Amoeblog

Digging the scene at "This Ain't a Scene" with a gangsta lean

Posted by Eric Brightwell, May 14, 2012 02:08pm | Post a Comment
This Ain't a Scene

This past Saturday, I went to the 1650 Gallery in Echo Park to check out the opening of This Ain’t a Scene: The Vibrant Music Community of East LA which was co-presented by Radio Free Silver Lake and compiled by Jackie Lam. Radio Free Silver Lake is a website focused on Indie music in Los Angeles.
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Map of the Eastside Map of Silver Lake Map of HiFi Map of Echo Park Map of the Mideast Side
Pendersleigh maps

Note: The “East LA” of the subtitle could be construed as a bit misleading.. East Los (whose vibrant music community produced performers like Black Eyed Peas, Cannibal & the Headhunters, Hope Sandoval, J-vibe, Kid Frost, Lalo Guerrero, Los Lobos, Los Illegals, Louie Perez, Luis Villegas, Quetzal, Suzanna Guzman, Taboo, The Bags, The Blazers, Thee Midniters and Tierra and  supported live venues like Club 469, Eastside Nightclub, El Club Baion, Kennedy Hall, The Lamp Lighter, The M Club, Rudy's Past House and Vex) is not represented here. The bands and venues depicted in this show are, if I’m not mistaken, all from Echo Park, P-Town and Silver Lake -- three neighborhoods in the eastern portion of Central LA that belong to a region that no one has named with a widely-accepted term.) Enough quibbling about geography and nomenclature from me… let's start the show.
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Your Tuesday night planned... Echo Park or Little Saigon -- what's it going to be?!

Posted by Eric Brightwell, May 11, 2012 07:43pm | Post a Comment
So I'm slated to DJ at the Short Stop in Echo Park on 15 May, 2012 (this coming Tuesday unless you're pulling this from the archives). I'll be splitting the music slanging chores with Joe Skyward (Sky Cries Mary, The Posies, Sunny Day Real Estate, Jean Jacket Shotgun), Jimmy James and Greene Candy Machine. 

DJ Flier


Of my comrades I only know Joe but I don't even know what kind of music he's planning on DJing. As for me, he only told me "No techno!" so I'll ignore anything '80s Detroit just to be safe. I do plan on focusing on the '80s, however -- chiefly Baggy, Bass, Bounce, Electro, Eurodisco, Freestyle, Garage, Italo, Spacesynth, Synthpop, Vietnamese New Wave -- that sort of thing. 

Races Release EP, Play the Echo

Posted by Billy Gil, November 14, 2011 04:17pm | Post a Comment
Races

Races: Lucas Ventura, Devo Higgins, Wade Ryff, Breanna Wood, Oliver Hild and Garth Herberg. Photo by Bryan Sheffield.
L.A.'s Races will release their Big Broom EP tomorrow on Frenchkiss Records. To commemorate that release, they'll play the Echo tonight at 10 p.m. with dark dancers The Chain Gang of 1974 (as part of their November residency there) and Polaris at Noon — the show starts at 8:30 and it's free.

Atmospheric rockers Races played their first show just two years ago in October of 2009, haphazardly assembled from friends playing in other bands, and already have drawn a following with their big sound, built from the ground up by six members playing smoothed out classic rock licks with a gentle percussive roll and Asiatic synthesizers, something like an indie-minded update of Fleetwood Mac's hevenly pop.

Frontman Wade Ryff, whose warm vocals wrap his songs like a wool sweater, said he'd been frustrated with trying to fit his songs into other bands and spoke with his friend, guitarist Garth Herberg, about forming a one-off band. The band now features Devon Lee on vocals/percussion, Breanna Wood on piano/vocals, Oliver Hild on bass/moog and Lucas Ventura on drums/percussion.

“I think we all sensed that there was something really special there and we just kept playing together because it felt good.,” Ryff said.

Pendersleigh & Sons Cartographical Art Show - Opening Night

Posted by Eric Brightwell, June 21, 2011 10:50pm | Post a Comment

Pendersleigh & Sons Cartography Flyer

If you're a fan of the primitive, hand-drawn maps that I do for Eric's Blog, then set aside 25 June to come to my first art show at 1650 Gallery in Echo Park. They'll be displaying forty pieces and offering originals, reprints in various sizes, and taking new commissions (also in various sizes).

Map of Venice Canals Map of Silver Lake Map of Taiwan Map of Tustin

Map of Angeleno Heights Map of Missouri

Map of Chinatown Map of South Los Angeles Map of San Francisco Map of Downtown Los Angeles

Eastside? Westside? Midtown? Northeast LA? Downtown? - A Mideast Side Primer

Posted by Eric Brightwell, March 16, 2011 05:00pm | Post a Comment
As regular (and probably irregular) readers of Eric's Blog know, I'm a bit of a Southern California wonk and a big part of my focus is writing about the culture, character and history of the many diverse communities of Los Angeles and Orange Counties. Although so far there have been around 800 votes from readers, I thought it would be fun (and hopefully entertaining) to focus on the regions and provide a brief summary of the districts within with the hope of encouraging informed voting. In this entry I'd like to focus on the Mideast Side.

 
Los Angeles' Mideast Side

You've never heard of the Mideast Side? That's probably because I made it up as a term to describe the neighborhoods of LA between the San Fernando Valley, Hollywood, Midtown, South LA, Downtown and Northeast LA. A stretch of neighborhoods west of the LA river between the peaks of Griffith Park and downtown. 

 
 

Hollywood secessionists want to claim parts, all the local gangs represent the westside, the cops consider parts of it to be in the Northeast Division, downtowners and developers claim part of it as Central City West, the LA Times covers it under Central Los Angles and mostly non-natives consider it the Eastside.

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