Radio Free Silver Lake

Torches Second Residency Night at The Echo (5/13/13)

text and photos by Brad Roberts

Sometimes I feel like I have just landed in the right place at the right time, with all elements in place and all the planets aligned. I have to confess, it's happened to me a lot my life and it happened again on Monday night, May 13. Attending the second Monday of the Torches (at right) residency at The Echo, I was aware that they were going to cover some songs by Arcade Fire, but when they started with "Rebellion", that feeling came over me again. A lot of people already know this story about how Arcade Fire are directly responsible for my entry into the world of music, but I'm going to tell it again.

Once upon a time, I was sitting on my couch realizing that my world was pretty settled, life was fairly routine. I had a job, a career, a few friends, family of the other coast and I was entering late middle-age and beginning to feel my passion for living was waning. It was after 11 PM on Monday, August 1st 2005, and as I was channel-surfing on TV, I went by a music video for "Rebellion" by Arcade Fire and it stopped me in my tracks. I listened for a minute then moved on, but realized I couldn't stop hearing that song so I went back to that channel.

Over the next 2 and a half minutes, a fire was ignited in me that grew and grew and has been burning brightly ever since. I had not listened to rock and roll in about 15 years and had believed it to be a dead art form. The next day I went out and bought the first rock CD I had bought in over ten years, Funeral by Arcade Fire and my journey began. There's so much to recount here, involving the Internet, the failing grasp of the giant music label behemoths, the rise on independent music, and the fertile local music scene, the hotbed of creative energy all around us...and on and on, that I need to write a book.

Show Review: Kurt Vile & The Violators at the Echoplex 5/7/13

Text & Photos by Kathryn Pinto

My excitement about the Kurt Vile show was tempered by my trepidation at all things that happen at a BNM show (his latest album won Pitchfork’s Best New Music designation). Yeah the buzz was great on this album, which is how I ended up buying the excellent Wakin on a Pretty Daze on vinyl and playing it non-stop. Pretty Daze combines laconic easy-paced songwriting in the vein of Neil Young with guitar playing that’s about as close to shredding as a chill guy from Philadelphia gets. But that same good buzz threatened to fill the room at the Echoplex with dilettantes likely to make me pissy as hell.

You know what I mean. There are the structural flaws of the Echoplex like terrible sightlines, Hollywood drink prices ($9 beer) and bathroom attendants. (Isn’t the ladies’ room just about the last place you’d want to buy a pack of mints?). Then there are the so-called fans who talk, make out or dry hump (as my colorful show buddy put it) while standing three feet from the stage the entire show. After bearing witness to some of the anticipated dry-humping during opener the Fresh and Onlys' well-fogged in and very droney, but good set, I ducked outside to escape the fog for the relative fresh air of the smokers’ patio outside between sets.

Kurt Vile took the stage dressed in the same white-white jeans, white shirt, white jacket and white Converse he sports in his “Never Run Away” video and opened with “Wakin on a Pretty Day.” He followed with “KV Crimes,” the second track from Wakin on a Pretty Daze. Vile mumbles his lyrics and his long metalhead locks obscure his face, but these outward gestures do nothing to distance him from the audience. Throughout the set the experience of seeing Vile play live was one of being lured in ever closer. He seemed to be backed by at least a dozen guitarists on stage with him, but really I think there were only three. The audience was a stoked, but reverent crowd. They certainly welcomed it when he played the hits, but there was awed appreciation throughout the set. On “Jesus Fever” from his previous album Smoke Ring For My Halo Vile was head bopping and toe-tapping and the crowd just about lost their collective minds in approval. “Peeping Tom” he played solo on acoustic guitar, creating a very intimate moment with the more than seven hundred in the room. From there he went into a full band vibing heavy, the romantics in our midst having presumably filtered to the back of the venue. After the encores, Vile left the stage saying, “You’ve been a beautiful audience, see you in the parking lot.”

More photos after the jump.

Show Review: MUDHONEY (and the curse of part-time punks) 4/14/13

Text by Seamus Simpson
Photos by Simon Cardoza

So a couple of weeks back I was taxed with going to see Mudhoney at the Echo. I haven’t seen this band since around ‘93 or ‘94 and the lasting image in my head was the band wearing dresses and ripping through “Mudride,” but a lasting image it was. This was a band that in high school was the lesser-known progeny of the Seattle scene. I have always appreciated how they never seemed to take themselves nearly as seriously as their peers in the scene. They always looked like they were up for a good time and Mark Arm was going to drag you there if he had to and you were going to enjoy it. So I was more than excited to learn that they were back on tour again and even more excited that they were doing only small clubs on this tour. A win-win situation for the fans.

Well, there I was sitting on my friend’s couch listening to Super Fuzz/ Big Muff and casually watching some really pretentious band on the first weekend Coachella (I let you the reader pick which band I was viewing as it will probably be right) and it occurs to double check when the shows starts and that is when the reoccurring curse of Part-Time Punks stuck me again. Due to this DJ night the damn Sunday shows at the Echo  start early in order to make way for the post-punk waifs dressed in black to lurch and sway all over the dance floor to a drone of classic post-punk and new wave, so of course I love the night.  I just always seem to forget about it.

Needless to say, we made record time from downtown to Echo Park and shoved our way to the front in order to catch a spectacle going full tilt as we walked in. This was a much different crowd at the Echo  than I was accustomed to seeing. It felt for a second that I was somehow back to 1994.

Show Review: Low - Down At The Troubadour (4/2/13)

by Brad Roberts

Low put on a typically low-key and hypnotic spell-binder of a show on Tuesday night, April 2, at The Troubadour. Having seen this band be equally impressive in so small a venue as The Satellite or as large as El Rey, they have the admirable ability to tailor their sound to the needs of a room's acoustical dimensions. The Troubadour affords them the best of both worlds. Big sound in a cozy setting.

I greeted their newest album, The Invisible Way, with a little trepidation, as it was produced by Jeff Tweedy of Wilco and I didn't know if that was a good fit. The album sounded deceptively laid back and sluggish on my earbuds, but it actually is strong and powerful when played with enough volume on a good home stereo. And that was what I heard at The Troubadour. Differing from the fuzzy electronic bombast of The Great Destroyer or the more lyrical quality of C'mon, this new album heads off in new directions as Mimi Parker assumes a more lead vocal role.

Show Review: Pam Shaffer Record Release Show with Little Red Lung - Hotel Cafe (3/14/13)

by Brad Roberts

Pam Shaffer held a record release show at Hotel Cafe the other night (Thursday, March 14) for It Is Happening Again, and was very impressive. She has gathered a band which includes a string section of two violins and a bass violin, drums and Pam on piano. I don't get to hear nearly enough piano playing and it was refreshing to see a performer spend all her time at the keys. Her voice is both strong and subtle and her clear delivery make the most of her lyrics.

Augmented by this fantastic string section, lead by Nikita Sorokin, who is a most charismatic performer as well as virtuoso on the violin, the music often veered off into purely orchestral arrangements and had the quality of a film soundtrack. Michael Ibarra adds depth with his bass violin and they were joined on some songs by Julie Carpenter on second violin creating a lush musical environment. Drummer Ben Lecourt would lead the music back to it's alt country/indie rock roots.

The well-constructed songs are centered around plain-spoken and personal observations about love, in its different aspects. Opening with a song about love/betrayal, "Drowning" off the new album, this number has a pounding determination. Love/illusion is the theme of "Dandelion". "Orpheus", dealing with love/salvation, has a gorgeously atmospheric string arrangement. A real beauty was the song articulating love/need, "Absence Gained" with a lovely piano solo  In all, seven songs from the new album ending with the first two album cuts, two songs Pam described as nice healthy love/anger songs, "Heliotrope" and "Remember This".

Photo File: The Orwells at the Echo (2/22/13)

By Kathryn Pinto

The Orwells electrified The Echo last Friday night (2/22/13) with a sweaty Tesla coil of a show. The Chicago teens unleashed themselves on the room in an explosion of hair, sweat and wild yelps. There's that time when you're so young that every day is a whole lifetime when you don't know much about history or anything that can before you, because today is now, man. These guys play like they've absorbed the Ramones, the Stooges and the Replacements and shook it all up like a bottle of soda, hand on the cap as long as a seventeen year old--who hasn't learned to think about cutting the grass and baseball at these moments--possibly can, then released it all in a single explosion of guitar bass drums as if no one had ever wrangled his four best friends and a case of cheap beer into a garage to rock out.

 

Show Review: Ra Ra Riot, Pacific Air, Cayucas at the El Rey 2/12/13

By Kathryn Pinto

Ra Ra Riot played a sold out show at the El Rey Theater last Tuesday night with Cayucas and Pacific Air playing fun opening sets. The band has steadily built a following over the last seven years by playing live, beginning at house parties at Syracuse University and now to a capacity crowd at the El Rey last Tuesday night.

Ra Ra Riot is touring in support of their third album Beta Love, out now on Barsuk. The new album  Beta Love, its title a reference to the cyber punk novels by William Gibson and Ray Kurzweil, is more synthy and cerebral than their earlier chamber pop albums. The band’s interest in electronic music is not a new development or really such a stretch. Two of the members–guitarist Milo Bonacci and violinist Rebecca Zeller–met in an electronic music class at Syracuse University. It may be more accurate to say that the new material is more stripped back and minimal than the earlier albums that had live violin and cello on nearly every track. Although the band is down to four official members after the departure of cellist Alexandra Lawn in 2012, Ra Ra Riot plays live as a six-piece, echoing the lineup of their first album. From the first notes of “Too Dramatic” the band bouncing onto the stage and front man Wes Miles with tambourine in hand, the show was a joyful bounce of a performance. The set included songs from all three albums prompting sing-alongs by a stoked crowd on “Oh La,” “Can You Tell,” and “Too Too Fast,” and “Boy.”

While the  albums are the place where Ra Ra Riot  experiments with new sounds and songwriting modes, the group's live show was never thin or tentative.  On stage they maintain a deep connection with an audience they have built over years of touring. "Can You Tell," maybe the best song written about a crush, has been around since before the band's first album.  "Boy" (from the 2011 album The Orchard) and "Beta Love" the latest single were equally rallying points for a crowd that had come to cut loose in joyful release. As their El Rey show demonstrated, the power of this band is in their live performance.

(For more photos, check out the Radio Free Silver Lake photo set for this show.)

Show Review: Halfbluud at Harvard & Stone (2/13/13)

Text and Photos by Brad Roberts

I happened to go over to Harvard & Stone last Wednesday, Feb. 13, to catch a set by the new project of our friend Harley Prechtel-Cortez called Halfbluud. Over the past year or so I've seen Harley a few times as a solo act and had him play a couple of my Feed Your Head shows at Lot 1, but this was the first time I've seen him with a band in a long time and the effect was exhilarating.

From The Weather Underground to Red Cortez to Just An Animal, I've enjoyed all the iterations of the bands Harley has fronted as well as his solo work, and in all forms he is a charismatic and entertaining singer/musician/performer. His expressive voice is as powerful an instrument as his guitar (and sometimes piano) and he uses it without fear. He can coo and whisper or just as easily blow out the back wall with what appears to be a minimum of effort or strain.

He has lately been globe-trotting a bit, recently returned from Tokyo, and perhaps that is informing the work of this new band, Halfbluud as the first EP is called Shibuya, which is the famous arts and entertainment district in the Japanese capital and a magnet for it's youth culture, where Harley spent some of his time overseas.

Photo File: Radar Brothers, Babies on Acid, and Young Unknowns at the Echo 2/2/13

Photos and Text by Amanda Glover

Radar Brothers appeared at the Echo this past Saturday (February 2) as part of the record release for their new album Eight. Jim Putnam (son of recording pioneer/Universal Audio founder Bill Putnam) and the rest of the band played their blend of surreal, swirling, guitar-driven tunes to an appreciative audience with support from Babies On Acid (whose set was pleasantly folky in contrast to their name) and Young Unknowns. The RFSL Flickr page has the complete photoset for the show.

Head over to RFSL Flickr page for more photos.

Photo File: The Gaslamp Killer and Adventure Time at First Fridays at the Natural History Museum 2/1/13

Photos and Text by Amanda Glover

The Natural History Museum's latest First Friday extravaganza featured explosive sets by headliners The Gaslamp Killer and Adventure Time. An electronically-oriented bill this month, the event also featured DJ Sodapop and Inka One (across from the headliners) in the African Animal Hall. A fun and intriguing venue for concerts, the museum also plays host to scientific lectures and other activities before the music begins.

Head over to the RFSL Flickr page for more photos.

Head over to the RFSL Flickr page for more photos.