Maxwell Demon @ Bad Dog Ale House, 11/30/07

Maxwell Demon rocked the fucking walls off at Bad Dog Ale House tonight in El Segundo and frontman Raymond had a lot more energy than I've seen in a while. It reminded me of the good old days years ago when they'd play clubs like 705 and Westchester Sports Bar and Grill. I fucking love this band; they're by far my favorite South Bay local act of the last 5 years.

In a great finale to the show, Raymond jumped up to rip down a Coors Light banner. A bartender chick who wasn't too happy about this immediately rushed over to scold him, but don't think he cared nor will he remember it, haha.

José González, Cass McCombs @ Henry Fonda Theatre, 11/27/07

Cass McCombs opened for José González tonight at the Henry Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles. It was a good show, but I'm pissed at the audience as usual for being too fucking stupid and loud during the opening set. Cass McCombs was playing acoustic and a handful of dumb bitches up front were being too loud the entire time. People were shushing them and telling them to be quiet, but they must've been fucking drunk for the first time in their pathetic young lip gloss covered lives, because they laughed and kept talking.

Anyway, Cass McCombs didn't play "Equinox" so I was pretty disappointed. I was really surprised to see bearded bassist Rob Barbato (of Los Angeles psychedelic shoegaze band Darker My Love and more recently of the legendary The Fall) at this show...he was playing bass for Cass McCombs. I also read that he played theremin on the album. Pretty interesting stuff!

Swede Jose Gonzales, who is mostly known for his folk cover of The Knife's electronic Heartbeats, performed an incredible solo acoustic set, with a spotlight shining down on him the entire time. The entire Henry Fonda crowd was respectfully silent. A moving experience, but maybe more of them should've had some respect for the opener that I went to see.

The Hives @ The Avalon, 11/7/07

The Hives played at the Avalon tonight in Hollywood, supporting their more-of-the-same-but-good new album, The Black and White Album . These Swedes rock hard (as most of them do) and were extremely tight and poppy as expected. Everyone in that band must have been hyped up on a Costco crate of Pixie Stix or something because those guys are nuts!

The Hives are known for being completely wild, and saying very ridiculous, nonsensical and seemingly cocky and arrogant things between songs. At one point, frontman Howlin' Pelle Almqvist wanted everyone to applaud louder and louder and he wasn't satisfied so he said "don't make me come down there and set the rest of the city on fire Los Angeles!" What a low blow! He's referring to all the fires in Malibu. The crowd "oooed" and "booed", then the singer was silent for a minute, and then said "ah fuck you guys!" and they kept rocking. Hahahaha, crazy Swede.

Highlight of the show for sure: in the middle of the song "You Dress Up For Armageddon", right after the line "who is the man with the microphone? Today he is here but tomorrow he is gone" the entire band froze exactly like wax figures for about 30 seconds. Silence. Then the crowd applauded louder and louder, until Pelle Almqvist broke the stillness with a smile, and then two seconds later the band continued with "but I disagree!!!" Awesome. And lucky you, bathtubexplosion blog reader! I have a clip of this below!



Only real letdown of the night was, I didn't know it was a fucking KROQ show! Yes, KROQ! The same idiots who fucked up radio with all the same shitty bands. Seen the "I Am KROQ" billboards? Incubus, Chili Peppers, Foo Fighters...get over them already, FUCK! These shows are always filled with a bunch of kids and idiots. There was a loud fat Mexican chick in front of me the whole show who kept crashing into people, and a bunch of high school kids who smuggled in beer cans and were obviously drunk for the first or second time because they acted like fucking fools and talked too loud in my face. I wanted to smash heads. But that's the price you pay to get up close and take sweet ass pictures!

Yo La Tengo @ MOCA, La Jolla, 11/5/07

Oh how I love driving all the way to San Diego on a whim. I did it recently to purchase a white maple necked Eric Clapton Strat, and I did it Sunday night to go see Yo La Tengo do an acoustic set at the MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Arts) in La Jolla. This show was sold out so I posted an ad on Craigslist and luckily enough I found a seller who sold me two tickets for face value of $25 each. What a fucking deal.

I drove all the way to La Jolla from Los Angeles and arrived at a very nice area in La Jolla with upscale shopping centers and plenty of coffee shops and restaurants. I had learned earlier in the week that Yo La Tengo were touring and playing special intimate acoustic sets which included audience Q&A's in between songs! I wasn't sure how well their feedback heavy sound would transfer to acoustic performances, but they sounded fucking fantastic!

They performed mellower versions of songs throughout their career (for an audience of almost 500), such as Autumn Sweater, Stockholm Syndrome, Griselda, and Mr. Tough. While many of the songs were sung so mellowly you'd swear you were having a flashback to a Simon and Garfunkel concert, some of them really picked it up with Ira Kaplan breaking out into Proco Rat distorted acoustic guitar solos. Very similar to the guitar in Tom Waits' Hoist That Rag! And his head-bowed-down-on-and-rocking-back-and-forth stage stance is very similar to Mr. Waits as well. Badass! This guy can really switch between soft guitar to fucking heavy fast shit--very similar to Thurston Moore's guitar playing.

The highlight of the night was definitely when I yelled out to Ira: "The song The Room Got Heavy relies so heavily on bongo drums and organ--is it even humanly possible to transfer such a song to a live acoustic set?" Mr. Kaplan smirked, and said "I don't know if that's ever even been done...is this a dare?" and they played a fucking awesome acoustic version that found simple amplified acoustic riffs opening the song, which eventually turned into some heavily distorted power chord shifts to finish off the climactic organ solo from the original version on I am Not Afraid of You And I Will Beat Your Ass.

This was one of the best shows I have been to all year. I won't soon forget the Ira Kaplan's between song commentary and soft spoken words of benevolence. He really seems like a nice guy, and handled the transition from "song--to audience question--to song (related to the audience question) very smoothly!

Thurston Moore @ Echoplex, 10/30/07

I met up with J. Giovanni and B. and B. Hart tonight for the soothing sounds of Thurston Moore's new "Trees Outside the Academy" tour. I have already heard many die hard Sonic Youth fan's, such as (Raymond of locals E>K>U>K and Maxwell Demon) say that Trees Outside the Academy was everything that Sonic Youth's Rather Ripped should have been. Relying heavily on acoustic guitars and stringed arrangements, this warm and lush album transfers excellently to the stage live.

I worked my way to the front of the hardly packed Echoplex and waited through one of the shittiest 27 minutes of my young adult life. Scores (featuring Heather Leigh Murray and Christina Carter who sings on a couple tracks on Trees Outside the Academy) opened for Thurston, and regrettably so. This female duo on electric slide guitar and lap steel started the night with a whole bunch of high pitched howlin'. This is obviously music from the soul, but maybe it's left better kept in the soul rather than in the ears of the audience, who seemed squeamish the entire time. Scores sounded like a gang of ghosts raping a pregnant lesbian wolf bitch while riding the Matterhorn at Disneyland and listening to Cocteau Twins. And don't get me wrong, I love Cocteau Twins. This duo was a bunch of bullshit in my honest opinion (which you're going to get whether you like it or not; you're reading this.) Seriously, it was just two older chicks howling for at least half an hour and playing some slow and droney guitars. The music DID NOT CHANGE the entire time. So fucking repetitive I wanted to walk on stage on start peeing on their faces so they would fucking leave already. If there was talent on stage, I didn't see it, and neither did the handful of people from the audience who walked away during their set.

Finally the cacophonous cries for mother's milk ended and the man, the legend, Mr. Thurston Moore came on stage! He came out calm and cool, and mentioned something of having a Halloween mask. He asked if we wanted to see it. Of course we did! The audience cheered and screamed. He went backstage, and came back with the corniest skull mask I have ever seen. Then he jumped into the audience and got on his back and began having what appeared to be a violent fake seizure of some sort. He growled and he hissed for a minute, then got back on stage. I don't know for sure, but I think I was the only one who was amused by this. I didn't know he'd be so playful and geekily down to earth. The audience was pretty silent.

He ripped through a tight acoustic set composed entirely of songs from his new album, and then came back with an encore that consisted of a couple songs from Psychic Hearts, the highlights being Queen Bee and Her Pals and the title track which were the only songs he switched to a Jazzmaster for. And Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley (surprise!) beat the hell out of the drums the whole time. Rock on!

JH and the Squares, Vaudeville, Abe Vigoda, and Mika Miko @ Comic Bug, 10/28/07

Comic Bug in Redondo Beach hosted a show last night which included the lineup of South Bay locals JH and the Squares and Vaudeville, following LA underground music scene giants Abe Vigoda and Mika Miko. Around 100 people showed up for what promised to be quite the entertaining night.

Check THIS link for more pics from both the Comic Bug show and the big after party at the Vermont House behind Vermont Shoes on Vermont Blvd.

JH and the Squares:

Joe Hylander is a busy man. When not touring with locals E>K>U>K, he's practicing and writing songs alongside fellow local man Jesse Hoffman of two-piece chicken dinner OHHOME! When these brilliantly creative forces combine, they make up JH and the Squares. Or, JH and the Motherfucking Squares!!! as I like to call them. Joe Hylander's vocals bear an uncanny resemblance to Elliott Smith's, and Jesse's stage presence is one of a statute confidence.

These guys are definitely coming to rock your world into a million tiny pieces (not to be confused with the shitty book that Oprah endorsed). If you were a toilet seat they would stomp you in half with a steel-toe boot. If you were a house of mirrors they'd blast through you with an AK-47. If you were a field of daisies they would run you over with a motherfucking John Deere. And if you were Steve Buscemi, they'd chop you up into tiny pieces and stuff your leg into a woodchipper with your socks still on. Yes. They rock that hard. And they're great guys, too!

These are some badass motherfuckers.

ENJOY THE PICS!




Loungy. Jazzy. Jammy. Psychedelic. Zappa-esque. Local heroes Vaudeville have been around the block and back, with fat catchy bass riffs, great smooth rhythms, and one of the best, if the not the best drummers in town, Sean Johnson (also of E>K>U>K, and formerly of From). If you live in the South Bay and you haven't at least heard of these guys, you're probably not cool. I'm serious. No I'm not. Yes I am.

Caribou @ Troubadour, 10/26/07

Wow. What can I say? Caribou rocked harder than I thought they would have. The best part about this live performance is that singer/drummer/keyboardist Dan Snaith rocks so hard at drums.

Now I'll come out by saying this: I don't know the slightest thing about drums except there are high hats, low hats, a bass drum, and a snare. I'm a guitarist and a keyboardist. Drums and me don't mix. But I do recognize fucking talent. And Dan Snaith has truckloads of it. His drum skills came as quite a surprise! Many of the songs included dual drum banging performances by Dan and the main drummer (I'm not going to pretend I know his name, nor will I Google that shit because it's fucking late and I'm buzzed).

If you've ever heard the word "Manitoba" then you don't need much else of an explanation about these guys. They're indie electronic 60s sounding sunshine pop.





This guy has nothing to do with Caribou but I spotted him at a Halloween party on Vermont. He looks just like him!

Man Man @ Troubadour, 10/23/07

I first got into Philadelphia's Man Man when reading about them on Pitchforkmedia early in the year.

I bought the album Six Demon Bag and it was awesome. Then I saw them open for Modest Mouse at the Gibson Amphitheatre at Universal City Walk after the show was moved from the Greek Theatre due to raging wildfires in the mountains and LA Fire Dept. setting up station there. Let's just say I felt bad for Isaac Brock and Co. ...I left to the Man Man merch booth during a Modest Mouse song to buy their first album, The Man in a Blue Turban With a Face. Equally engaging as the first with more of a children's sing-along vibe.

Man Man is one of the top 5 live bands I have ever seen in my life, and I've gone to Coachella the last four years in a row, along with hundreds of other great shows in Los Angeles. This show was fucking incredible and incredibly fucking packed was the Troubadour.

The place was super fucking hot due to all the damn Southern California wildfires and smoke. Dammit, every time Man Man comes to town, there's a huge array of wildfires. Coincidence? Or maybe they rock so hard that they set the world around them on fire. Last band that did that didn't make it out alive.

Rarely does a band have the kind of energy and chemistry on stage as these manly men do! They sound like a bunch of drunken singing fishermen who broke into a New Orlean's lounge bar and beat the shit out of the jazz band. They sound like a band of twee influenced gypsies wearing pots and pans on their heads while singing Tom Waits' covers and falling down the stairs.

The five or six dudes in Man Man jump up and down with their all white clothing: tank tops and T's, cutoff shorts, sailor shoes and those white Keds that your grandma still wears, and they rock the fucking house down. They pound the shit out their drums, use random items to beat with the drumsticks such as pans and empty oxygen tanks, and most of all, they just look like they are having a great time on stage. Every one of them seems to have at least one drumstick in their hands at any given moment. Keyboards, horns, guitar, bass, xylophones, drums, flute, melodica, drums, etc. I'm surprised they don't have a banjo and an accordion. Maybe on the next album, guys? Please?

Everybody sang along. You could barely find a path to the bathroom and if you did it'd take you five minutes just to get through.

Too bad I didn't show up early enough to take really good pictures. Enjoy.

Anton Corbijn's CONTROL @ Nuart, 10/22/07

Tonight after getting off of work, I quickly hopped on the 405 N. from El Segundo and began my heavily congested commute to the Nuart on Santa Monica Blvd. to see the Ian Curtis biopic Control.

This movie was hands down one of the best films of the year. Beautifully shot in black and white, music video director Anton Corbijn’s masterpiece presented an emotional impact not seen in many of today’s rockstar biopics (think Gus van Sant’s ultra-shitty Last Days).

I appreciated the subtleties in the character’s personalities and minds, such as Ian Curtis' (Sam Riley) tendency to wander off and focus on the trivial in his sad state of mental and emotional isolation; when called upon by his chemistry teacher, he is completely spaced out while he focuses strictly on the letters "OH" on the chemical chart.

I must say that Sam Riley is one of the best new actors I have seen today. He looks and sounds like Ian Curtis (and resembles Jack White, Johnny Knoxville and Leonardo Dicaprio).

I was born in '84 so I obviously missed Joy Division live (Curtis killed himself in 1980) but from what I've seen in videos, Riley's stage performance was dead on. His voice resembles Ian Curtis' and he has the exact same sort of awkward arm shuffling spasms and dancing while on foot were, in my opinion, almost a way of foreshadowing Curtis' real life complete loss of control when suffering a seizure on the floor.

There are lots of likable people in this movie, and you are really left feeling sorry for more than one of them. This is one of those movies where you can't decide who's side you are on because all of the characters really do have a lot of good in them.

I especially felt bad for Ian Curtis’ wife Deborah (Samantha Morton) who spent most of the movie crying and feeling sorry for herself and her deeply troubled husband, who suffered from epileptic seizures.

A favorite scene of mine was when Ian Curtis' psychiatrist prescribes him an overwhelmingly long list of hard to pronounce medication, and then completely belittles the dire side-effects. It's no wonder the guy was depressed!

I really enjoyed the comical performance from Toby Kebbell as Joy Division tour manager Rob Gretton. Whereas most tour managers are portrayed as greedy assholes, this one seems genuinely caring and friendly to the guys in the band, which was a refreshing take on the usually selfish character. I loved his first scene when he calls the potential Joy Division manager a "das cunt" and tells him he's nobody because nobody has heard of him. And he's also got a great scene where he tries to bribe a random dude to step in and sing a song with the band while Ian Curtis is backstage having an anxiety attack. "I'll give you 20 quid, just go out there!" The guy walks out, starts singing, and is booed off-stage by angry bottle-throwing fans of the real thing. He then walks backstage and asks "Where's my 20 quid?" and Rob Gretton yells "in my fuck-off pocket!" FUCKING CLASSIC!

Freelance journalist Annik Honoré (played by the super sexy Alexandria Maria Lara, who was born in Bucharest, Romania, the same exact city that my father was born in!) ends up being Ian's side dish, and a smoking hot one at that. I put myself in his shoes after he meets her, and I felt his pain and confusion. For an actor to be able to get you to look through his eyes like Sam Riley does in this movie, you've got to give them some serious fucking credit. He's in his early 20s, married too soon, in love too soon, with a newborn child too soon. His wife is a homely homebody who has gained weight naturally through pregnancy, and although he does love her, here comes this young and fresh pretty little thing staring at him with those big brown eyes. What a temptation! Click HERE for a super hot picture of her from the movie.

On the weaker side, TV personality Tony Wilson (Craig Parkinson) may not have been as fucking PHENOMENAL as Steve Coogan in 24 Hour Party People, but the focus was less on him this time around, and Steve Coogan has impossibly big shoes to fill anyway. Craig Parkinson's Tony Wilson did, however, have a funny scene in Control where he signed the band contract in blood. I'll leave it at that.

At 23, the same age when Ian Curtis killed himself, I really have a higher appreciation for Joy Division than ever before. I felt myself relating to him with his relationship struggles, feelings of confusion based on obligatory love and extracurricular lust, and his ultimate overwhelming anxiety and indecisiveness that led to his inevitable downfall. After all, love will tear us apart...

GO SEE CONTROL NOW! Showtimes HERE.

Black Lips @ Echoplex, 10/20/07

Just a day after missing Wolf Parade's Spencer Krug's main side project Sunset Rubdown at the El Rey (still bummed, I had my ticket, but ended up meeting up with co-workers at Union Cattle in Hermosa Beach for one too many drinks), Black Lips played at the Echoplex.

I arrived there early enough to catch openers The Spits and Pierced Arrows. The Spits, who are known for wearing crazy costumes live, had one of the craziest fucking pits I have been in in a while. These 30-years old or so bald Seattle dudes came out looking like skinhead Klansmen in loose white cotton sheet gowns, ink dots on their foreheads, and the guy on the keys was wearing a big fuzzy sasquatch-esque body suit and a welding helmet (think Homer in the opening credits for the Simpsons.)

They pumped out crunchy and raw power-chord punk that reminded me of Suicidal Tendencies with a synth, and even The Ramones on some tracks. Lots of singing-along, crowd surfing, and just an all out wild crowd. I had no idea this band had such a following!


I pretty much sat out the second band and then I worked my way up front to see Black Lips. Holy cow! I FUCKING LOVED THIS SHOW! I can't get over it! These guys have such a raw sound live. You can hear the crackle in the guitar's reverbed distortion as if someone is punching a Twin Reverb while the pickups are being run on a fading battery (I have an Eric Clapton Strat that uses Lace Sensors, and these active pickups sound exactly the same when the 9-volt is running low).

They really sound like a bunch of high school kids in the 60's getting drunk and singing along to old-school garage punk, and they do it extremely well, with catchy hooks that don't grow repetitive or annoying.

While their stage presence didn't include bodily fluid centered antics that they have become infamous for (urinating, masochism, vomiting, nudity, etc.), they still had a fucking awesome set and I really didn't miss the absence of cocks and barf on stage.

The crowd was really into it: yelling and singing along, pitting, crowd surfing, etc. but a lot of fans were also flicking them off and cussing them out and telling them to do crazy shit like "make out with each other!" and "take out your cock!" and "what the fuck happened to the good ol' days you motherfuckers!?!?" Some people were even throwing beer cups at them and they were getting splashed a bit. Nobody seemed to mind much except for thickly moustached bassist/vocalist Jared Swilley, who looked at the crowd, wide-eyed, with a look of contained-anger.

The band did well of keeping their cool until grillz-sporting guitarist Ian St. Pe broke a beer bottle on stage and the band was forced to pack it up with 5 songs left to play! Sucked! Everyone waited at least half an hour for them to come back on, booing and yelling, but they weren't allowed. Probably now banned from the Echoplex...