One of Us, Gooble-Gobble
By Ron Garmon
ANOTHER WEEK, ANOTHER FREAKSHOW
Yes, the L.A. branch office of Clubland is full to the transom with the startlingly malformed, but I speak instead of the decidedly non-metaphorical human anomalies crowding the stage at Smashlabs last week. Out on a Monday night toot with Dance Commander and her pretty-boy retinue, we arrived at the underground venue (hidden inside yet another anonymous span of brick-and-barbed-wire in downtown’s warehouse jungle) with the first trickle of hipsters and a band busily sawing away at some Bonzo Dogs-style retro-wheeze. The whole boast of 999 Eyes is that they’re “the last genuine traveling freakshow in the United States,” traveling with clowns and musicians as well as a retinue of glamorized oddities like Black Scorpion, a standup comedian with lobster claws for hands and human tripod Jackie ov All Trades, who sidelines as a singer-songwriter when not karate-chopping flaming blocks of wood in half. The genetic-oddity end of showbiz was in low repute by the 1960s, but its revival seems to have been awaiting the kind of unashamed, good-humored bawdiness we were treated to. Frank self-exploitation being always preferable to PC condescension, this Austin gypsy troupe went after every gag, setup, and scrap of weird tune (including the instructive moral ditty “Blow That Rusty Trombone”) with overamped gusto. 999 Eyes tours the Southland like an oldtimey vaudeville act, so keep up with these science-baffling entertainers at 999eyes.com
WHAT I ENDURE FOR ART
Why he was there at all was mysterious, but the guy in my face was an eyebrow shorter than me and sported a forlorn 27-hair moustache. That he was off-his-ass drunk was plain from his slitted, squashed-raisin eyeballs even before the mouth started to billow a dense cloud of reactor-grade scotch. His slurred, indistinct words were audible over midevening Friday traffic at the corner of Santa Monica and Western. Even so, I wasn’t all that concerned he’d fail to hear me when I took a quarter-step closer and smiled diffidently, murmuring in baby-soft tones, “Gee, I’d sure like it if you’d cart your fucked-up ass away from me.” He staggered the obligatory 30 feet away before taking out his wounded machismo in fuck-you-faggot abuse. I knew then I was safe from harm and remained easy in mind until the Metro dropped me off at The Echoplex some few minutes later. Inside, Portland’s Experimental Dental School was going off trippily, their wackadoo noise-pop diverting a crowd that looked like a vastly swollen haul of the cheery art-geeks who hang at The Smell or Echo Curio. They shut down too soon, but someone’s gorgeous remix of Beefheart’s “Bat Chain Puller” welled from the PA as I pushed to the front of a furnace-like room. Some solarized old Wheeler & Woolsey movie flickered in the background as a minimal wait preceded Deerhoof. Though Satomi Matsuzaki’s vocals put me a little in mind of Sandy Dedrick of 1960s soft-pop virtuosi The Free Design, it’s safe to say Deerhoof’s music is like no one else’s going in this derivative decade. They alternate skronk meltdowns with pop of the most gentle and caressing textures, with antic experimentations jostling in the mix for earhole attention. By the time the S.F. quartet began hurling big handfuls of this tonal powdered sugar around the room, the crowd was all hushed attentiveness and my recent urge to split some moron’s skull quite forgotten. After three songs, I faded to the back for the rest of the show, where a kindly security guard retrieved my weedpipe for me after I’d carelessly dropped it. These days, the milk of human kindness is wherever you find it.
AS SOCAL BURNS
Though a largish swatch of the Southern Cali horizon was on fire early Sunday morning, the catastrophe little hindered LAPD’s finding and closing down the Plump party a little after midnight. These Blue Meanies had shut down five other gatherings that night and looked to be having a blast when I arrived to find them milling around the entrance to the temporary venue, an unprepossessing warehouse near USC. One even praised my mad gate-crashing skillz before lobbing me back on the sidewalk. The full story is at projectalma.org and the underground party circuit will rise again, men with guns permitting.
ON THE INSTALLMENT PLAN
The good news, according to Nancy Sefton, is that all-around mensch Safari Sam Lanni has paid a thousand bux of the $6,680 he owes The Dog & Pony Show cancer benefit staged at Safari Sam’s last Labor Day weekend. I was at Burning Man when this marathon came off, but the event was so successful (and need for succoring cancer-wracked musicians so great) that D&P ramrod Dave Alvin is thinking about making this roots-rock extravaganza a yearly thang. The bad news is over five-and-a-half thousand of promised gate money is still outstanding and the worse news is that Duane Jarvis, guitarist extraordinaire and one of the four objects of D&P’s charitable intentions, is in hospital in the U.K. recovering from surgery. Jarvis has been on tour with Michelle Shocked and his friends ask you to remember him in whatever prayers you make.
Published: 11/19/2008
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