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Rolls For A Night

Last Saturday I (Eli Monolator) went down to Echo Curio to catch Karabal Nightlife and Shirley Rolls at the Echo Curio. I did not know until the end of their set that it was Lindsey's last show with KN--a sad occasion, but they put on a good show. My understanding is that Lindsey is joining C-Horse and the Karabals will continue on with a new bassist--I know we're playing with them at the Echo next month, for instance.

Anyway--when I got to the Echo Curio there was Tom and Sean (of Shirley Rolls) out on the sidewalk with Jonathan Hylander from the Voyeurs. Tom sees me and says "oh good, Eli, you're here. You're playing bass tonight." And naturally I said "I am?"

See, Jonathan Price, SR's bassist, is on tour with the Henry Clays, and neither Che (rhythm guitar) nor Ethan (keyboards) could make it that night for various reasons, so Tom and Sean were all alone, just guitar and drums. That is how I found myself picking up Lindsey's (borrowed) bass and plowing through a set of songs I have listened to and loved but never practiced or played before in my life. It was terrifying but also COMPLETELY AWESOME.

THANK GOD both Don from Don's Music and Johnny from Seasons were there to play percussion--but the real star was Tom's pal Randy, who brought along his insane homemade gigantic synthesizer, full of weird patch cords and knobs and switches and paint and about six feet long. Randy played squalling bursts of rhythmic white noise throughout, in sync with the drums, and basically covered up my endless screwups. Sometimes Tom would come over and tell me the changes before the song started, sometimes I tried to follow him by watching where he was on his guitar neck, and other times when I got lost (which was often) I just played a bunch of oddball scales under the theory that at least SOME of the notes would be on key. Still--Jonathan Hylander said I was probably on key about 80-85% of the time, and I'll certainly count that as a success. It was one of the best times I've ever had playing music and generally completely glorious. I hope I can sit in with the Rolls sometime again, maybe I'll even get to the point of learning the songs beforehand.

Any pictures from the show? I'd love to see them. This one showed up on LA Underground--that's Johnny Season's bleeding hand from the set:

posted by Eli Monolator @ 11:31 PM