The Fake Angeleno

Hey New Yorkers: Check Out the Dead Sextons

One of the very few frustrations of not living in New York any longer is missing out on the new music/performance pursuits that my friends are up to. 

Case in point -- The Dead Sextons...  Joe Sullivan on sax.

Here's how Shadowtimenyc recently described the band:

“Saw this strange, swampy band before The Hunt played a few weeks back. The Dead Sextons incorporate the croon of Nick Cave, the existential sleaze of Tom Waits, and the undead Elvis rockabilly quiver of the Cramps all steeped in the Delta blues. Not too hot on the outfits and the MySpace tracks aren’t as down and dirty as most of the stuff I heard live, but I gotta give the singer props for incorporating blood into the set. All I can say is I’m determined to find out more…”

He's not kidding about the Nick Cave influence -- a video I saw of the band recently made me think of Cave's appearance in Wings of Desire.  Speaking of videos...

The genesis of the band's name is pretty entertaining.  A "sexton," I recently learned, is the cemetery attendant responsible for making sure the bodies get buried and the graves are looked after.  Which leads us to the conundrum: Who buries and watches over the grave of the dead sexton?  An existential question fit for a rock 'n' roll band, my friends.  I hope you'll go hear them at earliest convenience.

LINK: [The Dead Sextons]    

Old News: Beck Opens Downtown's New "Club Nokia"

There's been a lot of blogosphere buzz this week about the opening of downtown L.A.'s new "Club Nokia" concert venue this Sunday and Monday evening.  So why would the Fake Angeleno want to weigh in on something he had no part in and that's been well-covered elsewhere already?

For no other reason than to point out that Beck is becoming very difficult to distingiuish from Claire Danes.  Are they morphing into the same person???     

 

Devil's haircut ... In my mind!

Activity Report: Marina Del Rey Summer Symphony Orchestra at Burton Chace Park

Prescription for a swell summer Thursday evening:

 

Take a picnic and some lawn chairs to Burton Chace park and enjoy the sunset over the marina while an excellent symphony orchestra plays Rhapsody in Blue and Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto on a double bill.

That particular music selection is kind of like The Doors and Led Zeppelin of classical music: You've heard it all a thousand time before, but how can you pass up a chance to hear it again live?

Rhapsody in Blue made me wistful for a Hudson river sunset (not that the marina was unattractive...) and the Rachmaninoff had me pumping my fist in salute of "the deuce!" as I like to call the Second Piano Concerto.  

It's too bad last night was the last of the symphony concert series, but all is not lost.  Dame Cleo Laine and her husband Sir John Dankworth will give a concert at Burton Chace park the evening of 8/30.  Details here.

Wednesday Music Post: Zeppelin Rumors; Bad Band Names

It's already been in print for a couple weeks, but music editor Randall Roberts has a great piece at L.A. Weekly about attending a music industry event at the Sunset Marquis hotel where Led Zeppelin was rumored to be playing a set. 

LINK [For Those Who Stand Long ... A Zeppelin Reunion?]

Now I don't know enough of either L.A. or the music industry to say that Roberts "captured" anything whatsoever.  But I do know good writing when I see it...

I've been a big fan of Roberts' stuff for a long time and can recommend checking out his author archive at LA Weekly.   Roberts is a fairly recent St. Louis transplant, and I always enjoyed reading his and Paul Friswold's music writing in the Riverfront Times back home. 

Incidentally, Friswold was a personal God of Alternative Print Journalism to me and my college roommate back in 1999.  Read this Friswold classic and see if you can tell why!

Finally, I was getting desperate for something to post today before stumbling on the Randall Roberts piece, so I was surfing around looking for some bad band names to amuse you with.  Fortunately, a website called The L.A. Music Scene (.com) provided me with three solid starters. Without further ado I give you:

Chalkline Kuhdavers: "Description: ska/punk/metal and everything else"
Corman: "Description: It's platinum rock, babe!"
Ryanjoy! "Description: pop/r&b singer which appeals to a diverse group of fans. people have described it as black eyed peas meets gwen stefani.

LAT's Southern California Songbook Promo (Rabbit Hole)

In what's probably a worldwide first in web marketing history, an ad in a newspaper actually drove me to the newspaper's website yesterday.   The LAT ran a little "On latimes.com" promo in the calendar section yesterday featuring a small photo of Randy Newman and this copy:

Such a lovely place...  It's L.A. and as Randy Newman sang, "We love it!" We even love to sing about it. Geoff Boucher's Southern California Songbook, at latimes.com/entertainment, chronicles the history of music about our town by the Eagles, Celine Dion, System of a Down, Bad Religion, Rickie Lee Jones and others -- including, of course, Newman. 

Excellent work, 22 year old intern!  Your tossed off cleverness and very-wide-net selection of artists has induced, me, the print-edition-reading rube, to log onto the internet and "engage."  But when I get to the latimes.com website, navigation to Boucher's songbook selections is nowhere to be found.  I'm now so hurt and confused that I could be in the middle of a Celine Dion ditty called "My Bad User Experience Will Go On."

Hey, at least they have a gallery of Miley-Cyrus-inspired notorious nymphets throughout recent history.   Well done, interactive team!  You even had the good taste to include the "Rock the Cradle of Love" video girl at number 7.  Now that was the nymphet of the early '90s.  (Who, by the way, is now a mom and a school teacher in suburban Atlanta.  No tragic Dolores Haze, she.)

Finally, shaking off the distraction of the nymphets gallery, I spend five minutes trying to find the SoCAL song gallery.  I finally get there by searching for "Boucher" and clicking through a couple times. 

The SoCal songbook is actually a great page.  It looks like Boucher's been taxonomizing an L.A. song every month since summer 2006.  He's got essays on Bing Crosby singing "San Fernando Valley," Burt Bacharach on the "Pacific Coast Highway," The Flying Burrito Brothers, Loudon Wainwright, Warren Zevon, Frank Black, The Decemberists, The Handsome Furs ... but not (yet, anyways) Barry White. 

My only complaint is that the paper hasn't gone the extra mile to license each song so I can listen along while I'm reading Boucher's piece.  At any rate, when I set out to create my L.A. '08 mix tape later this year, Boucher's handiwork will provide me with one-stop shopping...

LINK: [Geoff Boucher's SoCal Songbook]

 

Dinner and Destroyer: A Great Monday Night Out in L.A.

I first heard a Destroyer album around two years ago, and I was blown away after the first track.   The rest of the album did nothing to disabuse me of an entirely pleasant astonishment.  The name Destroyer, of course, conjures up thrash metal.  But here was a voice and a guitar style that echoed David Bowie's "The Man Who Sold the World" album -- one of my all time favorites.  It seems to me Dan Bejar, aka Destroyer, is what you'd guess might have resulted if early David Bowie had lain with middle-period Black Francis, while a rotating hologram of John Lennon suffused the late-evening-lit bedroom with an unearthly flicker. 

I saw Destroyer last night at the Troubadour, and it was good. 

Rock concerts, for me, have always been a more-miss-than-hit proposition.  But last night's show -- to steal a line from The Lebowski's narrator -- made me feel like I'd seen somethin' every bit as stupefyin' as them old rock n roll shows way back when... 

Jim Morrison died 4 years before I was born.  I've never seen U2.  I didn't see Page or Plant.  And I ain't never seen Mick Jagger in his damned undies.  But seeing Destroyer last night made me feel like I could die happy with a smile on my face...  Without feeling like the good lord had gipped me out of the price of a ticket... 

Before the show, we celebrated our good friends' anniversary at the laid back and delicious Trattoria Amici -- a swell Italian restaurant close to the Troubadour.  We all really enjoyed the food, and the restaurant had an outdoor seating area that was perfect for last night's comfortable evening weather.  I'd highly recommend it to anyone thinking of making an evening of it in that neighborhood.

Here's some additional Destroyer information if you're interested:
Destroyer's My Space Page
Pandora.com -- type in "Destroyer" and let it play...
Review of Destroyer's recent album by Mark Asch
Additional Asch on Destroyer at the L Magazine site

Handsome Furs Show Saturday

So the Fake Angeleno has been working hard this week -- sorry for the light posting.  To that end, we're doing something fun tomorrow night and heading to the Troubadour to see a show.  Besides seeing Au Revoir Simone three months ago and hearing Mose Allison at the Jazz Bakery on Valentines day, we really haven't heard much music since we came to town nearly four months ago. 

The band tomorrow night is called The Handsome Furs. (Pictured at left)  I know nothing about them except they played a show in NYC recently with Spoon -- a household favorite.  Google along with me friends, and let's see what my friend Jocelyn's magazine says about the band. Ah, seems they're a husband and wife Canadian team with a melancholy bent.  Perfect. 

Full report next week...

Whole Lot of Nothing

In the midst of an NYC nostalgia attack today, what should pop into my mind but a song I heard on the Jonathan Schwartz show over two years ago.  I'd never heard the song before or since, but it stuck with me as a near-perfect rendition of the Greenwich Village hipster scene circa. the mid 1960s. 

I had no idea about the title or the artist, but I remembered it was a song about "nothing."  Thanks to google, I was able to ascertain that the mystery song was The Fugs' "Whole lot of Nothing."

What's my point?  Nothing.  Give it a listen if you like.

Sample lyrics:

Church and Times Square, all a lot of nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing!
Stevenson nothing, Humphrey nothing, Averell Harriman nothing. John Stuart Mill nill-nill, Franklin Delano Nothing.
Carlos Marx nothing, Engels nothing, Bakunin Kropotkin — nyuthing! Leon Trotsky, lots of nothing. Stalin less than nothing!