I’m a 20th century man who only lately has been feeling the 21st century. With that in mind, most of my professional achievements are now old-school: from magazines I started such as Beach Culture, RayGun, Speak, Gravity, Revolution, from books on everything from geeks to music video to beach volleyball, from consultancies with companies like Disney, Rollerblade and Reebok. People have paid me to write, to teach, to skate and even to dance. But they never, not once, paid me for sex.
I readily admit, it’s taken me awhile to back into today. But I figure it’s time to pay attention to Marshall McLuhan and marry the Internet’s style and substance into something that makes a 20th century guy feel at home. If you can help, I’m all ears.
My Grammy weekend started at The Echo, one of Los Angeles’ best places to hear new music, and a set with Berkeley’s Morning Benders, a band that didn’t look old enough to buy their way into a club. Given their youth, the range of their references, inadvertent or not, was impressive, with everything from Sonic Youth to the Smoking Popes, on display.
Without really knowing why, I mumbled to the person next to me that they seemed “smart.” The singer’s mother later confirmed this when she told me he not only read books voraciously, but counted Nabokov’s impenetrable Pale Fire as his favorite novel of all time. That alone is enough to justify big expectations.
kooky
happy b'day, Marques!
The headlining band, The Kooks, came cloaked in big expectations. Media darlings in England, their songs had enough sonic undercurrents to explain why they might develop into something interesting, and they did keep the crowd happy. But for a band with all that press and hype, I expected a true headliner. Instead, no matter how hard I tried to convince myself otherwise, The Kooks seemed likable and promising, but nothing, really, to justify taking the late-night crosstown bus for.
Headliners were in no short supply on Sunday night, but at Deep, the long-running Los Angeles Sunday institution, it had nothing to do with the Grammies. Instead, it was Deep’s own Marques Wyatt’s birthday and his annual bash, which featured Marques and his friends, Mark Farina and Miguel Migs. Imagine, three house giants for $20, spinning for 6 ½ hours, for the same price as two baby bands. There’s a reason electronic music remains the best bang for your music buck.
The night itself was perfect, with Wyatt’s opening set, slamming, nasty, funky, keeping the packed house screaming for more. This guy has brought some of the best music to Los Angeles for years, Sunday night after Sunday night, so when, around midnight, Mark Farina led the crowd in a rousing “Happy Birthday” sing-a-long, you just knew that no matter how many celebrities were clutching their statues at private parties in clubs throughout the city, no one was having a better time than the people at the Vanguard, screaming out well wishes to a true L.A. hero.
- When the Light Goes by Larry McMurtry - The Raw Shark Texts by Stephen Hall - Teenage by Jon Savage - Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling - The Archivist’s Story by Travis Holland
