The New Generation of Autumns Fans

My cousin is thirteen years younger than I am. I remember the day she was born because my mom had told me when she picked up my friends an I from an afternoon of theater-hopping R-rated movies at the Peppertree Theater. I was kind of excited because that meant that I would have a little cousin to whom I could teach the ins-and-outs of music geekiness.

My sister and I babysat her when we were teenagers. I remember us saying that we would never actually take her anywhere because she was so much younger than us that we didn't want anyone asking if she was one of our kids. So we would hang around the house-- either ours or our grandparents-- and I would always play Siouxsie for her. By the time she was five, she would walk in on holidays and say, "Lizzie, can you play some Siouxsie?"

I thought maybe my cousin would turn into a mini-goth, but she's actually pretty normal looking. She does, however, have good taste in music, despite being from a generation that thinks it's actually cool for people over the age of ten to listen to music that began on the Disney Channel.

So, today, we were at our grandma's house and she says to me, "Hey, have you heard of this band called The Autumns?"

I totally freaked out. Have I heard of The Autumns? So, I told her about how when I was maybe a year or two older than her, I first heard the band and lost my mind. I told her how my friends Robbin, Brian and I would go and see the band over and over and over again, how we were all working at Coven 13 and our enthusiasm helped get the band booked at the club. And then I told her how I've interviewed them several times and how they're plain old awesome.

Turns out she really likes the band too.

By the end of the 1990s, the L.A. music kind of sucked. I'm just being honest here. It was, on the whole, a lot of second-rate indie rock. And then there were The Autumns who were weirder and louder than most of the people we had grown accustomed to seeing on the stages of our fair city. They were our pride and joy and, to this day, remain a must-see around town (although they play infrequently right now). To hear that my college-bound cousin, who was just a little girl when I was listening to The Angel Pool for days on end, is now getting into the band gives me hope that maybe good music is not a thing of the past.

The above video is from one of The Rockit showcases we did last year. The show, I believe, coincided with a story I did for the publication and (full disclosure, I suppose), I helped book the party. Norton Wisdom is the guy painting in the background.