowboy Bebop, which I think both series were airing their first US television runs at around the same time. Regardless, that's why Mal and Spike are one and two on the list. Han Solo was a pretty obvious choice and Vash the Stampede had to be on the list as well because Trigun is a great series. Outland I found on a Netflix search and rented it because it's High Noon in space and stars Sean Connery. It's quite an underrated film and the score, particularly for the strip club scenes, is fantastic. I want a copy.

The day the story came out was also the day that Keanu Reeves announced his intentions to play Spike in the Cowboy Bebop film. Anime chatboards are ablaze! I shall say now, though, that I have no opinion on Mr. Reeves as Mr. Spiegel. I'll wait until there is a finished product.

More Mark Lane

My profile of Mark Lane is now online, it will also be running in tomorrow's print edition of the LA Weekly.

In addition, you videos from Saturday night's show are now available on MySpace.

Goth in the LA Weekly

It's not secret, I used to be a goth. I probably still am a goth, I just haven't really gone to the clubs since 2000. But then I started to check out Ruin Hollywood, which is a good time, and wrote about it for the LA Weekly.

Go forth and read.

Clowns and More

I'm up ridiculously early today, only because I have to finish a CD review today, hopefully before I head over to the day job. There aren't enough hours in the day.

My write-up of "Clowns!" which is showing at Corey Helford Gallery is online now. The highlight was my accidental meeting with Angus Oblong, a highlight because I'm up super late just about every weeknight and therefore never miss an episode of The Oblongs on Adult Swim.

Today's going to be mostly about trying to finish things that may never be finished. Trying to get a hold of people for interviews. Trying to get more people to send over hi-res photos. Why is it that people with nightclubs never seem to have hi-res photos of their parties (LA folks are exempt from this, you are media savvy)? It's a necessity, everyone who anticipates press for anything needs at least one hi-res (300 dpi) photo ready for the press. End story.

Lolita Aftermath

Monday's Lolita story garnered a really amazing response, even making it to the front page of Digg.

I couldn't help but become a bit obsessive over reading the comments (an example is here). Having done the bulk of my professional writing for print before the past few months, I never really knew what people thought of the stories, so having the opportunity to read responses is really fun. It's similar to the point when I moved from radio DJing to club DJing, instead of being holed-up in a booth waiting for the phone to ring, I could see the reaction immediately. And I appreciate that reaction whether or not I actually agreed with the sentiments (which is more or less a moot point). I do, however, admit to getting a bit irritated when people mention the story as being in the LA Times. It's the Weekly! It's way cooler (at least in my humble opinion).

I thought Erin's slideshow was amazing. Usually, when you see Lolita photos, everything is posed like a fashion shoot. These were pretty spontaneous, giving the look of a massive birthday party, complete with the giddiness and even the exhaustion, which helped to really capture the spirit of the event.

Long Day, Fun Day

Yesterday, I headed out to Little Tokyo for Cosplay Oneesan's Lolita event at the Kyoto Grand Hotel. You can read the story at LAWeekly.com.

The day began early, I had to meet up with Erin, our web editor who also shot the story, at around 10 a.m. There was music and a fashion show and a tea party and a skit and, of course, shopping. I spent most of the day interviewing people, probably talking to about 20 girls on the record, in addition to the designers and the musicians.

I got home at about 7 p.m. Grabbed some dinner and went to work. I don't know how I managed to transcribe all of those interviews, but I did. Then I remembered that this was supposed to be a short story, so I trimmed everything down to the most basic elements and finally finished at around 12:30 a.m., whenever it was that The Oblongs was on last night. Before 4 a.m., the story was live.

They're Legendary

There's a lot going on right now, but I hope you have a chance to read my story on The Legendary Pink Dots, which streets in the print edition of the LA Weekly tomorrow and is online right now.

The Dots are all sorts of psychedelic madness. I've been a fan since high school and my fandom peaked in college, when I was on the prowl for just about everything related to the band, including the elusive cake box project, upon which Ka-Spel is not credited. For the record, I never found those. I took a break for a few years mostly because it got a bit expensive. However, thanks to domestic reissues and iTunes (although I lament the compressed sound of the latter, I appreciate actually being able to find some of the albums), I'm back in the game.

The Dots were more or less lumped into the goth/industrial thing (industrial, really, only with side project The Tear Garden because of the Skinny Puppy connection), but their really an everybody band, so go read the article and then proceed to get obsessed.

In case you're curious, these are my top recommendations for beginners. (I do love Plutonium Blonde, but suggest you brush up on the older material first.)

The Crushed Velvet Apocalypse (which should definitely be the first album you get)

The Maria Dimension

All The King's Horses 

The Golden Age

The Lovers

Faces in the Fire

The Tower

Also, make sure you get The Tear Garden's Tired Eyes Slowly Burning.

Dolls Remixed

On Saturday, I headed over to the Elfdoll showroom in Glendale for a Halloween party. Elfdoll is a Korean brand of ball-jointed dolls. Like other BJDs, they are made from resin and have great opportunities for remixing, which you will notice if you check out my LA Weekly story.

This was a fun story to write. I enjoyed meeting the BJD enthusiasts and loved looking at the way they redid their dolls for the Halloween contest (which was open to dolls made by other firms too). I love the idea that you can buy something that is basically a piece of art (they are handmade) and then play around with it to change the doll's appearance. Maybe I'll write more about BJDs later.

My Interview with Charlie Kaufman

Lots of things to report, not enough time, so let's start with the Charlie Kaufman story.

For a few years now, I've been writing primarily about music, not because it's my only interest, but because I seem to have some aptitude in that area. This was my first real foray into covering film, outside of a few music-related projects I covered in the past, so just having the chance to do this story was extremely exciting. On top of that, I'm quite fond of Charlie Kaufman's writing and really appreciate that his work requires the viewer to become intellectually and/or emotionally involved in the film and that no one interpretation of the story is correct.

As for Synecdoche, New York, my opinion is quite the opposite of Rex Reed's. The first paragraph in the Weekly article is derived from my own experience in watching the film and I have to say that I appreciated feeling so awkward in a theater.  It doesn't happen very often. I still haven't recovered from a bout of hypochondria suffered after watching Synecdoche (the screening was at the beginning of the month, so it's been a while), but it's worth it.

Ah, the Writer's Life

Yesterday, I had the chance to interview Chuck Klosterman.  I really appreciated having the opportunity to ask questions to someone who asks questions for a living.  You can read the results here.

Really, though, this post is to let you know how glamorous the writer's life is.

5:30 p.m.  An unusually low level of traffic on Sunset allows me to get to Book Soup early.  I didn't realize that there's a lot behind the store, so I parked five blocks away in the structure that is usually $5, but today was $8 because parking attendants love arbitrary and temporary price hikes.

6 p.m.  I walk into Book Soup and hang around for a bit.

6:20 p.m.  I meet Chuck Klosterman and we go upstairs for the interview.

7:20 p.m. CK reads.  I take notes.

8:30 p.m.  Spike Lee is going to be here tonight too, so we decide to stick around even though an interview is totally not going to happen.  He won't arrive for another hour, though, so I meet up with the Weekly's photographer and an LA Times reporter and we walk down the street for pizza.  

9:30 p.m.  Spike Lee fields questions.  I take more notes.

10:50 p.m.  I come home.  I am tired.

11 p.m.  I start transcribing my interview.

12 p.m.  I realize that this interview was incredibly long considering that my max word count is 1000.  I think about fast forwarding through it and just transcribing the best bits, but it's all interesting to me.  I keep going.

2 a.m.  I finish the transcription and read it repeatedly until I can figure out what to keep and what to cut.  I figure that since the piece is about the event of reading from the book, I should stick to questions pertaining specifically to the book.

2:30 a.m.  I finish editing the transcript and start writing the intro.

2:50 a.m.  I fall asleep with my head less than an inch away from my laptop.  I blame this on One Life to Live's horrible plot lines.

4:30 a.m.  I wake up and start writing the intro.   I can't think, so I smoke a cigarette.

5 a.m.  I have stopped thinking about the intro and started writing it.  

5:55 a.m.  I send my editor the story as the credits for InuYasha roll.

6:10 a.m.  I fall back asleep

7:30 am.  I wake up for work.  Decide to sleep some more.

8 a.m.  Okay, now I have to get up for real.

3:30 p.m.  Get home from work.  I'm not really sure how I got there, what I did when I was there or how I ended up at home.  I posted something on MySpace earlier, but it seems like a blur.  I try to put on a Pink Dots album, but I can't find the needles for my turntables and I'm too tired to look around my room.  So I open up iTunes and fall asleep.

4:45 p.m.  I wake up either because a really noisy song came up on the cue or because I had to go to the bathroom.  I can't remember.  All I know is that I can't fall asleep.

5:30 p.m.  I decide to watch TV.  Bush is talking about the economy.  I'm still not sure what's going on.

6 p.m.  Eat dinner

7 p.m.  Decide that I'm not going back to sleep anytime soon, so I go to the gym and start reading Twilight while I'm on the treadmill.

8 p.m.  I know I have some things I have to get onto paper, but I can't organize my thoughts.  Wait, I can never organize my thoughts.  I guess this is starting to revert to a regular day.

9 p.m.  Watch One Life to Live.  It's still boring.  Man, I could write better story lines on two hours of sleep.

10:21 p.m.  Watching random anime that I have DVR'd.  Figured I would blog in an attempt to revive my writerly sense.

Blogging for Others

Today I guest blogged over at the Anime Blog, covering this weekend's MikomiCon event at CSUN.

Also from today's files, I covered Friday night's Man Man extravaganza for the LA Weekly.

Anime Music Videos in the LA Weekly

I started working on the idea of this story last year.  I spent at least an hour a day watching clips on YouTube.  Then I started going to cons, found some people whose work I absolutely adored and took it from there.  Thank you to everyone who took the time out to be interviewed for the story.  I really appreciate your help.