Feed Us A Live Insect

The doorways are low at Tangier, but who cares

We were extremely delighted and fortunate to play last night at LA Underground's Holiday Extravaganza at Tangier with our friends Sweet Hurt, The Exfriends, and Castledoor--stars, all of 'em, I tell you, stars! Stars! Each turned in a stellar (ha ha!) performance and is destined for great things, I think. We (ie, The Weak Link In The Chain) even managed one of our better sets, despite a great nervousness that caused us to careen through our songs at about nine thousand times normal speed. But even so, it was fine, and if nothing else I got to wear my wonderful new white Elvis-esque mod motorcycle jacket that makes me look like...er, well not like Elvis per se, maybe more like someone who was an extra in The Wild One but got left on the cutting room floor because of being "too not-even-remotely-tough-looking."

First up was Wendy Wang's band, The Sweet Hurt...I've mentioned Wendy before because she's played keyboards with us in the past (and I think she'll be sitting in with us at The Cocaine this Sunday?), but this is her own band, and oh my goodness they're wonderful. I've seen several of her shows in the past and they've been more in the acoustic singer-songwriter vein, and this time she had a rawk band and played a rawk set and it was a revelation. You HAVE to go to their myspace page RIGHT NOW and listen to "Miss Misery.". I'm telling you, this song is a HIT, and Wendy's voice is glorious. There is no reason on earth why The Sweet Hurt shouldn't be absolutely huge, and I think they will be. Yay Sweet Hurt!

Then we played and sweated quite a lot. Andy and Mary were stupendous! I am just glad that I didn't have diarrhea like I did the night before the show, as I was wearing white pants that were kinda see-through. I am happy to report that we (that is, my pants and I) made it through the night okay! Whew!

After us was The Exfriends from San Diego who, um, kinda toasted us, musicality-wise. If you don't know them, they're a kind of indie country punk band, featuring Matt Curreri's superduper sweet-ass amazing songwriting skills (and scarf) and some really really astonishingly tight bandmates who can basically play anything, as far as I can tell. They've got this song that I adore called "Barbara Sands" that...hmmm...isn't up on their myspace page at the moment, but I'm sure it will rotate through if you keep checking back. Again, here is a band with a great, unusual sound (unusual in Silverlake, anyway) that I think will accomplish a great deal in the coming years. Yay Exfriends!

And finally there was Castledoor. They don't really need any plugging from me, as they seem to be doing quite nicely on their own, thank you, but still: here is a band of which one of my friends said "why aren't they playing in front of 500 people?" To which I answer: well, they will be, and quite soon, I think. We're just lucky that we got the chance to play with them now before everything goes crazy. Castledoor knows how to write a catchy pop song and Nate's got a great, expressive voice--where I shout and croak, he actually sings, funny thing about that. Plus they had the genius idea of projecting found 8mm movie film (that's film, not video) on their bass drum head, something that I should've thought of myself but didn't.

Head on over to their myspace page and listen to "Magnetic Forces" to hear what I'm babbling about. Yay Castledoor!

And that was that. Everyone acquitted themselves well, and I only had one real idiot moment where I hit my head on the low load-in door by the side of the stage. Dark club+goofy flailing dork in all white=very obvious moron.

posted by Eli Monolator @ 3:57 PM