896 and Counting
Walter Meego and company at the Viper Room
Disclaimer: I am old. Somewhere between 25 and 40, but like 894 in Viper Room years. So rolling up to Hell Ya! night at Viper Room to see Walter Meego, I prepared myself for feeling like someone’s (very-somewhat-cool-yet-out-of-place) aunt.
First of all, Colin Yarck: You little minx. The way the Walter Meego keyboard/computer impresario makes love to the dance floor with nothing in front of him but a Mac notebook is startling. No one else in the room was dancing, but you, sir, had Bunsen burners under your toes, stealing all the thunder from vocalist Justin Sconza, who was ruggedly-handsome-in-a-Keanu-Reeves/Lou-Diamond-Phillips-way (but rugged). Did I just drop the Diamond Phillips? Ay La Bamba, I did. I think I just turned 895.
Sconza is the straight man to the flamboyantly electronica’d-out Yarck and his cyber waltz, layering lush vocals over the somewhat harsh beats, derivative of Daft Punk but minus the melody. The classically trained pianist tickled the keys enough, I suppose, but there was no Chopin, no Tchaikovsky. But you have to know the rules to break ’em. The main one he broke was showing up in a flannel and leather moccasin slippers. Seriously. Even Jackson Browne wears shoes.
What I didn’t hear was the quirky Incredible Moses Leroy-like tunes from the band’s newest release, Voyager. Maybe they just pumped up the jams for the stage show, but I missed the emphasis on the Xanadu-era ELO that I heard before in “Girls.” I was not so fond of the techno dance party before me. The reverb rolled through the floor, girls in latex pants and tube socks danced without a smidge of irony. I turned 896.
A British boy fresh off the boat once told me guitar was dead, that no one listened to rock music anymore. No one! That cheeky lad went on to discover the Beatles in America, so those words seem a little hollow now. But looking around the Viper Room, I saw his point. Walter Meego barely touches a guitar, and when they do it seems more for posturing than any sort of artistic element. There were no shared I-love-this-song glances between girls mopping the dance floor with their sweaty tresses, just self-involved chatterers with feathers in their hair and Stellas Artois in their grips.
But then it was Plushgun time. Plushgun, for those who have never seen Plushgun – likely most of you since this was the band’s first time performing in Los Angeles – are from Brooklyn. And at first I thought, this guy, lead singer Dan Ingala, is no Mick Jagger.
I stood corrected. He’d never played a tambourine in public before. That did not stop him. He has no fashion sense whatsoever. That, too, did not deter. He had drive and a deep need to get people moving their asses, even offering up a T-shirt for a dance-off during songs like “How We Roll” and “Just Impolite,” in which he walks the line like Johnny Cash. If it wasn’t already his shirt, he would have walked away a winner.
After five minutes of tambourine tangents, he let the crowd in on his virginal cymbal status. “You rock it!” some equally girly guy yelled.
“Yeah, I do rock it,” he said with absolute aplomb. His voice? A bit like a Geddy Lee-Mark Almond lovechild mixed with Debbie Harry sass. God bless the gays. And if they’re not gay they should be. They’d rock West Hollywood.
Published: 04/09/2008
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