This week, two L.A. bands will be playing in New York City. I do hope that some of you reading this can check out some of the shows scheduled.

The Temporary Thing features my old college buddy Devin on bass. I pointedly asked him if he was in need of groupies and, since he answered YES, I am listing the band's next few gigs.

Friday, August 26th @ Delancey

Saturday, August 27th @ Pete's Candy Store

We mention the Mojo Filters here a lot because they are nice and they make good music. Here are the upcoming dates.

Wednesday, August 24th @ The Scenic
25 Ave B. New York, NY 10009
Between 2nd and 3rd Street
www.scenicnyc.com

Saturday, August 27th Club Tiswas @ Don Hill's
511 Greenwich @ Spring Street, New York, NY
www.tiswasnyc.com

Monday, August 29th @ Pianos
158 Ludlow St. New York, NY10002
www.pianosnyc.com

We know that there are more and more people reading and bookmarking this here page, but since it's pretty rare that anyone outside of our friends comment, we don't know who you are. If anyone wants to say hi, send a link to your own blog, blah blah blah, email me at lizziegolightly@gmail.com I know that there is a link to another address here, but I'm having problems actually reading email from that one.

If you are an Anglophile (and, chances are, if you live in L.A., you are to some extent), you might want to check out the latest issue of Under the Radar, which documents the rise and fall of Brit Pop with interviews from members of Charlatans, Blur, Pulp, Elastica. Y'know, the biggies.
The magazine noted Elastica's sophomore effort, The Menace, as one of a number of Brit Pop albums that sort of fell flat, more or less indicating that the era ended. Yeah, The Menace did not do well, to say the least, but it is an album that I hold dear five years after the fact.
When Elastica's debut made its way to the U.S., I was a seventeen-year-old Valley girl, a high school journalist and zine-maker who could probably pass for Justine Frischmann's kid sister. When The Menace hit, I was twenty-three, living in the Valley again. I was a year out of college and had just quit my first real job as the assistant to a record industry exec to DJ most nights of the week and work part-time in a publicity firm. Needless to say, a lot of time passed between the two albums and Elastica's members had probably gone through as many, if not more, life changes than I had.
Maybe time was the real problem with Elastica. With a five year gap between two albums, it was natural for people to forget about Elastica. In order to make a full "comeback" it was necessary for the band to release an album that was similar enough to the debut to evoke a sense of familiarity, but something that spoke specifically for the year in which it was made. Essentially, the band would have to pull a Kylie.
Elastica did not do that. Instead, Frischmann and the gang recorded an album that was ahead of the crowd by miles. In 2004 and 2005, years after The Menace was released, there is little perceived to be cooler than heading to the Smell and checking out a line-up of synth-punk bands. Synth-punk is the predominant sound of The Menace, but Elastica accomplished this with far more finesse than the average band, incorporating the energetic pogo-stomp of "Mad Dog God Dam" and "How He Wrote Elastica Man" (the latter being a joint effort with the Fall's Mark E. Smith and a staple of my DJ sets at the time) with the smooth, lo-fi Spector-pop of "Nothing Stays the Same" and non-songs like the ambient instrumental piece "Miami Nice." Elastica pulled together a collection that kept the rawness of the debut with all the electronic mayhem of nights spent listening to Aphex Twin and Squarepusher. (Did Justine listen to the Warp gang when she wrote the album? )
Maybe five years from now, synth-punk will become a household word and maybe one of the bands who gets big will cite The Menace as an influence. In the meantime, keep looking in those used bins because you want it before the Elastica revival hits and the price quadruples.

Earlier this evening, after resigning myself to a night of staying in, I received a call from my friend Demi wondering if I wanted to go to Incahoots with her. For those not in the Inland Empire, Incahoots is a bar in Riverside that on Tuesday nights plays a mix of 80s pop, punk, indie, electro, and modern dance-rock. The night has been going on for about two years, but due to one mislaid plan or another I never made it out until last week. Having had fun last time, I told Demi that I would not only go, but that I would drive. We got there around 11 and got in immediately due to our cutting in line, then proceeded to order the first round of amaretto sours, which to our delight were only $1 each. The club's sound system is pretty good, but only when you're on the dancefloor. DJ troupe Mantastique don't mix, but for some reason still feel the need to pitch certain songs way up. The songs they played were either great or horrible, with very little in between. I'm sorry, but "Get the Balance Right" has a nice beat, when it has a beat. (Okay, so that wasn't played this time, but still refects on them as djs.) Regardless of that, it is one of the few places in the IE where one can go dance to something that isn't hiphop, salsa, or deep house. As a result, I ended up running into many people I knew, some from high school, some from college, a former coworker, and some I've just seen around. This also marked my first face-to-face encounter with the PDP's own Balthazar Monsoon.
Being Riverside, about 10% of the club consisted of bros, which is actually a pretty good ratio out here. Bros and bro-hoes tend to go solely for the cheap drinks, so they aren't too much of a bother outside of the bar. Tonight, a couple of them got into a fistfight which meant there were two less lifted trucks in the parking lot.
Aside from my nitpicking, however, the place is decent enough. It's the only night like this around, and it feels good knowing that once you've left the club, gone to eat, dropped off your friends, and made it home, the sun still hasn't come up like it does when going out in LA. I still plan to leave the IE for a place with more... entertainment options (cheap euphemism for scene reasons), but in the meantime, this place works. Thank you Demi and Shiva, for deciding to call me tonight.
I almost forgot: got a flyer on the way out and saw that PDP-approved Winston and the Telescreen are playing there on the 30th.

Every now and again, I make the attempt to listen to KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic. Every single time I listen, I drift into the sort of light slumber that feels like an allergy pill side-effect.
I do not understand how Nic Harcourt accomplishes this, but I imagine that in his hands even "Ace of Spades" could be soporific. This morning, I listened for about an hour as my head consistently dropped into my textbook. I had to pry my eyes open. When I rose from a half-sleep, I could only remember two songs-- the latest alt. hit from the White Stripes and a new track from Catherine Wheel-frontman Rob Dickinson. The rest was a blur of background music culled from the Starbucks catalogue.
Maybe it's not Harcourt's fault. After all, the show was a snooze fest when Chris Douridas was the host. It isn't that the music is bad. On the contrary, I might actually write down the names of a few artists if I could remember what was what by the time he does his airbreak. Overall, though, MBE seems to be this long winding road of sound geared towards yuppies who shop at American Apparel and actually read the editorials in the LA Weekly. Maybe the tepid sounds are compiled to create a non-offensive environment in the office, but shouldn't that be the job of KOST, KBIG and STAR?
To an extent, I like MBE, if only for the reason that some of the live guests are interesting (take Royksopp a few weeks ago). And, I really do appreciate KCRW. I just do not understand why, when I listen to a show like Metropolis I have to sit upright and listen intently as Jason Bentley consistently turns me on to great new music while MBE leaves me feeling lethargic.

Two years ago, I entered this funk that was the mother of all "I'm just a cold dark candle in the cruel white world" sort of teenage Live Journal goth pits of doom. If I harbored any sort of fondness for black lipstick and Anne Rice novels, I might have been able to turn into some sort of joke, but I've never really liked the former and latter always bored me. So, I stopped wearing make-up, stopped going to clubs, stopped talking to most of the people I knew. I even stopped listening to music.
To be specific, I stopped listening to most anything that resembled the classic pop song structure. I still listened to dance music, but that was mostly because of the therapeutic nature of jumping up and down on a four-count to a 136 bpm Vitalic track. I could go to clubs where the DJs played house or techno or sometimes even hip-hop, because I could lose myself on the dancefloor without ever realizing what song was on the decks. Plus, there was little, if any, chance of running into someone I knew. Nobody would ask me why I hadn't been to any of the indie clubs lately and, therefore, I would never have to mention things that I did not wish to discuss.
After I started grad school last year, though, the world started to look a little less like a Nine Inch Nails song. I took baby steps. I went to Underground once with Melissa and we had a good time. I went back a few more times and realized, "Hey, I'm having fun." I went to see the Trash Can Sinatras with Mr. Monsoon (who has hooked me up with such good music lately that he is permanently on the list) and we sang along to most of the set. After that, I started going to more and more shows, everything from Basement Jaxx and Royksopp to local line-ups in Silverlake. Carlos and I went to more, for lack of a better term, techno events and I didn't just dance, I outdanced every single one of my far healthier friends. Then I realized that Tower Records has most of the "indie" cds marked down to $12.99 and less, so I started buying albums that I would not have purchased a year before. Now I'm cleaning in time to Kasabian, reading McChesney while listening to Spoon (thanks for the tip, Mary) and bobbing my head along to Hot Hot Heat and the Kaiser Chiefs in the car. I'm feeling every beat and hearing every word, something that I thought I would never do again.