After growing up with Tommy Guerrero always on our t.v. in the Bones Brigade skate videos, I got the chance to see him play his music live last night at The Townhouse (a mere stone's throw from the Venice Skatepark), and I was as super impressed with his jams as I always was with his skating.
The Del Monte Speakeasy in the basement was packed with skaters (like Jeff Ho and the usual band of brothers) and fans, and we got there just in time to hear Carlos make the band's heartfelt introduction. Guerrero's tunes are all instrumental, and reminded me a bit of a more modern Dick Dale ... super expansive, transportive music that makes you feel like you're on vacation. A real cool vacation. In my hand was a vacation style cocktail The Townhouse's Dorian invented for me ... ask him for the "CJ Sour". Yum.
My brother was the reason those videos were always on our t.v. growing up, so he was extra happy to meet one of the heroes of his youth. And they're both still skating.
The occasion for the show was the release of Guerrero's brand new - and awesome - album, Perpetual. The music we were listening to live was so good that I wound up buying two c.d.s, one for me and one for a present to spread the good vibes ever wider.
Perpetual is going to be on the Venice soundtrack for a good long while, for sure. You probably want to get your hands on your own copy pretty soon, so you'll be down with it too. So good, so fun, thanks to all for the great music and the great night on the town at The Townie.
Earlier this year I went out to Pappy & Harriet's to witness the reunion of my Minneapolis ladies, Babes In Toyland. It was, of course, awesome. The worst L.A. traffic ever found us arriving just as Babes was blazing through their first song, totally missing the openers, Deap Vally. All night we kept hearing how good they were, so I was disappointed to have missed them.
That all got fixed last night when I got the invite from RTO+P and Wolf At The Door to come and see Deap Vally play in the parking lot at the Lone Wolfs Objets d'Surf shop on Lincoln.
It's a gorgeous shop, and the Wolf At The Door recording studio lives downstairs in the former pool area of the PADI dive shop. The whole place just feels cool, and very Venice creative. I love it.
The gals of Deap Vally took the stage, and pretty much as soon as they blasted out the first notes, traffic got even worse on Lincoln, as cars slowed down to see what in the world was going on next to the Thai restaurant. And what was going on was pure rock.
Lindsey Troy belted out her vocals with sheer force, perfectly matched by Julie Edwards' banging drum beats, and both of them had on the freshest unitards, star spangled, fringed and shiny. Jealous.
Venice locals were out in force, enjoying a Little Friday (Thursday) and getting sauced (courtesy of Reyka Vodka) in a parking lot in a bit of practice for this Sunday's Abbot Kinney Festival.
In between songs, Edwards commented, "This is my next to last show before a baby comes out of my body!" - and I liked them even more. Rocking moms!
Some guys circle danced around in front of the stage and it all amped up from there ... and then we remembered we still had to go to work today. Oof.
The bottom line is Deap Vally is awesome, Lone Wolfs is super cool (more on them soon), and Venice remains the place to be surprised by a rock show when you're just out walking your dog, as happened with some friends of mine that randomly showed up. Excellent.
Thank you to everyone involved for another exceptional evening in Venice, California.
As we head off into the sure to be memorable weekend ... remember this truth from the Lone Wolf bathroom ...
We'd been excited for months about The Replacements getting back together and playing at The Hollywood Palladium, and I'm actually still super buzzed from last night's show. It was so fun, I felt like I'd time traveled back to Minneapolis to back in the DAY. That was helped by literally bumping into friends from back in the day every few feet it seemed. SO. FUN. Especially because absolutely everyone there was all the way into it. The whole time.
I went in to this show kind of off duty because the plan was to simply rage and feel and love it all without taking notes and photos (and I didn't have my rad photographer Paul G. with me either). So that's what I did, but now today am so hyper about it that I still have to write something to share with you how awesome it was. This band ... !
For the die hards, here is the stellar set list:
I'm In Trouble
Kissin' In Action (with a little Sabbath thrown in - Iron Man)
Little Mascara
Color Me Impressed (I was)
Love You Till Friday (I did)
Maybellene (Chuck Berry cover)
Treatment Bound (when Tommy said they all used to be a mess on stage and now he went to the gym. Where he was on the treadmill for nine whole seconds before he needed a cigarette.)
Take Me Down To The Hospital
Waitress In The Sky
Valentine
Achin' To Be
Kiss Me On The Bus
Nobody
I Will Dare
Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out (with a little Hendrix "Third Stone From The Sun")
Sixteen Blue
The Ledge
I'll Be You
Whole Food Blues (awesome)
Can't Hardly Wait (And my friend Deb was there who wrote and directed the movie of the same name and I was so happy for her that they played it!)
Bastards Of Young
My Boy Lollipop (Barbie Gaye cover)
Never Mind
Then they left the stage and the sardine-like crowd roared for more. If you know my friend Shane and I at all well, you know that we LOVE the song "Skyway". LOVE. I also learned that singing that to girls in a real skyway was Shane's high school game. Smooth. But we are not people - nor should you be - that yell out requests, and I said, "It's going to happen organically. It's going to. I know it. But time was running out. Then Paul Westerberg came out alone, with just a 12 string acoustic. He played his solo act song, "Ghost On The Canvas". Then ... suddenly, the opening chords to "Skyway"! And Shane and I died happy. Then rose again to have the moment captured. Which it really wasn't, but you can probably tell our heads are beaming and about to explode with joy. Such a beautiful song, such a special treat of a moment with great friends and memories. Thanks, Paul!
The rest of the band came back out for the next encore and we got "Left Of The Dial" and the fantastic "Alex Chilton". Right about here was when I seriously contemplated dropping down off the balcony to stage dive across the entire Palladium floor. It just felt like the right thing to do, almost required. The guys suggested I stay put, so I settled for dancing around like the girl in the Sia videos.
The wonderful Replacements left the stage again, but there was such a thunderous roar for more that they came back out and played - aptly - "I Want You Back" by The Jackson 5 (!) then closed out the night with "I.O.U." Phew. The lights came on and everyone was spent from the rock and the loudness of it all, but the happiest exhaustion you can imagine.
The merch line was endless, the lines for street dogs outside were endless, and the total fun of it all seemed endless too, as we kept bumping into more (super happy) people we knew. I even walked smack into one of my dearest friend's brother-in-law in town from Minneapolis! The celebration continued on in the parking lot with everyone raving on about what was their favorite song, swapping show stories from back in the day, and altogether not wanting the night to be over.
So, I guess I'm saying you probably want to get there when they come to your town. It's a damn good time, even without a Minneapolis connection. The Replacements are BACK, People!
I hadn't seen The Smashing Pumpkins in years, so it was with excitement that I accepted my kind friend's invitation to see them live at The Fonda last night.
The place was packed, and the crowd was stoked. It took a while for them to take the stage, but boy, when they did - it went off. There was no opener, and having released the brand new Monuments To An Elegy just last week, they opened up with a bang, playing "One And All (We Are)" off that album. It was extra-rocking, as all the new songs seem to be (I hadn't heard any of it yet, so it was with fresh ears I was listening). It's basically just Billy Corgan left from the original Pumpkins line-up, and the music is all his. And he's FEELING it these days. He spoke very little between songs, just intros and how we're all slaves to social media (true), and let his music do his talking.
I was squeezed in tight on the floor so didn't really take any notes, but did manage to snag the set list, so for Pumpkins aficionados, I got you:
Being Beige
Hummer
Tiberius
Tonight, Tonight
Drum and Fife
Glass And The Ghost Children
Stand Inside Your Love
Monuments
Drown
Disarm
Zero
Bullet With Butterfly Wings
Fame (Bowie cover)
Silverfuck
Encore: Burnt Orange Black
And there certainly were Pumpkins aficionados in the house. To the point that I had to tap a woman next to me and tell her how nice it was to see someone getting that overjoyed to see someone play music ... fists pumping to every line - that she knew every word of. She thanked me for noticing, and confirmed that she'd pretty much never been happier. These were her JAMS.
As they were the jams of two bros that sang ecstatically along, arms around shoulders, thrilled at every note (this was enhanced by the j's they kept passing along to everyone - it was a very communal show). They tried to mosh a bit, but it was pretty much between the two of them.
It was all much heavier than I remembered, like metal heavy. This may have been because they had Brad Wilk from Rage on the drums, bashing them to smithereens and lending a much harder rock element to the show. At one point I could actually feel the music through my feet on the concrete floor. It was truly ROCK, through and through.
Another great show in 2014 ... what a wonderful year for music! Truly. There's just nothing like an awesome rock show.
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