We arrived in Pasadena Friday night, a truly epic traffic jam all through the valley. My friend Josh had emailed me and I had learned that day that he had tickets to Ulrich Schnauss, an electronica artist. I was tired, but decided to make the trip into LA.
Last time I visited him, Josh lived with a band in a super-lo-rent in the Downtown Industrial District. Thousands of homeless people lived on the street a block up. Trash fires burned. The Capitol record company exectives who ahd signed the band were afraid to visit the band. But there was a fraternal spirit to the place and the locals never hassled the band members. But after I refused to give a panhandler a donation, my car --the same Subaru -- was broken into in fairly short order. The rest of the trip ended up being a lot of runaround. Once I got the glass repaired, I refused to park anywhere but Beverly Hills, six miles away, and rode a bike back and forth.
This time Josh said he had a parking space in a gated apartment building garage and directed me by phone to exit the 110 onto 3rd toward Alvarado. I noted that deserted streets except for a few soup kitchens. I thoght immediately to the Red Chili Peppers and Under the Bridge Downtown.
We took his Camry and parked in a secret space just outside Beverly Hills in West Hollywood. Schnauss was playing at the Troubadour. A pudgy German guy with a laptop and keyboard and no backing musicians. We each had a Chivas on the rocks. Not Schnauss, but Josh and I. There were a couple moments where I thought someone had put something else in the drink -- the music coupled with some pretty impressive liquid DVD projections certainly got under the skin. There was a bit of a new age feel to the music -- most of his "tunes" were four chord progressions. The Chemical Borthers were making impressive electronic music like this ten years ago. But impressive and pure sound. He even had some stereo effects -- which is rare, usually everything comes out of the centre of the PA at clubs.
1 comment:
Nice going, TTT :)
Post a Comment