Monday night. LA. The Echo. The Captain and I learned a few things on this chilly Election Eve:

1. Scenesters are the new hipsters and I’m pretty sure they have no interest in music.

2. The only thing lamer than smashing your guitar on stage is pretending to smash your guitar on stage.

3. Joan of Arc had a rough go of things.

We arrived during a performance by Light (I think) and amidst the screaming and loud noises I caught something about happiness not being cheesy, but good. The woman who uttered this nugget of gold was a scenester. One may assume this reclamation of happiness would go against the belief system of a scenester. Not so. This would be likening a scenester to a hipster, who, of course, is too indifferent to experience happiness. A scenester enjoys a good time. Throw on a gold lamé bikini, add an unusually cut tank top, blue jean cutoffs, black sheer tights, finish with furry boots and they will dance their little hearts out to the house music between bands. Scenesters don’t really care what music is playing (they may not even like music), they are there to be seen and a nice long mustachio, full mountain man beard, or mullet will ensure that.

The next band, Weave, was the supposed reason for being there. All scenesters, for sure: cutoffs, holey clothes, oddly placed scarves, clothespins in hair. Struggling to ignore the singer/bass player’s constant cursing, encouragements to vote, and attempts at sultriness, I focused on Sleeping Beauty playing over the stage. As a result, I missed the debacle that caused the guitarist to seemingly smash his guitar. The keyboardist, who was wearing fake dreads, joined him on the floor and shortly thereafter they proceeded off stage. I felt mildly sorry for the remaining members, the potty-mouthed singer and comparatively subdued female drummer, but they persisted and the keyboardist triumphantly returned, sans dreads, to rock the tambourine. For the closing song, the guitarist managed to make it back on stage and revealed that he had in fact only fake smashed the guitar. He turned his back to the audience though, and didn’t actually play. Album release party success!

The actual reason we were there was Warpaint. During their performance, Victor Fleming’s Joan of Arc was playing. I’m not sure there could be anything more haunting than the close up of a teary eyed Ingrid Bergman as Joan to the accompaniment of Warpaint’s reverberation. They too put an enormous effort into dressing as unattractively as possible, but their musical talent and knife-twisting-in-heart lyrics excuse their proclivity for parachute pants and moo moos. “Oh wonderful one, why are you like that?”

 ~ ALHP