Twenty five years ago I lived in Los angeles. During the decade that I lived there, Melrose developed as a street with interesting stuff. Billy Shire opened Soap Plant,Wacko and La Luz De Jesus Gallery and was nice enough to buy and show my work. Billy gave my father and me a painting show at La Luz many years ago while he was still on Melrose. Gai Gherardi and friends at LA Eyeworks let me show my paintings when they opened their first restaurant, City Cafe, on Melrose. Steve’s House of Fine Art –SHOFA and Vinyl Fetish abutted Melrose on Larchmont.
Last week we made new friends and met old friends at Chris Gere and Katie Vonderheide’s store front art and music space. Devin Flynn and me were in town for our art opening at SCION and it worked out that Ross Goldstein and his better half Trish were thinking of driving to LA from New York for fun. DEVIN GARY & ROSS is the band I’m in for the last four years and we found ourselves all in LA at the same time.
Devin’s steady girl Jane set up a show for her to perform solo, as SPIDER, and us as DEVIN GARY & ROSS and her friends HUMAN SACRIFICE at SYCHRONICITY SPACE on Melrose. Once we started thinking of a show in LA we thought of our pal Rick Potts of the LAFMS and Dinosaurs With Horns as someone fun to perform with again and also someone crazy enough to loan us stuff and rehearse with us at his and Krystine Krytre’s pad in Pasadena and drive around all night returning equipment after working all day at AMOEBA.
I haven’t mentioned that we were reconoitering and milling about Devin’s Folks Ed and Vivian and brother Ian’s cool pad in Atwater near a killer taco stand. You don’t have to read this–I am just telling you what happened. I am not walking down the street typing this as it happens. This happened last week.
We arrived early, naturally, to set up our gear and do a sound check. There we met Chris and Katie, handsome and beautiful, and willing to let us try our thing out in their room.
In performance, SPIDER was winsome and melodic and kind of in the great Donovan’s company, which is very pretty indeed. HUMAN SACRIFICE (not the Christian death metal band by the same name) were a beautiful couple of nice hairy singers and guitar, autoharp and electronic players and I really liked what they did. It was warm and human and real and risky even.
DEVIN GARY & ROSS came on last to a room of enthusiastic friends and strangers and, with Rick Potts help, we churgled into a swampy cosmo improv oil slink interrupted by occasional semi-recognizable melodies and angelic harmonies and finally by a BALLS TO THE WALL ( what the heck does that mean?) rave out and exit stage left. We said good night and drove way the heck somewhere behind downtown to a mysterious labyrinthine art complex in an old brewery, called the Brewery and returned equipment with Rick.
Devin, Gary, Ross, Jane and Trish said good night at IN AND OUT BURGER and I wended my way back to Malibu to Mr G’s house, to cop a few hours of sleep only to greet the dawn in LAX car rental return bus and eventually onto a Delta flight back stuffed tightly between a nice lady who didn’t say anything and a nice lady reading a book entitled PRAYERS TO THWART DEMONIC POSSESSION and one named WINNERS IN THE BATTLE AGAINST DEMONIC POSSESSION.
Take off was delayed an hour because of a hydraulic leak (good– please fix it) and then a stupefying return to the gate after a passenger demanded to get off the plane. All the luggage had to be removed in case the hysterical lady was trying something tricky tricky tricky tricky tricky, if you know what I mean. I think the lady next to me inconveniently riled a demon in her that had to get off the plane and away from the prayerist’s effective invocations. These vampire killers and their inconsiderate ways!
