Music with real people
It's incredibly embarrasing to admit but I've now lived in Los Angeles for five months and hadn't gone out to see live music until last Thursday! Appalling, I know.
Fortunately the tide seems to be turning. Our first experience was at the Largo with my new SXSW pal Lauren who prodded us out of our musicless cave. Then again a few days later we ventured forth again to our first experience with the venerable Echo in Silver Lake (not in Echo Park for some reason).
The Largo is a really special venue but is so expensive for what you get that it's hard to go often. The room is the perfect size for a small show and if you have dinner reservations you have the pleasure of sitting, as we did, at one of the tables that fills the prime real estate in front of the stage. The room can't seem to decide its identity. On the one hand the burgundy walls and dark wood with the occasional celtic symbol imply a classic pub atmosphere from an earlier time. The Irish brogue on the intricate voicemail-based reservation system drives the point home. Not to mention that the crowd was a little older than I'm used to for a night out.
Yet the cluttered floor-level stage with a vivisected piano and sundry crates and instruments forshadows that hipsterific pleasure that eminates from the stage when the music starts. This is the Friday night haunt of Jon Brion, famous for his film scores to Magnolia, I (heart) Huckabees, Punch Drunk Love, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and his co-production of Kanye West's 2005 triumph Late Registration. Because went on Thursday, we enjoyed three different singers who varied in quality but shared Brion's oeuvre.
Saturday at The Echo couldn't have diverged more from the chill pleasure of the Largo. The Echo is a venue more in line with DC's The Black Cat. The size is good and there are few token tables but there are no pretentions that this place is for more than music.
At home making dinner earlier in the evening we heard Garth Trinidad, host of KCRW's Chocolate City, announce that he would be spinning that night at The Echo with a crop of other DJ's. We both felt like dancing and who can resist a five dollar cover.
When we arrived at the mid-day hour of ten at night we were the third group in the place. A few more couples trickled in as the DJ's got started and when the evening hit its stride there couldn't have been more than fifty or sixty people in the place. Everyone was dancing. The music was all over the place and before we could realize how much time had passed it was just after one in the morning.
Julie is really one hell of dancer. Anyone who has gone out with us knows that while I get marks for trying, she isn't messing around. We've had fun since we moved out here but this was the most I've seen Julie in her element in this new city.
It goes without saying that we're going back this Saturday.
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Who is this guy?
Sam...good you've found Largo. Now go see Jude at Largo. He is playing April 15. Don't miss it.