The Hive Gallery, October 3, 2009
Click on the thumbnails for a larger image

I should really start taking more pictures.  Because I am an iPhone owner, I have no excuse for not taking pictures, considering what goes on around me and in my life.

I probably forget to take pictures because I'm mostly a listener, not a seer.  I'm a listener because it's a sign of mutual respect as a musician -- I'd want people to listen to me, so I make an effort to listen to them.

Alright, fine, my hearing isn't so great, but that's because I've been listening to live music since I was 12.  You'd have to assume some of my hearing has gone away after that.

After all, if I'm going to tag a post with the following: electronica, underground, artwork, los angeles, bananas, burlesque, cheerleaders, gorillas, zombies, etc...

Well, then I better damn well have some proof.

As someone who used to be a promoter, I never throw flyers away.  I keep them in my car, and then when I’ve gathered enough, I tape them together and bam, I’ve got a wall poster. If some get outdated and I gather even more, I start slicing them up and tacking them onto existing posters.

After all, it took the artist a while to drum up the flyer in the first place.  It’s a shame to let all that artwork go to waste.  Plus, being wasteful with flyers means you hate mother earth. So there.

Anyway, I got asked to make a flyer for some good friends’ (This guy and this guy) upcoming show and it reminded me of how much fun it is to Photoshop when you’ve got free reign over what it looks like.

So here’s what I whipped up last night:

Photo by Evan Stiles

• Friday, I spent my day like I usually do at work in and around the hipster neighborhood of Silverlake.
• Friday night, I went to night 1 of the music and arts festival Magic Garage, which was tucked away in an industrial district.
• Saturday, I started off in the suburbs of Pasadena.
• I drove out past some of LA’s ghetto to pick up a friend for a carpool.
• We then went to a bachelor party dinner in Beverly Hills, which was ridiculously expensive but also ridiculously delicious
• We cut back through the ghetto so I could drop him back off at his house, a trip which was impeded by police tape from some kind of crime scene, slowing me down so that I was unable to make it in time to catch a friend’s set at night 2 of Magic Garage
• Sunday, my roommate from the near-future and I drove out to our near-future landlord’s house to sign a lease; he lives on a cliffside in Playa del Rey, overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
• We trek back to the industrial area between Silverlake and Glassell Park to check out a rehearsal space, where my band may be pitching in to share the lockout
• We make a quick stop in the building where we’re going to be renting, in which we already have friends.

That’s another big thing in my life: I’m moving to another apartment.

I like the area okay as it’s turning into a suburb, but I should note that it used to be known for belonging to one of the deadliest gangs in LA, Los Avenidas.

Now, however, it seems to be gentrifying (I can see a friend of mine already rolling his eyes), but its movement in this direction is slow and actually quite different than that of the other gentrified LA neighborhoods.  Sure, the hipsters come out at night and hang out at the local dives, but the bars themselves are very fortunately easy for most people to overlook, so they aren’t claustrophobic like the rapidly growing Echo Park and Silverlake. The native Hispanic culture is reassuringly still very much the identity of the neighborhood, but the culture is less gang related as much as it is itself generating a different brand of hipster. I actually tend to like them better than traditional stereotyped hipsters because they don’t carry the pretense of irony, or taking erudite obscurity as a personal challenge — rather, a lot just tend to be into Morrissey and hot rods and/or thrash metal and skateboards, some are into smoking pot, most are into drinking.  As with any young and “hip” subculture, they are large proponents of the arts.  Instead of lamenting being “lost”, they are fully aware of their cultural identities and are proud of it. They take family seriously, and treat friends like family. And, oh, how refreshing to see that they are quite the opposite of blasé.  Some are in fact so extroverted that getting a flyer for a show leads to standing around, smoking cigarettes, talking about who are the best tattoo artists in the neighborhood, and even exchanging phone numbers.

So yes, I can definitely get along with all of this.

But the best part about the neighborhood are the kids.  Every other night I hang out there, I can hear the neighborhood kids screwing around, but they aren’t getting into the same trouble as their gang member predecessors.  I hear skateboards on concrete and poorly tuned drum kits and cheap guitar amps blasting covers of The Casualties.

And when the local kids are punk rockers, you know there is hope in your neighborhood.

Right!

In order to get the ball rolling, I posted an ad for my job on CraigsList.  Initially I rejected this idea simply because it cost money to post a job description.  But this is a necessary step in trying to loosen some of my ties to the music business thereby freeing me up to focus on the music part.

But wow, I had no idea how regularly people peruse that site.  Within the first 72 hours, my email has been straight up INUNDATED with a DELUGE of people who want my job.

And all these applications are the cholestrol clogging up my Series of Tubes!

For now, that’s a good thing!  Though I’ve often characterized the job as thankless and repetitive, going through the motions of working here has let me meet some great people with novel ideas.  It has given me the pride of putting on many a show that had the genuine intent of helping a band do what they love – to play.  That’s it.  The point of the venue is to play a show.  Profit? Pfft.  Create a scene? Yeah, right.  Explore the dark corners of sonic experimentation for the furthering of music theory? …who the eff do you think you are?

…to finally be the “cool” crowd? Let’s see how cool you are as soon as we get your ass stupidly drunk with our mighty tasty drink specials. Not so clever now, are you, hipster?

Nope.  Our veteran musicians know that when you play at our venue, you play because you want to play.  And how many venues in Los Angeles can honestly say that?

Ranting on the LA scene aside, some of my candidates are better than others – but I think our bar owner’s hiring strategy might have influenced my interview queue.  See, this may sound TOTALLY SEXIST, but I’m interviewing the females first.  But I have good reasons, I swear!  It’s because:

• I’ve worked with women in this underground/booking industry before, and they are less likely to have musicians and managers try to pull a “fast one” on them.  If the client party is male, they interact with a female booker in a way that tries to impress them.  If the client party is female, they interact with a female booker in a way that tries to avoid a cat fight.  Moreover, a woman will not take crap from prima donnas, and our venue could use some oomph behind our (completely sincere!) altruistic ideals.  Or at least this is what I’m hoping.
• A female has taken my position temporarily before, and the hidden secret bitch superpower she possessed turned out to be an INCREDIBLE asset to getting shit done.  See, if I put my foot down, bands throw a hissy fit.  If a lady puts her foot down, bands cast their gaze downwards and say “yes, ma’am.”
• There needs to be more women in this industry.  Seriously.  Damn sausage fest up in here. (fun note!  www.sausagefest.com exists, and is incidentally Totally Safe For Work; that is, unless you’re not down with carnivora.)
• Surveys and studies show that women may very well be better at multitasking and organizing than men are.  Well, hell, no wonder our booking was in near shambles when I was running it.
• I am not basing this on looks because I would rather she get the job done than spend it inadvertently flirting, as some employees might have done in the past.

So I’m going to put this out there on the interwebs to help me prep for interviewing people:

If you were applying for my job at the bar (booking bands and doing live sound) what would you want to know about it?

*What does one do in a rut?  Steer?  I’ll leave it up to your imagination.

One of the worst things you can do as a booking agent for a music venue is to cancel a show.

[sarcasm] And you know what’s fuhrkin awesome? [/sarcasm] I have to do just that.  Why?  Because somehow, I wasn’t paying attention, and let two resident artists — or “recurring artists” for those of you who don’t speak venue — book (ie. reserve) the same night.  What does that mean?  It means either one show gets moved and the other gets priority, or one show gets to play while the other gets straight up canceled.

No matter what happens, I am an asshole.

What makes me more like an asshole is that line from Dante in Clerks: “I’m not even supposed to be here!”

But hell, that’s true.  I’m a musician.  I’m made to hate the music business.  Sure, some musicians are great at it, but I didn’t ask for this job.  This job fell into my lap because nobody else wanted to do it and I supposedly represented this booking company in a good light.  But oh, how I loathe this job, and I hate it even more when shit just goes wrong.  I would like nothing more than to sit around singing melodies and strumming a guitar.  And I never get to do that because this job’s basic tenet is that I’m supposed to help others do just that.

Every Saturday night, I’m jealous that it’s them on stage and not me. When you play on stage, strangers come up to you, tap you on the shoulder, ask you questions about what you listen to, when and where you’re playing next, saying “good job!” in all of their empty-praise glory just to see what you’re like as a person.  And sometimes you’ll get the sincere ones who keep the conversation going, and then they actually do follow you to your next gig, and it snowballs and these people learn to sing along to lyrics that you wrote in your bedroom or your garage or on a napkin in the parking lot of a Denny’s.  Then when you run into them at parties, they make it a point to ask when your next show is so that they can show off to their friends they know a musician.  And then those friends come to your shows.

It’s not the attention that matters – it’s that you created something people get to share with each other.  A memorable melody, a night out they can recall to their friends with “Hey, remember that show when…”, a way to make their lives that much more intimate with this thing called music.

And everyone likes music.  Even deaf people like music.  No, I’m serious.  Phil, back me up here.

I used to be that music-maker, but not anymore.  This damn bar job is so f’ing thankless.  When I walk through the crowd at the venue it’s like watching cockroaches scatter in the lamplight.  Oh, they think, don’t get in the way of the sound guy, he’s doing something important so that the show goes on.  Nobody congratulates me on a job well done.  I hate having to be nice to musicians all the time even when I think they’re complete douche-cacca. And I hate being nice to the prick musicians in front of other musicians because when I’m genuinely nice to the awesome artists I do like (which is actually the vast majority of them) they think I’m being insincere.

I can’t win.

And waaaah waaaah waaah, Nico, why don’t you do something about it?

Oh, I’ve tried to find a replacement.  And now I’m trying it again.  So let’s see what you’ve got for me, Craigslist.  Get me the fack outta this rut!

But the more I think about it, crappiness has had little to do with who wants to listen to demos or who supports it out of friendship.  From my experience as an amateur performer and from working at a venue, I think it’s more likely that there are just too many artists out there to care about the people who are making music around you.  I am also feeling that people will generally only actively consume music if that artist has something that creates a layer of distance between them and their audience.  Exempli Gratia, if it has been propped up by a label, no matter how small that label is – and in some cases, especially if it’s a small label.  And when there is that layer of distance to an artist, be it management or simply not knowing them in person, there is a sense of legitimacy.  I think this distance is required for fan-dom.  I also think it’s mostly it’s a subconcious thing.

Think about it:

Scenario #1: You’re friends with a crappy band.  They have a showcase – all the A&R people and managers will be at the show and it would really mean a lot to them if you’d show up.  You’re available and they’re getting you in for free.  Do you go?  Of course you do.  If you don’t, you’re a crappy friend.

But maybe you are busy.  And then you don’t go.  And some time later on, you catch another show, after they’ve been picked up by management.  It still means a lot to them that you were able to make it out, but now that you’re at this show, you’re wondering how this many people heard of your friend’s crappy band.  Where did they all come from?  Are they friends, too?  People actually like this music?

Now, let’s turn this around.

Scenario #2: You heard about a local band that sounds like a band you already like.  Cool.  Oh, they have a show at [X] venue.  That’s close by.  But you’re busy, so nevermind.  Oh, but they have music for download?  Okay, let’s check it out.  Holy crap, this is really good.  Alright, you’ll catch the next show because now you’re technically a fan.  The next show’s flyer has text in a large font that says to come and support this band because all the A&R people and managers will be at the show and it would really mean a lot to them if you’d show up.  Do you go?  Of course you do.  If you don’t, you’re a crappy fan.

But in this case, there’s a little bit of exploration needed on your part because it’s not like you know the people in the band as friends.  There’s that distance that legitimizes your appreciation for their music.  It’s not like your friend made you listen to a demo or anything.  You did this of your own free will.  You found this music yourself.  And that’s a good feeling.  They’re your band.  You found them.

NOW – let’s take away the show.

Scenario #3: If you’re friends with the crappy band, you probably don’t care to listen to their demo in lieu of a performance.  If you’re not friends with them, chances are there’s no reason for you to have heard about them because there is no show to put them into a context.  If you’re a musician yourself, you tend to actively listen to the music of your peers for at least the edification.  You adore the ones who are genuinely talented.  But if you’re a musician, you usually find out about your peers by footing the same bill as them.  No show, no camaraderie.

The show is almost the totality of a music career here.

Scenario #4: Let’s take away the crappy.  You’re now friends with a pretty damn good band.  But does this make you a fan?  Probably not.  You get the music for free because you’re simply curious, you get put on the guest list for the shows you decide to go to, and you show other people this band because you’re proud of your friends.  But the music then starts to speaks for itself, the fans catch on, and now you’re friends with a good band who is going somewhere.  And now, it weirds you out, because they are your friends, not necessarily rock stars. It’s weird to see the young girls swoon over the guy you’ve seen wipe boogers on his dog when it walked by.  It’s weird to see guys fall in love with your friend, the chanteuse, when you’ve held her hair back as she ralphed because she just got her ass kicked by Jose Cuervo.

They’ll always be your friends, and unless they become millionaires (which in this day and age of music is highly unlikely), they’ll never be rock stars in your eyes.

So what is my point with all this?

My point is that I’m continually discovering the extent to which amateur musicianship is being in a strange pickle.  No matter how talented you are, you need to know how to work the system to get recognition.  That’s understood as one of the sad facts about music and its business.  But the system is self-contradictory.  There’s a paradox in amateur musicianship, in that the only quantifiable merit in the underground is popularity, and popularity can be feigned with the help of friends; but after surmounting the underground and breaching the independent league, there is then merit for obscurity, and for how obliquely an artist is positioned to appear to new fans.

Seriously, what the hell?

But regardless of where you are in the pickle, you’ll always be blindly supported by your close friends whether they like your music or not.  Because they love you, and they realize musicianship is important to you.

Even though the reality of the matter is they don’t give a crap.

Now, I’m not talking about how the music industry refuses to adapt to modern times. That’s a rant for elsewhere, and it has already been done much more eloquently than I could do it.

This is about working for a venue. And having to deal with managers as a booking agent. A lot of venues that have full-time booking agents might prefer dealing with a manager for an artist, but not me. Booking bands isn’t my full-time job. Nor is it anyone else’s at the bar. We are really just a small spot that want to hang out with friends and meet good people, and just want to keep the bar alive by selling drinks. That’s it. We’re more of a community than we are a business. We’re not out to make a killing. We just don’t want to die.

And a lot of bands just don’t seem to get that.

For those of you that don’t work in a bar, my life can be described thus:

Imagine that in your daily life you are pestered at least twice a day from various communication outlets by people you don’t know asking if they can hang out at your hangout. Now, imagine putting in place a filtering system (email? MySpace?) to get people to follow directions so that you can sort out this mess and organize who can hang out and when they should.

Imagine someone representing those people who want to hang out. They are contacting you on the behalf of the people who want to hang out. “I have a group of five kids/prima donnas that want to hang out with you at your bar.” And then imagine them asking to get paid. And then asking for free drinks. And expecting people to want to pay hang out with them. And dropping biiiiig impressive names thinking you actually give a shit. And talking about how many people bought the last CD, how many MySpace friends they have, how many labels are interested in them, and how marketable they are – when in the back of your mind you just want to ask, “Okay… but are they fun to hang out with?”

So I guess my problem is with managers, who these days are pretty much obsolete.

Musicians: YOU DON’T NEED A FUCKING MANAGER. If your phone is ringing off the hook (or cellphone charger?) every hour about your next show, and you have to drop some money because your CD is sold out, or if you are actually signed to a label and you don’t understand legalese, or if people are filling your shows to capacity, you might need a manager. If you have none of these, please be realistic!

It is not a manager’s job to get you a show. It is a manager’s job to organize the shows you are being offered.

It is not a manager’s job to make sure you get money. It is a manager’s job to organize the money you already have coming in.

What I don’t understand is how the word “manager” became essentially “aggressive salesperson.”

And whatever happened to DIY?

In my college band, we were able to sell out all of our t-shirts and stickers, had to make burned copies of our own CD because we ran out all the time, and were able to book a tour through the South-West of the US, and we did this all by ourselves.

Your music should speak for itself. I don’t ever want to see someone hired to speak for your music. Because with a manager, you’re just a number, and less of an artist. You’re a commodity. And your “manager” is shilling you. You’re a cog in a rusty machine. You are SO on the border of SPAM COUNTRY. And our bar has issued an embargo on all goods and services produced in Spam Country.

I hate music business. I hate it I hate it I hate it. ARGH.

AP:OUGE:ALNBEFG:OSDGFQE(*& PUEDBP)*E P(QWUE P(UBWEDFSBDFVERGAKEBSDF sDE!!!!!!!!!!11!!!!!11!!!oneoneone11!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Keep in mind that Taco Trucks are a staple of our cultural identity in Los Angeles — they are not only a cultural artifact, but a social haven for those who may to turn to being miscreants. They create pockets of incidental community on what would otherwise be abandoned streets.

As they are given the reputation of being “roach-coaches” for those of you with hoity-toity tastes in cuisine I realize you may not care. But then that means you don’t know authentic Los Angeles. Moreover, I have known Taco Truck vendors for years now, and I can reassure you that their offerings are not only delectable, and that they are willing to modify their items to be vegetarian (though in some cases not completely vegan), but they are completely sanitary. I’ve eaten at far worse and at a higher price.

If you’re reading this, please sign the taco petition and find a Taco Truck in your area to support them May 1st.

As stated by a nearby co-worker, “think of the taquitos”.

Friday can mostly be attributed to musical at the Pasadena Playhouse that Stuart treated us (us = Fred, Evan, me) to see called Mask, which was originally a 1985 movie. Would I recommend it? Meh. No complex conflicts between any characters or ideas, over-the-top and grandiose songs written exclusively in the major scale, and more so than anything else: cheezy cheezy cheezy. I particularly enjoyed Stuart’s later described train of thought during the opening number: Oh crap. My friends are going to kill me. All in all it was enjoyable escapism, but nothing as intellectually or even emotionally stimulating as what Stuart usually takes us to see at the Playhouse.

Saturday gave me a night at work I’m going to remember for a while, because not only was the music my particular cup of tea, but was another night that helped to restore my faith in underground music in Los Angeles. When only one local band is able to support a bill almost entirely made up of touring acts, and is able to generate enough money at the door so that all five touring bands were able to take some gas money on their way out.

Men of the group Beware of Safety, I raise my goblet to the gods of rock that guide your path. May you slay many a dragon.

For those of you interested in the bands that played that night, or are even just interested in ENORMOUS crescendos, I recommend taking a listen to the following acts:

• Arc of the Aurora (AZ)
• Form and Fate (NorCal)
• Beware of Safety (SoCal)
• North (AZ)
• Hellas Mounds (AZ)
• Empires (MN)

If it helps, all of the guys in these bands are nice people who are also good drinking company.

And yes, there were six bands in our tiny little bar on Saturday. That meant that after cleaning up after the show, dropping my brother off, and then driving back to my apartment, I got to bed around 5 AM. And I wonder how my circadian cycle is always messed up…

Sunday was spent mostly doing catch-up freelance and laundry. The only other thing of note was going out for sushi.

And now the work week is in mid-flight, and this week has been particularly intense. How do I have time to blog? Well, this what I do when I watch progress bars.

10%…. 30%…… 35%……………….

…38%……

…38.6%…

…

…

Screw this, I’m getting a coffee.

Inspired by a recent El Ten Eleven show at the venue in which I was born and raised as a musician, I have picked up writing music on a regular basis again.

While talking with them at their show, the guitarist of El Ten mentioned that he will be putting up a recording studio no less than 5 blocks away from where I work at my day job (and across the street from one incredibly tacky strip club). I realized that with the band that I have just recently established that at the rate we are writing songs, we will have enough music for an E.P. ready by the time the studio is finished with construction. They even are willing to do some pro bono work just to get the word out that that the studio exists. This, as well as watching such a tightly executed El Ten Eleven show, was my first taste of sublime creative motivation.

The second round of motivation is actually more in the form of nostalgia, and it came from working at the bar on Saturday night – the musicians were actually particularly young that night, and about 20% of all of the songs from everyone’s respective sets were covers. I haven’t heard live covers in a long time, and this night was full of them. I mention the covers because this is important; all of the bands I knew in high school implemented at least a couple of covers into their sets. The band I drummed for in high school did covers, too. Covers remind me of a time when music and musicianship was a wider world of wonder, and way before I became phased and jaded by having to work in the music business. There was a weird fascination and legitimacy in recognizing your influences by performing covers when you got the chance, even when you primarily performed songs you wrote yourself. That fascination and legitimacy wanes over the years. You keep maybe one or two covers for the crowd and for possibly encores, but learning lots of covers is markedly something you do as a nascent musician.

But of course, you don’t cover Stairway to Heaven. You just don’t do that. However, you can and are encouraged to cover Freebird.

Now that I’m talking about it, I retrospectively wonder how the hell that many young bands got into our bar. I must consult our booker…

The third wave of motivation came Sunday, where I happened to discover the joy that is amp modeling. For those of you who don’t record music on your computers, imagine this: You plug your guitar into your computer, and a program turns your computer into a guitar amp. A really good sounding amp, too.

Yeah. It’s fuckin’ rad.

More specifically, the AmpliTube by IK Multimedia, which plugs into Ableton Live like a dream, has made my life in recording and songwriting so infinitely easier; I don’t have to set up microphones around my real amp and guitar pedals–and holy fuckin’ a, this thing sounds better than my real amp, who knew?

So I spent Super Bowl Sunday not watching said Super Bowl. And this is not just because I seem to be missing the male genetic predisposition towards sports. It’s because I was having the most fun with music I’ve had in a long, long time.

I think this time I’m going to go for a folk-tronic feel that I’ve seen a lot of people do and I seem to enjoy. I do feel, however, that a lot of local artists make the mistake of somewhat neglecting the electronic components of their compositions (conversely, some pay lots of attention to it and the results are great. See: Zaptra). Um, I guess the best example I think I want to go for is an aesthetic similar to Bright Eyes’s Digital Ash in a Digital Urn. But I dunno, mr. Oberst’s lyrics and songcraft are head and shoulders above anything I can do, so that may be setting the bar a little high.

I’ll post some tracks on this blog when I’ve finished something and we’ll see what that sounds like. Man, how I’ve missed Polyhymnia.