Wednesday night, Ivan and I headed down to Spaceland for Madchester, which kinda-sorta took the place of Club NME. One of the DJs was wearing a Ned's Atomic Dustbin t-shirt. The same DJ played Candyflip's cover of "Strawberry Fields Forever." Ivan didn't know it. I told him it's probably because he's too young to remember. I think I was a lowly high school frosh when that song made its minor impact on pre-Nirvana KROQ and our much-missed Request Video. Ivan can't believe that I'm five years older than him. He thought I was joking when I said that I turn 30 next week. Watching people reel with shock when they find out that you are *that old* makes being *that old* a little more tolerable.
But back to "Strawberry Fields" as covered by Candyflip. I used to close Bang! with that song almost weekly after I randomly came across the 12" for $2. Even the people who didn't know the cover beforehand dug it and that was a good decade after its initial release. Hearing it again made me miss British musical domination. Yeah, I know you can still pick up copies of NME and read all about Pete Doherty and Carl Barat's exploits or tune into BBC online and hear the tunes from Klaxons. Saturday mornings, you can turn on Indie and catch the same on Passport Approved and there is always Rodney on the Roq on Sunday nights. But, it's not the same because My Chemical Romance is still wasting space on the cover of every other magazine this month. And, egads!, have you heard the shit that is in rotation on KROQ? I think my head might explode from a Middle America whinecore overload. Would it kill these guys to pop some phenylphedrine before recording the vocal tracks?
I guess Anglophilia hasn't comepletely gone away. There are bands like The Tender Box, who played Madchester, that are more akin to Kasabian than AFI. It was the band's first hometown gig since touring the U.K. and the place was packed. Since you have probably read about The Tender Box on this blog more times than you can count this year (I'm not even sure how often I saw them play this year), I'll just let you know that the band played like they were on stage at Staples Center. Let's leave it at that.
Last night, I went out for another round of Brit-loving madness with Ms. Penny Pop of The Rockit. Penny never went to Cafe Bleu on account of the fact that she was living on the East Coast during its heyday. She loved the club, though, and was saddened by the notion that this was the last Cafe Bleu party ever. We danced to Style Council, Sly and the Family Stone, Blur and more. We talked about Pulp lyrics and watched the Cafe Bleu supergroup (featuring members of The Pacific and The Tender Box as well as Clifton, formerly of The Mojo Filters and now a DJ at the Beauty Bar on Tuesdays, amongst others) perform the club's standards. Joey of The Tender Box nailed "Laid" and "Disco 2000" and Curt from The Pacific did a great job with "Vapour Trail." Oddly enough, even though I have seen The Pacific before (only once, I think), I didn't realize until last night that I knew Curt from my KXLU days, when he played with an armload of South Bay indie bands and sold me records at Off/Beat (RIP). Random.
We stayed until last call, beating the rush out the door by only a few minutes, and ran into just about everyone, including PDP contributor and Rockit writer Robert and Rodney Bingenheimer.

I should tell you all to get the new issue of Razorcake. I wrote a piece entitled "Sunburns and Lemonade." It's about the adventures that Megan and I had this past sunburn. I mean summer. We got really sunburn. Megan says the story is "hysterical." I say her photo is freakin' awesome. Check it out.

BTW, we're collaborating on another Razorcake piece that is due this weekend and will, therefore, be out in January.

I now know where the former Parlour crowd now hangs, Part Time Punks. Last night was my first time at Part Time Punks, which might come as a shock to any hipster readers we have unless you know me well enough to know that A) Most of my nights out involve work, which means that I'm almost always found in places that look like AFI video auditions and B) When I do go out just for fun, it's either Underground or something involving internationally renowned DJs. And in keeping with That Which Is Liz's Life, I was actually at Part Time Punks for purposes of work. Specifically, I was there to interview Tussle, which I did roughly three hours before the band hit the stage. Tussle had encouraged me to stick around between the interview and the show so that I could see openers Lemonade. Naturally, I obliged because A) I had grabbed the elusive parking spot in front of the club; B) What else would I do? Hang out at The Shortstop?; and C) Considering that I like Tussle and we share a common interest in Captain Ahab and Anavan, I'm inclined to trust their judgement.
Now, I am here to urge you to go see Lemonade. The songs posted on MySpace aren't much of an indicator of the live show. Said MySpace page also offers very little information about the band, so I can't tell you who is who or anything like that. I can tell you that the singer seems like he would be a cool guy. During Tussle's soundcheck, he grabbed an oversized maraca and started shaking it as he slid around the unusually un-grungy Echo floor. During his own set, he came out onstage in a Roadrunner t-shirt and Day of the Dead mask and bounced around as he twiddled some buttons that distorted his voice. After he took off his mask, we could see a Cheshire Cat grin that remained in place for the rest of the show. Smiling onstage is always a plus. The sound is probably best described as noise rock-meets-techno. There were some flat out raver moments on stage, which were augmented by the space alien vocals.
As for Tussle, even the geekiest of my music geek friends (sorry, guys, it's really something none of us can deny) claim that they haven't heard the band. Trainspot some more, friends, because I have seen you headbob and perhaps even dance to this back in the Parlour days of yore. So, this weekend, I kept asking friends if they wanted to go (apparently, everyone was busy) and was consistently answered with "What does it sound like?" I had to state the oh-so-trite explanation, "I guess it's like !!! without vocals." Actually, Tussle is a little more Krautrockish than the bulk of dance rock outfits and that seems evident in the newest material, which the band played last night. (Even though they just released a new album, the shows are now focused on currently unreleased material.) The two drummers play in sync to complement each other and the guitars and other noises lend a rough, metallic edge to the music. Heavy, yet soulful is what I think the kids might say.