Earlier in the night at Underground, I hopped about the dancefloor with my brother and Annie, Dave and Drew to "Charmless Man," a Blur classic that you don't hear too often at the clubs these days. It felt very Old School.
Old School is in a constant state of flux. When I started clubbing in the mid-1990s, Old School meant that you went to Scream or Marilyn's or even Helter Skelter when it was in Little Tokyo. Now my friends and I are considered Old School as most of us went to Helter Skelter (although this was when it was at The Probe, which was the autumn of the club's life), Stigmata, Perversion (when The Ruby was still known as Diamond Club) and even Coven 13, Cafe Bleu and Shout!, which came after the first three clubs I mentioned. We were at Bang! on opening night and were at Beat It when the club was struggling to find a crowd.
My friend Sean asked where the crowd went. The sad thing is, I can name several people from our crowd who aren't even in the state anymore. Paul the ex-GGBW moved to Texas with Kris, his wife, who was also part of our smoking patio crew. ("Denton!" said Sean. Yeah, I think all of us had the same reaction.) Club friends-turned-roommates Jamie and Jen headed off for Nashville. Minidress Melissa is in Denver. Erika made a few-year pit stop in San Diego before heading out to Arizona. We miss our friends.
Earlier in the conversation, our friend Eric said that people want us to make the distinction between club friends and real world friends. We agreed that there really isn't one. Just because we might generally see certain people in one particular setting doesn't mean that the relationship is more shallow. I thought about this car accident I had five years ago. It was a nasty car accident, leaving me to look like a still-ripening plum. Plus, it rendered me carless, which is actually worse for an LA native than looking ugly. In the six months that it took for me to settle the insurance claim and get a new set of wheels, Paul the ex-GGBW and Tim took me everywhere. On one night, Paul was running late, so Tim picked me up and took me to Beat It, even though he couldn't even stay at the club. That's what friends do, even if the only reason that the friends came together is because of a certain club.
These songs are for my "club friends."

Blur "Popscene" (Live at Peel Acres)

Blur "M.O.R." (Live at Peel Acres)

Back when my friends and I actually weren't Old School, Blur stood side-by-side with Pulp as the two bands that would be played no fewer than four times a piece during the span of the night. Can you believe that there was a time when you could dance to Blur songs that weren't "Girls and Boys" or "Song 2?" Yeah, I know, it's difficult to imagine now, but "Popscene" and "M.O.R." were quite the hits at one point.
These are live versions taken from the CD Bustin' + Dronin'. I'd tell you about the recordings, but the liner notes are written in Japanese.
This CD was a limited edition release in 1998. Disc One features remixes from the likes of William Orbit, Moby and other top producers of the late-1990s. Disc Two is live. I randomly came across it at Second Spin in Sherman Oaks sometime around 2000 and couldn't resist the urge to add it to my collection. Used copies are available on Amazon and the prices are reasonable.

Is anyone having problems seeing the archive and post at the bottom of the page or is it just me?

Mylo v. Scissor Sisters "Drop the Numb" (Brumland White Label Mix)
(Song Removed)

This track is an absolute no-fail dancefloor monstrosity. I have no idea as to its origins (honestly, I'm not much of a trainspotter), but every time I play it the floor overflows with sweaty people. Then a few of the sweaty people will come up to the booth and drip a little on the floor, but, fortunately not on the gear, and ask me what it is. Then they ask where they can get it and I just have to say, "Keep searching and ye shall find," or something like that. It's not that I'm being all secretive or anything, it's just that I haven't come across a vinyl copy yet, but then, it's been about two months since I've been to Amoeba. (I know, it's horribly sad, but graduate school does that to people.)

The Cinespace back room hosted a strange night of independent music last week on May 30. That night, jass-funk-hip-hop hybrid Free Moral Agents shared the stage with the eclectically-convoluted (that should damage a few brain cells) underground hip-hop star Busdriver.



Free Moral Agents is NOT Ikey Owens (The Mars Volta, Sublime) side project. "I don't do side projects" he clarifies.

FMA is his own personal effort come to life with the help of Jeff Harris, Mendee Ichikawa and J. The debut album, "Everybody's Favorite Weapon," was released 2 summers ago through Gold Standard Laboratories, a label run by fellow musician Omar A. Rodriguez-Lopez (The Mars Volta).

The hour-long set consisted of tracks from the album and a small handful of new tracks the group has been working on.

Busdriver worked the crowd with old favorites along with debuting new songs from his upcoming album to be released on Epitaph Records. The album is being produced by Nobody and Boom Bip.



Sadly, the L.A. artist has a larger fanbase in places like Vancouver. Fuck's up with that?!

Finally, no show/party entry is complete without a few crowd photos (especially since I name-dropped this website all night).



Krello!



My friend Kenny with Promoter/DJ Jason Stewart. Spins great old-skool rap with 80s tunes.



Haha!



Someone left a window open and a scenester-bumblebee flew in.



You'd be smiling too if you had a drink in hand.



An attempt at "throwing a sign while holding a drink" gone awry!



The "cute non-chalant smirk" is the next big thing!



Told you so!



There's a program now out that allows DJ's to spin MP3's off their laptops and manipulate them with blank vinyl on turntables. Very convenient.



Dim Mak Records founder Steve Aoki crowd-surfing in the front room. Who says hipsters can't have fun?



Cute couple.



Skeet skeet!



Paul Chang of URB Magazine and Luke Mulderink of Dim Mak Records.



Fito wearing Club Bang stripes.



I've got a soft spot for short, sassy girls like her.



Closing out the night.



Beneath that evil grin, he's actually very friendly.



The tall man in black on the left is Keith of Club Moskow fame (seen here promoting a new party night at The Hear Gallery).



Ca-ca-call me. I get busy!



Nothing relaxes one's feet after a night of dancing like leaning up against a taxi.



Aoki rides a bike to work because he cares about the environment...or maybe because the Dim Mak base of operations is on Cahuenga & Fountain, a hop-skip-and-jump away from Cinespace on Hollywood & Ivar.

My sister was pissed that she heard about this through a reference on a survey I posted on My Space. I could have sworn I told her. Anyhow, I'm editing The Rockit as of yesterday or the day before. Can't really remember. I'm working on my first issue, which streets in July. A journalism professor told me that I would make a good editor someday because I'm really neurotic and, y'know, all of that Type A goodness. I guess we will find out in July.

Last night, for the first time in my life, I felt like Marilyn Munster. Marilyn Freakin' Munster. I'm not even blonde and I have never worn one of those prim 1950s/early-1960s frocks. But, even if your hair is black and your shoes are pointy and trimmed in metal, you too can feel like the most normal person on the planet while attending a concert dubbed "Tribute to Evil" that also served as the El Vez-officiated nuptials for Stanton and Szandora Lavey .
My black pants, burgundy top and oversized, gun-metal gray purse (filled with reporting tools) were no match for the legions of folks young and old dressed as urban primitives, fetish models and other assorted creatures of the night (yes, some were wearing monster make-up). There were tons of Resplendent Dudes in attendance, complete with pentagram vests and untamed, blonde hair. Those who went casual showed up in a diverse array of band t-shirts ranging from Misfits to Samhain to Danzig (okay, exaggeration, I saw a few Slayer shirts, one Suicidal Tendencies baseball jersey, a torn GG Allin top and, gag!, a Skrewdriver t-shirt). Megan said I was the rebel for wearing red. I noticed that we were both wearing cross jewelry, perhaps because we always do or perhaps because we were subconsciously covering our bases just in case the rapture happened while attending the wedding of Anton Lavey's grandson.
I'm not sure, but I think the whole thing was intended to be ridiculous. I mean, people couldn't regularly end each sentence with "Hail Satan!" and a two-fingered wave lifted from Ronnie James Dio's grandma. Right?
Megan had introduced me to a friend of hers and he started talking about Skinny Puppy. I said that I loved Skinny Puppy because when I was 14 and first saw "The Killing Game" video, it gave me nightmares. The guy hi-fived me. Turns out he's a special effects make-up artist who did the video, as well as a bunch of the band's tour work. Here's the video so that you can understand Skinny Puppy's true creepiness.
Oh, btw, in case you were wondering, Glenn Danzig kicks serious ass. So does Hank III.

First of all, you really must attend both of these shows in the coming weeks. You will feel like a huge poseur dork if you don't. Okay, maybe not, but, seriously, you don't get line-ups like these in LA very often.



Now that it's 6/6/6, I have a special song for you.

Spell "Lullaby Pt. 1 (Theme from Rosemary's Baby)"
(Song Removed)

This is from Seasons in the Sun, the cover album done by noisemaker Boyd Rice and Rose McDowall, who is probably best known as half of Strawberry Switchblade. It's an album filled with the eeriest renditions of AM pop diddies you will ever hear and this number is probably the most nightmare inducing. Plus, you know, Rosemary had the devil's kid and all.

This album was never easy to find. Oddly enough, I came across it at the Tower Records in Marina del Rey, back when I was living on campus at LMU and we spent virtually every evening combing mini-malls for food that tasted better than cafeteria crap. You can score a copy on Amazon, but the prices are pretty steep. My suggestion is to check your local indie record stores (if you're in LA, I recommend Vinyl Fetish) and see if you can get one.

I started going to the clubs because of the music. However, since I am a horrible liar, I must admit that part of me hoped that I could find love, or at least a date, on the dancefloor. I couldn't have worse luck in the clubs than at school, right?
Maybe some girls, perhaps even some of my friends, have had success in the club dating department. Not me. For the most part, the guys I thought were hot were either gay or musicians. Oddly enough, I had better luck with the former. ("Oh, Liz, it's your birthday and no one has kissed you? I'll fix that.")
Then there were the guys who actually showed some interest in me. I would rather spend six month stretches of crying myself to sleep over an unrequited love than waste half a conversation with any of these douchebags. Here are some of the highlights.

• The guy who looked like Long Duck Dong's European-American counterpart, who hit on Estelle and then approached me with the line, "So, since your friend won't talk to me, I guess it's your turn."
  
• The guy whose invitation for a date I accepted only because the pity party in my head grew so loud that I couldn't say no. He hung out in my dorm, spent the whole night talking about his ex-girlfriend, didn't even take me anywhere and actually had the audacity to think that I might put out.
• The slew of guys who claim that they're "feminists" because they love Sleater-Kinney and, because of this, refuse to ever hold a door open (even when you are holding something like, for example, a record crate), pay for a date or do anything else that might be considered polite because they "believe in equality." Really, it's just because they are cheap and rude.
• The guy who tried to look up my skirt and then, after I kicked him, tried to give me a dollar for it.
• The guy who said, "How 'bout you take me back to my hotel and we fuck." Seriously, this guy didn't even say, "Hi, how are you? My name is..."
• The guy with orange Dallas Raines sort of skin who wrote some book and, when I lied and told him that I had a boyfriend, said "I'm sure your boyfriend won't mind if you go home with a quasi-celebrity."

I ended up meeting my boyfriend at the college radio station. We went to school together, but because of our common interest, there was also a club connection. This too can pose problems, particularly when you breakup for a year. Fortunately, when you are a DJ, you can work out all of your club drama with songs. However, there are complications here as well. My first story for Ruined Music is about this sort of situation.
I'm going to assume that everyone knows the first two songs of the set. As such, I am only posting the third selection here.

Kon Kan "I Beg Your Pardon (I Never Promised You a Rose Garden)"
(Song Removed)

You can find copies of the CD, mostly used, on Amazon.
Here's a Wikipedia entry on the band.
Dance music junkies will note that Kon Kan's Barry Harris is perhaps best known as part of Thunderpuss.

Lifestyle "My Favorite Song"
(Song Removed)

Sometime towards the end of 2001 (roughly), I met this guy going by the name of Rock Stone on one of those Yahoo Music Chatboards that I used to frequent before I got annoyed with people wasting 100+ post threads on repeated debates over what constitutes a song as electro. Rock was in this band called Lifestyle, based out of Boston and connected to Freezepop, and asked if he could send me a CD. I said, of course.
Although I absolutely love receiving and listening to new music, most of the stuff that is sent to me by bands doesn't ever get played in a club. This is because, more often than not, when a band contacts me itself, it is with a demo-quality CD (even if it's actually released either by the band itself or a smaller indie label), meaning that, even if the songwriting is stellar, the production doesn't lend itself to play over club systems, where everything must sound big and clean. (Radio, on the other hand, is a completely different story). So, I do my best to keep in touch with the bands with the hope that a new, club-appropriate version will surface.
I thought that such a scenario might be the case with Lifestyle, but it wasn't. The band sent me a copy of the 2001 CD release Frontier, which was released through The Archenemy Record Company. I popped the disc into my CD player and the album's first track, "My Favorite Song," instantly became *my* favorite song. I thought this song to be perfect synthpop more in the Duran Duran fashion than the more prevalent Depeche Mode, um, mode. This was the sort of song that could fit in with the still-popular Britpop bands, Pulp in particular, and then-current hits from Bis and Ladytron.
But then a new problem presented itself. Playing new music in rock-oriented clubs is no easy task. (Long, rambling diversion from the point to follow.) As a DJ, your major task is to keep the dancefloor packed and you keep that crowd moving through song selection, not beatmatching. It's not always appropriate to beatmatch at rock clubs. There are several reason for this, but the big one is that in rock-based music, whether or not it has electronic elements in it, there is no uniformity to the rhythm. With techno and house, you're basically dealing with a limited range of beats per minute, which varies depending on the sub-genre your playing. For example, if I play an electro-techno set, most of the music is going to fall somewhere between 125 and 135 bpm. With rock-oriented music, the beats can be as slow as 90 bpm or as fast at 145 bpm. Additionally, the crowd at rock-oriented clubs tends to prefer hearing/dancing to songs in the form closest to the album version, so, if you're going to play a remix, which can lend to more consistency in the beats, it tends to be something that keeps the major points of the original song in tact adding, perhaps, longer (hence, easier to mix) intros, outros and bridges. With that in mind, the biggest difference between techno/house-based clubs and rock-based clubs is that, at the latter, your crowd is dancing to the song, not the beat.
Let's get back to the whole introducing a new song thing, though. When you play a new song, particularly if that song is by a band that most people in your city won't know, you're taking a huge risk of clearing the floor. So, when you play a new song, you have to cover your ass. The song before New Song should be a major hit. This ensures that you have the maximum amount of people on the dancefloor. Also, people might be so high off the Big Hit that they will continue dancing despite having never heard the song that follows. New Song must then be followed by a hit that is at least as massive as the first track, as to ensure that people will return to the floor should New Song tank. This is definitely the biggest gamble you will make if you DJ at a rock club. Sometimes, the songs that you are convinced will be major hits tank so bad that you will refuse to ever play them again. Other times, songs will tank, but you will remain convinced of their hit factor and play them week after week until the songs become the club hits of the year.
In this instance, I played New Song after "Just Can't Get Enough." Depeche Mode songs are almost always floorpackers at LA clubs, but this is the classic, the band's "Blue Monday." After fading up "My Favorite Song," I immediately cued "Common People," which was, essentially, Pulp's "Blue Monday." Between those two hits, the floor remained packed. Lifestyle was actually working. I was shocked. Even Ladytron's "Playgirl" didn't hit until playing it for a month straight. "My Favorite Song" became a staple of my sets for a year or two, never once failing to make people dance. I'm not sure if that ever did anything for the band, but I really hope that there were at a least a few folks in Los Angeles who ended up contacting the Boston band based on this song.
I lost touch with Lifestyle after Rock, my contact, left the group. This CD, according to the website, is out of stock. However, it's still listed in Archenemy's catalogue, so you might be able to order a copy.

Even though I don't work for them anymore, I still browse the Vans website. While looking at the new stock of slip-ons, I saw this:

Slip-ons with the Mod bull's-eye!! Now, I don't know if ALL locations will carry these, but it couldn't hurt to check. If they don't, ask to do an online order. You can try on a pair to see how they fit, then order them online. Also, if you order from the store online, you don't pay for shipping and handling, but don't let anyone know I told you that.