
Tag: garage rock

Osees at theTeragam- A Rose By Any Other Name
I had still only seen Osees under 10 times the first time I thought about missing one of their shows- I think I was offered free Lakers tickets- good seats. But the team wasn’t that good that year so I opted for the gig- which was the last time I saw Thee Oh Sees at The Teragram Ballroom. What I realized that night was that unlike the Lakers, every Oh Sees show is just as good as the first- I’ve never seen any composition of the band under any name have an off night. How is that possible? related: The 4th Wave Of Garage Rock- A Retrospective Sometimes, I imagine John Dwyer in a basement beating his drummers when they get off tempo. Like some Rock and Roll Kobe Bryant not allowing anyone who works with him to show any less passion than he in his preparedness for perfection and greatness in his craft. An artist and a scientist, taking the mathematics of art and doubling down to provide a more powerful experience. An endless human algorithm of DIY spewing content. He is not a prototype but he is a prolific model. related: Thee Oh Sees And The Practical Application

The 4th Wave of Garage Rock in Los Angeles-A Retrospective
Those of us lucky enough to be in L.A. for the 4th wave of garage rock in the 2010s suddenly find ourselves mourning the fact that it’s gone … long receded. We hardly even noticed. What the fuck happened? words: Brent Smith related: Ty Segall And The Secret Show- A New Tradition in Los Angeles I see them around- skulking the Zebulon smoking patio or pounding cheap beer at the Taix bar in motorcycle jackets and old band shirts (that their friends are in) and black denim and dirty Chucks. The weary look of defeat in their bloodshot eyes as we see each other (through the endless, bobbing sea of Benson Boone clones) and head-nod and ask if we met at that one Desert Daze when Iggy headlined. I see them around. The Echo Park refugees of the 2010s wave of garage rock. related: Over 10 Years of Desert Daze Archives And yes, this is my declaration that the 2010s merit a mention in the annals of American garage rock — ’60s, ’80s, ’00s … ’10s. The Fourth Wave. If you’re some music nerd who disagrees you can go fuck yourself. You couldn’t swing a dead cat on Sunset without

Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Launch North American Tour at Lodge Room
Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs, OR Pigsx7 launched their North American tour from the Lodge Room in August, staining the sacred planks of the venue with more sweat and abandon than bands are typically used to expelling throughout a set. For those not in the blissful know, Pigs x7 are a beloved heavy band that’s been adopted by the LA psych scene, one able to discharge hallucinatory spores from their pores during their intense performances that induce pure rock and roll rapture. Their songs breakdown the same way your body does when in their crosshairs. And just when you’re completely destroyed and a pile of rubble before them, they find a way to engineer your rock and roll rebirth in their image. How this crossover from psych to metal took place was a mystery for me and the inspiration that made me trek out to their show in the hopes of catching an earful of insight into what sonic sinew connected their sound to the standard Desert Daze LA hipster. Somewhere between Sabbath worship and The Doors, Pigs x7 managed to straddle the line of two fanbases that, while sharing some DNA, rarely overlap this seamlessly. related: Desert Daze

King Tuff Is Leaving Los Angeles: A Final Farewell at the Lodge Room?
Los Angeles, get ready to say goodbye to one of the city’s most beloved rock ‘n’ roll weirdos. Kyle Thomas aka King Tuff is bidding farewell to the City of Angels with a final hometown performance at The Lodge Room in Highland Park on Wednesday, May 15, 2025. As part of what’s being called a celebratory send-off rather than a swan song, this show promises to be a psych-fuzz-reverb drenched night of gratitude, good vibes, and garage-glam magic. related: King Tuff and The Shrine In Venice for Red Bull Sound Select Tickets for King Tuff’s farewell LA show are going fast, and for good reason: this isn’t just another tour stop—it’s the end of an era for fans who’ve followed his journey from lo-fi beginnings to Sub Pop success. Whether you’ve been spinning Was Dead since 2008 or fell in love with the introspective shimmer of 2023’s Smalltown Stardust, this Lodge Room date is a rare chance to experience the full spectrum of King Tuff’s sound one last time in his hometown. Why This Show Matters This isn’t just a concert—it’s a transmission from a singular creative force. Over the years, King Tuff has helped shape LA’s indie-psych-rock landscape with

If Anyone Needed A New Year, It’s Me: The Black Lips at The Lodge Room
New Year’s Eve; this is usually when you reflect on the year you’ve had and think about the year that’s about to come. Well my year was shit to say the least. Nothing beats losing a job, your dog getting cancer, and two break ups that bookend 2023. The year to come is uncertain for the first time in my life, and that’s pretty insane to me. With having no job for the first time in 9 years, I finally had an open New Year’s Eve to do something fun. The only thing that stood out to me this year was Cretin Hop’s New Year’s Eve Party with the Black Lips. The Black Lips are one of those bands that I’ve seen over and over and have never been disappointed. So no contest, the Lodge Room was the place to be New Year’s Eve. This was a weird New Year’s, and I think everyone can agree. When traveling around town, it just didn’t feel like there was anything really being celebrated. I started with overpriced drinks in North Hollywood at a ghost town of a bar. I soon realized I was running behind and made my way over to The

The De-Evolution of Burger Boogaloo
Just like in my last Boogaloo review, Janky Smooth apologizes for the opinions herein and advise that anyone below the age of 18 or with an aversion to graphic language, obscenity, or humor, should not continue reading. related content: Burger Boogaloo 2017: The Ballad of John and Iggy Burger Boogaloo 2017 was so good that when we left Mosswood Park last July, we didn’t think 2018’s festival could possibly be better. After all, what band could out-punk Iggy Pop? What sort of headliner could possibly drive the festival further in its evolution? Were they going to bring David Buoy back from the dead? Total Trash productions was clever though, they knew they had to think outside the box if they wanted to make Burger Boogaloo California’s undisputed champion of festivals. So what did they do? They realized that progress doesn’t necessarily have to move forward like we’d expect. No, the answer was De-Evolution. And in the spirit of this movement backward, to the primordial swamp we once infested and called home, what was once the Gone Shrimpin’ stage in 2017, an ode to foot fetishes, was now Toxic Paradise. A mutant stage with tentacles and eyeballs sticking out of the

Burger Boogaloo 2017: The Ballad of John and Iggy
This Burger Boogaloo 2017 review is X-rated, so if your kids are reading it, Janky Smooth apologizes if they develop a foot fetish. Like your baby sister’s pretty pink switchblade, the marriage of legendary filmmaker and filth peddler, John Waters and atomic boy, Iggy Pop, cut the Bay Area deep till it bled out all the outlaws, shrimp pimps, gamblers, hipsters, hippies, hyphys, crust punks, trust-fund punks, rockabillies, rockabetties, and freakazoids to gather at Burger Boogaloo 2017 at Mosswood Park. Two whole beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on an acid infused bun. The trip up the 5 freeway was long and arduous but upon entering the burger’s third eye vortex, the camaraderie of San Francis-folk mellowed me out as straight as a noodle. That’s just how us So-Cal kids see Bay Area babies: hella mellow. This year, the festival’s theme was Shrimpin’ which is fiend’s slang for toe sucking. Four giant legs kicking up from the stage to the sky were inflated behind the Gone Shrimpin’ stage, which became the alter of our collective foot worship. I’m talking about high heels and low-life, sweaty soles and pedicured puppies. related content: Burger Boogaloo 2016- Bringing Rare Vinyl Back To

Isaac Rother & The Phantoms Are Back With 5 Hits From Hell…
Isaac Rother & the Phantoms and their soul-laden stew of R&B horror rock and off-the-charts live show bring a seminal but sometimes forgotten era of rock from the 50s and early 60s back to life. But Isaac and his Phantoms also evoke a time just a few decades past, at the cusp of our Modern Garage Era of Rocken’ at Large (or ”MONGEReL” for short), when bands such as the Mummies, the Trashwomen, the Gories, the Bomboras, and the Makers (just to name a few) rooted through not only the record collections of their rock forefathers, but also the backs of their closets, churning out live shows as loaded with sequins and monster masks as they were with broken drumsticks and blown out Fender amps. Unlike many of their successors, these bands also weren’t afraid of adding a little roll to their rock, or exploring those sections of rock’s lemon that still needed lemonade squeezed from them, be it surf music, garage, bubblegum, or glam. Like a breath of fresh tomb air, Mr. Rother and his army of the undead have “dug up” this full-immersion concept anew for the current generation of garage, soul, and just plain rock

Celebrating Cheetah Chrome’s Birthday with Sex, Drugs, and Rock N Roll at Alex’s Bar
The hand-picked line-up of locals supporting Cheetah Chrome and his band at Alex’s Bar was about as solid as it gets. So, cheers to the insane minds that made Cheetah Chrome’s Birthday Bash an unforgettable evening of beauty, brutality, and bruises. related content: Opening Bands Shine as OFF! Play Alex’s Bar 16 Year Anniversary Prologue For those of us in the trenches, going out night after night to document the music scene, each show is a dice roll. We painstakingly wade through mediocrity. Furthermore, we pay for overpriced drinks and parking and suffer from lack of sleep. So what pulls us away from the comfort of our home vinyl collection? For me, I seek those nights where everything comes together. Nights when parking is a breeze, the opening band rocks, the atmosphere is 100% party, the crowd is full of beautiful people, and the beer is reasonably priced. Every show serves as part of a never-ending quest to relive that first real high. That space in time where the music entered my soul like a needle piercing a vein, transporting me to another level of consciousness. Thankfully, this ended up being one of those nights that makes this music junky’s struggle worthwhile. The

The Murder City Devils Cast Voodoo Spells at Teragram Ballroom
Some bands wow audiences with epic light shows and costumes and confetti and dancing bears. Some bands wow audiences with tits and ass and more tits but other, more rarified artists bring nothing but their gear and raw talent. No filler. No fat. No stage banter. No politics. No masturbatory instrumentation. Just sweat and pure passion. The Murder City Devils do just that. Their show is a collaborative effort between band and audience that hits the perfect pitch of what rock and roll once was and is showing signs of becoming once again. Raining, the night was a stripped-down affair with 2 minimalist supporting acts before Murder City Devils. Seattle’s Corey J Brewer took the stage first. Just him and a briefcase of electronics that he used to tap into our psyche’s and pull and knead them like taffy. His music can be many things like a trippy mix of war and jungle drums, sampled wolf howls, and reverbing shamanic vocals all spewing from a scrawny North-Western-white-boy. The first thing that went through my mind as I meandered between the early comers during Corey’s set was figuring out what kind of people were into Murder City Devils. Baseball/Trucker caps abound,

The Sonics Teach Garage Rock History 101 at The Observatory
In 1960, a band of kids heavily inspired by 50’s R&B, formed The Sonics with no clue that more than 50 years later, they would actually be the inspiration for modern day rock n roll power houses and music enthusiasts around the world. In 1964, The Sonics were signed by Etiquette Records and released their first (and wildly popular) single, “The Witch”. Even though its radio airplay was restricted, “The Witch” went on to become the biggest selling local single in the history of the Northwest. Between ’65 and ’67, The Sonics released three studio albums: “Here Are The Sonics”, “Boom”, and “Introducing the Sonics”. Their covers of songs by artists such as Little Richard, Chuck Berry, The Fabulous Wailers and Richard Berry gained the boys national attention, however, the real standout tracks were their original hits such as “The Witch”, “Boss Hoss”, “Psycho”, “Cinderella”, “Shot Down” & “Strychnine,” which gained them a true cult following. The 60’s were a great era for music, but no one did it quite like The Sonics. They screamed louder and played faster and harder than anyone else at that time. Their recording style, performance, and lyrics would usher in a new age of

In the Red Records’ 25th Anniversary Party: Weekend at Larry’s
A quarter century ago, Larry Hardy formed In the Red Records in Los Angeles, California to release garage and punk records for an underground that is thriving now more than ever. Some call this scene the garage rock revival, in which case In the Red Records was the scene’s Lazarus. So with 25 years of releasing music ranging from down tuned stoner rock to twangy blues garage, from bands in Los Angeles to Detroit, Portland and NYC, how does Larry Hardy decide to celebrate? A three night festival taking The Echo and Echoplex hostage to host a slew of bands spanning In the Red’s sonic history. As soon as I crept down those pissed stained stairs from Sunset to Glendale blvd and checked in, it was nonstop rock. Wounded Lion’s party rock launched the festivities and loosened me up for the debauchery to come. Dancing and prancing around the stage, cramming the jams down our throats, I picked up a sweat bouncing and bobbing and dashed out the Echo down to its bottom-bitch Siamese sister venue. A man eyeballed me suspiciously and asked for my papers, so I showed him my Zig Zags. Zig Zags were the first of many