Category: SHOWS

Finding the Funk: Birocratic at Union

Dillon Vaughn May 20, 2018

I’d like to begin by getting one very important thing out of the way: I’m a transplant here, as I’m sure a solid 95% of those reading this are too. I’m not as far from my home (Arizona) or my home before that (New Mexico – fuck it, I’m a child of the southwest after all) as most of you are, but I’m sure one thing is common among all of us: moving to Los Angeles represented a pivotal moment in which we were all allowed to explore and pursue every desire and interest we’d ever had, regardless of the cultural taboos and expectations placed upon us by those who raised us and sent us out into this mess (often unwillingly.) I was brought up in a very “metal” family; my parents owned a record store in New Mexico throughout my childhood called The Dragon’s Lair and our family road trips (which were almost exclusively planned around concerts) were soundtracked by the big four or Iron Maiden with sprinkles of what would become a growing obsession of mine: funk. Those deep, catchy grooves encouraged me to dig through every soul section I came across in a record store by the

Erika Wennerstrom Brings the Bootleg Theater Closer to Nature

Grace Dunn May 17, 2018

Questioning your existence is necessary for spiritual expansion. Growth through self-exploration in solitude is Erika Wennerstrom‘s debut of her solo album Sweet Unknown. The Bootleg Theater witnessed Erika’s soul on fire approach to song writing and those whom have never crossed paths with her were in for a treat. related content: In The City Of Sad Angels: Loma And Jess Williamson At The Bootleg Theater Jaime Wyatt opened the night for Erika and gave a courageous musical exchanging of vulnerable tales. She was bold and brave enough to mention her time spent in jail. Her confident charisma comes across best in her song ‘Wasco’. Performing without her band, her accompanying guitarist was a solid match to Jaime’s raw, powerful country voice. Erika was equipped with a brand new Gretsch Duo Jet that had such a clean tone that it cut through the crowd with great range. Immediately, the audience reacted in supportive awe with plenty of whoops and hollers all in agreement that Erika’s vocalizing song paths feel as refreshing as water through the Grand Canyon. Erika’s sensitive songwriting combines the great American spirit of freedom with a deep sense of humility and alignment of purpose with soil. Then haunting howls

Slayer’s Final So-Cal Show at Five Point Amphitheater: The Most Insane Review I’ll Ever Write

Rob Shepyer May 15, 2018

Seeing Slayer from the front of the crowd is the most violent live music experience you can gamble your life on. And I’m not exaggerating, the risk is real, tangible. Most music bloggers covering this show didn’t choose to stand where I stood, inching forward with the crowd with some kind of unconscious death wish; probably because most music bloggers have more to lose. To sum up what a Slayer show that close to the band is like, I’ll make a World War II reference like the band does on the song “Angel of Death”, their closer of the night. The front row of a Slayer concert feels like being crammed into a train on its way to a death camp, only a band is playing. Everyone is squeezed so tightly into each other that they can’t move. There’s no step you can take back, forward, to the right or left, that could give your body any relief. You’re lucky if you can move your arms. Then suddenly, you’re violently pushed in every direction, colliding with the bodies beside you and falling into them but not falling over, if you’re lucky and God forbid you do, because those that fell

Morbid Angel at The Regent: A Lesson in Death

Rob Shepyer May 13, 2018

Morbid Angel is one of the longest reigning, pioneering, OG Flordia death metal bands still touring. If one were to make a list of the “Big 4” of death metal, one would have to place them in the the number 2 slot, only after Death. Having titled their records alphabetically, the band has already gotten to K with Kingdoms Disdained an album that scrapped their former lead singer and bassist David Vincent to reunite with Steve Tucker. Under the master guidance of guitarist and band leader Trey Azagthoth, this latest 2017 release is one of the most crushing and riveting albums in the entire universe of extreme music and for a first generation death metal band to have released it among all these young kids trying to reinvent the wheel of metal, is truly significant of Morbid Angel’s greatness and right to reign. related content: The Battle of The Bays: Obituary & Exodus Clash At Teragram Ballroom Church of the 8th Day hosted Morbid Angel at the Regent with three openers, each contributing to a night of ear-splitting insanity. The first of which was Voices of Ruin, strapped with spiked leather and growls of Herculean magnitude, the band’s sound was

We All Scored At Lethal Amount’s Pure Trash With Sylvain Sylvain

Rob Shepyer May 10, 2018

You read that title right. Every last one of us, from the most hideous to the most creeporial (or is the word creepatory?) got laid that night. This was just an event like no other, between the cool, rock and glam songs Sylvain Sylvain was licking out to the unmistakable camaraderie inspired by any Lethal Amounts shindig, getting laid gets easy. Part of the reason is that Lethal Amounts brought back their Pure Trash night which used to be a staple every week at Monty bar and ever since its absence, I’ve had a lot more trouble chasing tail. Now that it’s back though, lock up your daughters… fuck it, your sons too. related content: Snow Blood On The Leaves: Alice Glass, Zola Jesus, And Pictureplane At Teragram Sylvain went on a bit late, strutting on stage after midnight but that left a few hours of great hanging to transpire at the ol’ El Cid with plenty of palomas and beers being passed around. I was actually just as entertained by the groups of people talking and being natural with each other as I was for the show and that’s not a slight against the performance. Some weird dude was

Super Tight Rides into the Sunset at Final Show

Travis Beck May 9, 2018

At first glance, the psychedelic clown flyer for Super Tight appears to be some underground Tim & Eric masochist party where everyone takes drugs, has sex and talks about the TV Show they’re developing. Actually, wait: that’s kind of what it is. In the best way. This out-of-focus Polaroid shows a fierce thirty-something female with pink furry hair and sequined flower-antennae standing shirtless against a purple wall. She wears blue lipstick and a red clown nose on her orange and green-painted face, with the words “SUPER TIGHT” emblazoned in bubble letters in the white space below. This kind of eye candy is enough to make any hipster in Highland Park run his hand through his hair and say, “oh, shit.” related content: Stayin’ Alive: Giorgio Moroder’s 78th Birthday At The Globe Theater Super Tight is a monthly show produced, curated and maintained by Casey Rup, a young producer in the animation world. He’s a nice guy, and humble in his accomplishments, which range from animation producer of Viceland’s Party Legends, to executive producer of Ricking Morty, an episodic commentary on the hit Adult Swim show Rick and Morty. Rup got his start in the animation world by working as an

Stayin’ Alive: Giorgio Moroder’s 78th Birthday At The Globe Theater

Robert Cohen May 8, 2018

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about who we become as we grow older. For all the hype the vitality of youth gets in our society, the shedding of the layers of bullshit that age affords people of all ranks is equally liberating and deserves its time in the sun as more than an ad for adult diapers or awful late-career DeNiro movie (I’m looking at you Dirty Grandpa). In many ways, this sentiment got its day at Giorgio’s Birthday Celebration at The Globe Thursday before last, with a fascinatingly disparate group of musicians who’re tied together by the knowledge that life is short, so you might as well be yourself. related content: Cloak & Dagger Fest: The Heart Of Los Angeles Bled From Dusk Till Dawn Kicking things off was the token millennial band of the night, Portland-based YACHT. As much as an admitted antipathy I’ve had for their music in the past, they managed to make a believer out of me when it finally clicked early on that the intermittently shitty indie-pop that I thought they were peddling is actually a rather clever satire on bands that are so focused on being “cool,” that they

Snow Blood On The Leaves: Alice Glass, Zola Jesus, And Pictureplane At Teragram

Aria Silva-Espinosa May 7, 2018

Before catching the first night of the Snowblood Tour, I had these artists placed at two very different ends of the darkwave spectrum. At one end is Alice Glass; a brash, angsty counterculture icon with an unmistakable approach to music and at the other end is Zola Jesus; a classically-trained opera singer with a lush, passionate depth to her music. The Zola Jesus remix of Alice Glass’ ‘STILLBIRTH’ was released at the time of the tours announcement and offered a preliminary glimpse into the middle-ground between these two seemingly polarized artists who still thrive in very similar realms of darkwave. But these two artists have a significant amount of common ground between them, which is evident in the way their performances compliment each other so cohesively. related content: The Growlers Lose The Beach Goth Battle But Won The War This Weekend Both women began performing in their late adolescent years and have enjoyed a decade of recording and touring internationally. After years of writing and recording music at home, Zola Jesus released her first solo album The Spoils in 2009 before her career took off and she toured as a supporting act with Fever Ray and The xx in

Shred And Sensitivity: The Smoking Popes At The Viper Room

Rob Shepyer May 2, 2018

The week leading up to The Smoking Popes‘ return to Los Angeles at the Viper Room was filled by my reacquainting myself with their music. I remember the first time I heard of the Popes, from a friend who described them as pop punk meets big band, which is a description I dispute after having seen them, but still it made me curious enough to investigate the band. I had been listening to their cover of Gene Wilder’s “Pure Imagination” nonstop and was willing to see them as many times as it would take to hear that cover live. The Smoking Popes had hung up their papal pipes for a few years but with the twenty year anniversary of their seminal album Destination Failure, the band decided to get back on the road to celebrate. The last time they were in Los Angeles was 2012, when they played the Knitting Room (RIP). related content: Heaven Or Coachella?: Django Django And Tank & The Bangas At The Fonda Entering the Viper Room, which was already filling up, I got to the front of the crowd to watch the opening band Bad Cop/Bad Cop, a band that I’ve been hearing and seeing

Crusty Anthems and Salty Sing-alongs: The Distillers Return to Orange County

Rob Shepyer May 1, 2018

I remember The Distillers as a band on the periphery of my hesher upbringing in the early 2000’s. They were on MTV back when pop-punk was still sweeping the airwaves and amassed a large following even though their music wasn’t your run-of-the-mall, American Pie movie soundtrack drek. The Distillers were dirtier, more raw, in both sound and image. Like if Hole was supped up with a hotrod engine and covered in prison tatts. And Brody Homme, then and still Brody Dalle, was a role-model for punks and normies, men and women, simply based on the merits of her talent. That was then. And close to 10 years later, seemingly everything, sans the band, has changed. MTV is long-past relevant, pop punk is almost shameful to enjoy, and nostalgia for what came out of that decade is often laughed at. And yet, after only seeing them once, I know that The Distillers are not part of that bygone decade. It became quite obvious to me and virtually everyone in attendance at this particular show, that the band and music were timeless. Distillers songs still sound fresh, with songwriting so good, that it could only come from a time before we all

Heaven or Coachella?: Django Django And Tank And The Bangas At The Fonda

Aria Silva-Espinosa April 30, 2018

Much like the eye of a tropical storm, Los Angeles enjoyed a few days of eerie tranquility in the weekdays between the first and second weekend of Coachella. If you don’t have the patience to deal with drunk teenagers and a few thousand dollars worth of disposable income to make your way out to Indio for one of the two festival weekends, it’s easy to succumb to the gnawing fear of missing out. Knowing all your favorite artists and even more new artists you didn’t know you would love are playing so tantalizingly close to you but you’re poor, impatient or maybe just disinterested. As a Coachella virgin but an avid adversary of frivolous spending, the outdoors and idiots, I take comfort in the knowledge that every act worth seeing will roll through Los Angeles in this quiet span of five days between the conclusion of the first week and the incitation of the second. related content: Between Coachella, Brazilian Boogarins At The Echo With the promise of a rousing performance from Django Django, a staple in the indie pop scene since time immemorial. Formed in 2009, Django Django has been making the festival circuit and touring internationally and have

Between Coachellas, Brazilian Boogarins At The Echo

Rob Shepyer April 24, 2018

As I continue my education in psych rock, I start seeing these shows as lectures and the artists as professors in preparation for my “thesis” at this year’s Desert Daze. That said, it was refreshing to get an international take on the genre with Boogarins, a band that hails from Brazil and played the Echo as an off-shoot show between their Coachella sets. They were actually the best psych band of the few I’ve seen and drew me closer to understanding and liking the genre more than the other shows I’ve been to. related content: Desert Daze 2016: Quantifying The Physics Of A Good Time The first band was another non-American band, Señor Kino, from Sonora, Mexico. Their songs are in Spanish, though that doesn’t deter anyone from reading the feel and joy and changes in tone in their songs. Señor Kino are a surf rock band with a pinch of 90’s alternative and I mean that as a total compliment, like the best kind of 90’s rock. Although the band is rather young, they seem to be emotionally intelligent beyond their years and I sense this solely from seeing them live and never talking to them or understanding their lyrics.