This is just a super quick update with last night’s set list from Midnight Cities at Catch One. It was a super fun night and, for everyone who was there, I hope you had a good time on the dance floor.
Continue reading Indie, ’80s and a Little Darkwave: Midnight Cities Set List 3/13/25
“You could pop on the internet right this second and find people road-raging,” says Mark Lane. “It’s so ubiquitous, such a part of the culture.”
That unabashed anger so often on display online and in the streets is what Lane is referencing in “Yelling at Cars,” the title track from his latest EP, released last November. “I saw you standing in the street/Yelling at cars,” he sings over a beat that’s a little electro, a little EBM, a clubby sound that still conveys the shock and dismay of his observations.
“It’s really hostile now,” he says. “The record touches on this psychosis of imagined road ownership. These people really believe, the road is mine. You see it over and over.”
Continue reading “You could pop on the internet right this second and find people road-raging”: Mark Lane on New EP, Yelling at Cars
Start the weekend on Thursday night with Midnight Cities: Indie vs. ‘80s at Catch One. I’ll be in the DJ booth playing ‘80s, indie, post-punk and synthpop for this 18+ party. Discount tickets are available now on Dice, so click this link to get yours now. Party starts at 9:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 13. Catch One is located at 4067 W. Pico 90019. See you on the dance floor at Midnight Cities.
As for the rest of the weekend, keep scrolling to find out what’s happening in Los Angeles.
Continue reading Midnight Cities: Indie and ’80s at Catch One, Plus More Happening in L.A. March 13 -19
Corita Kent was L.A.’s own pop art star. Back in the 1960s, when she was still a nun and known as Sister Mary Corita, she was named one of L.A. Times’ women of the year and landed on the cover of Newsweek. While she was creating serigraphs with social justice messages, she also taught at Immaculate Heart College and became head of the school’s renowned art department. Kent continued making art long after she left her religious order and moved to Boston. In fact, her best known work was the massively popular U.S. postal stamp that read “Love,” which was released in 1985, one year before her death.
Last week, on International Women’s Day, a new home for Kent’s legacy opened in the Arts District. A few days prior to that, I headed to the new Corita Art Center for a press preview. During my visit, and in the days that followed, I kept thinking about one specific piece. It’s called e eye love, which is part of a series called circus alphabet. In it, an eye is superimposed on a capital letter E. Underneath it is a snippet of a quote from the philosopher and writer Albert Camus, “should like to be able to love my country and still love justice.” Kent made this piece in 1968, a tumultuous year in U.S. history. More than 55 years later, I’m looking at it in a gallery-like setting thinking, “Same.”
Continue reading The Social Justice Pop Art of Corita Kent Has a New Home
There’s some good news for L.A. crate diggers. Salt Box Records is back IRL. The record shop operated by modern funk musician and DJ XL Middleton recently reopened inside Little Tokyo venue Hello Stranger after focusing on Instagram drops and pop-up events for the past few years. The soft open was last week. I stopped by on Friday afternoon and left with some heat.
Continue reading Salt Box Records Is Now Open in Little Tokyo
Saturday was another amazing night Klub Nocturno at Catch One. I played in the new wave vs. darkwave room, which definitely leaned more darkwave. The one super-new release that made it into the set was “Make Me Feel” by Night Ritualz, whose self-titled album came out on Friday, and there’s a good amount of Molchat Doma in the set because they played on Friday night. Going to keep this update short because there is not enough coffee to wake up my brain on this daylight savings Sunday and I keep writing Molchat Doma as Molchat Dolma, so maybe I need to eat or something. So, thanks to Nocturno for having me play and thanks to everyone who came out and danced. Set list is below.
Continue reading Molchat Doma and Everything Else You Heard in Klub Nocturno’s New Wave vs. Darkwave Room on March 8, 2025
It was the night before the inauguration and, somewhere in the distance, the Eaton and Palisades fires continued to burn. Needless to say, the mood was grim on the streets of L.A. that Sunday. Inside The Regent, though, at a little after 7:30 p.m., the vibe was dynamic. Agender was in the midst of their opening set for CSS. The floor level of the venue was already packed wall-to-wall. The balcony, where I stood, was quite full as well. Looking down, a mass of people bopped around the floor as the L.A. punk band ripped through one fierce song after the next.
“I think it was a moment of the city coming together and it felt special,” says Romy Hoffman, who is the singer, guitarist and songwriter for Agender. “I know I needed that outlet.” Hoffman, who has known CSS since a previous project of hers toured Australia with them in the mid-‘00s, notes that the Brazilian indie band has a “positive, infectious energy” that lent itself to the “catharsis” inside the venue that night. “It was the perfect band to play at that time just because of their energy,” she says. “We had a great time and the crowd was really responsive. It was wonderful.”
Continue reading Agender: “Some Songs Need to Be Fast and Furious”
Klub Nocturno is back at Catch One on Saturday night with five rooms for one cover price. This month’s lineup: Rock en Español vs. Cumbia, New Wave vs. Darkwave, System of a Down Night, Sad Bunny Night (old school vs. new school reggaeton) and Disco. I’ll be dropping the bangers in the New Wave vs. Darkwave room, so drop by if you want to dance to Molchat Doma, French Police, Boy Harsher, The Cure, Depeche Mode and more. Click here to get your tickets for Saturday, March 8 at Klub Nocturno. It’s 18+ and the party starts at 9:30 p.m. Catch One is at 4067 W. Pico 90019.
As for the rest of the week, Molchat Doma and Sextile at the Palladium and The Altons and The Sinseers at Belasco, both on Friday night, are basically sold out, unless you feel like paying over $100 for resale tickets. Still, there’s a hell of a lot going on this weekend and next week that isn’t sold out. Confidence Man, who you’ve definitely heard in my DJ sets, plays the Fonda on Thursday night. Over at Catalina Bar on the same night, Mink Stole (!!!) And Peaches Christ will be debuting “Idol Worship” in L.A.
On the movie front, Alamo Drafthouse launches its month of David Lynch programming this weekend with Blue Velvet and Eraserhead and Brain Dead has a bunch of Wes Anderson films on the calendar. Meanwhile, Allan Moyle has three films screening in L.A. this weekend. The Rubber Gun, from 1977, plays Los Feliz Theater on Thursday and Friday is a double feature of Pump Up the Volume and Times Square. He’ll be doing Q/As for both those events.
For more info on these and more events, keep scrolling.
Continue reading Klub Nocturno, Confidence Man, Pump up the Volume and More Happening in L.A. March 7 – 12, 2025
There’s no shortage of irony in the news, but I nearly fell out of my chair laughing when I read a New York Times piece about how Starbucks wants to bring back the “third place.” A third place is not a corporate imitation of a coffee house that serves the same menu at every location. It is not a carefully cultivated vibe of Brand Safe Boredom that extends from its forgettable decor to the inoffensive playlists played at a volume that ensures you will never actually remember what you heard.
If you’re on the chattier social apps, then you’ve probably seen people describe the third places they wish they had, which, for some reason, always seem to sound like the public libraries they clearly don’t patronize. But, third places were a real thing. Once upon a time, people did have their own, local versions of the DoubleR or the Central Perk. Technically, they still exist. Underground, where I often guest DJ, happens every week. If you’re a regular there, it is a third place. Last year, I wrote a story about the pinball tournaments at Revenge Of. For pinball players, that absolutely falls into the category of “the third place.”
The whole concept of the third place, though, began its death spiral well before the pandemic. I suspect that there are multiple reasons for that, but let’s start with Corporate Coffee.
Continue reading The Death of the 1990s Coffee House and the Third Place
Imagine you’re trapped inside a machine, looking for a way out. You feel a cold beat and tense rhythm, hear bleeps lurking in the background. It’s unsettling. Then, in the distance, a voice repeats the phrase you know from Dune. “Fear is the mind killer.” You see Timothée Chalamet or Kyle MacLachlan or some other Paul Atreides who lives in your head survive the box of pain. You feel relief.
That’s what it’s like to hear “Fear (is the Mind Killer),” the Optometry song, for the first time. From Lemuria, the L.A.-based duo’s sophomore album, the song is an homage to Dune as much as it is a reflection on life in the 2020s.
Continue reading Fear is the Mind Killer: Inside the World of Optometry