Well later is right now!For those of you who aren't familiar with east side LA rock club schedules, Monday nights are when you can get into the Echo, Spaceland, and the Silverlake Lounge for free and check out a tightly-packed bill invariably consisting of some combination of:A) ultra-generic silverlake indie pop bands (more on these later)
Ultra-generic Silverlake indie pop bands. Where to begin? First, lets establish the pointless, self-absorbed and incredibly contrived content of their "songs". I don't know if it's Rilo Kiley's fault or Weezer 's or Elliott Smith's, but there isn't a single original songwriting voice in an entire scene based on "singer-songwriters".
Then there are the "country via Dylan via indie pop" rootsy cutesy bands. I don't know why, but there's usually at least one girl with a great dress collection and a guy with a beard involved. Listening to anything by the Parson Redheads, to name one of many, is akin to listening to room-temperature milk evaporating. I swear to God, one of their songs combines the chorus melody of "Mr. Tambourine Man" and the verse melody of "Blowin' in the Wind." I remember standing there in the near-empty room on some free night, in awe of the balls that guy must have to try and pass that off as his own song.
The main problem may be the blatant and homogenous hero worship that goes on in these bands. Maybe if Elliott Smith was still alive all these 3rd stringers wouldn't have the guts to get up on stage and jerk off to themselves. Imagine a world without Gavin Rossdales!
You know your scene's in trouble when the "successful" band is a Smashing Pumpkins sound-alike, and the band with "art cred", Autolux, hasn't released an album since 2004. Great Northern, Sea Wolf, Airborne Toxic Event, and many many more epitomize this self-congratulatory, kidding-themselves-and-each-other scene. The good news is, it seems like younger people have stopped forming this type of band in the last couple of years.
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