A lot happening since last post.
We got the touring wagon sorted, a late model (2010 even) KIA minivan with 6 seats and a GPS unit we are calling ‘Suzie’.
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Went down to the garment district and picked out some fluro lime green t-shirts to get printed up for tour with a facsimile of one of the original designs for an early gig in dunedin by a guy with a small screenprinting shop just outside central L.A.
Word came in from Aussie when we drifted in tonite that Bob missed his plane to Sydney (layover on way to L.A.) due to an AK transport malfunction but had rebooked on another two hrs later and was now safely ensconced on the L.A. flight.
No word from Dragan who is supposed to be joining Bob in Sydney from Wellington before the pair travel on to L.A. together, so can only assume no news is good news until we hear further…
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Picked up Steve Humann’s kid Ava from school, took them over to the Halloween Carnival the next day, picked up the shirts and caught a couple of gigs, Kurt Vile and Jello Biafra with his new band The Guantanamo School of Medicine.
Eating at least 3 meals a day, Humann is a walking directory of L.A. food joints!
I get the feeling Suzie is a little jealous of him as she only wants to please us but Humann has the insider knowledge of the good eating and shopping locations without us having to punch the zip code into him. Hope we don’t piss her off too much before we hit the road…
Caught a couple of gigs, Kurt Vile at Spaceland and Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine at the El Ray Theatre on Wilshire Blvd.
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Our string of good luck with parking in L.A. (mostly due to broken meters) came to an abrupt halt at Spaceland when we got a traffic violation ticket for parking in an obscurely signposted Residents Permit parking zone… we will contest it claiming kiwi ignorance of course.
Fiddle-de-di, tomorrow is another day… picking up Bob and Dragan at LAX tomorrow at 5.00PM local time.
Went round to Steve’s ex’s to drop off Ava and partake of the biggest pizza either of us have ever seen, a celebration for SH’s birthday…
The L.A. Stroll – Origins
Not being a big city for walkers, it is culturally interesting the latest dance craze here involves participants walking round in a circle – by the end of the gig, quite possibly the longest walk the auience member has done since the last mosh-able gig they attended.
According to our authority on the subject (Humann, fount of all L.A. knowledge), the dance developed from L.A. punks getting bored with pogo-ing in the 80’s and becoming fascinated with skanking when one of their number returned from England in the early 80’s having mastered skanking, the dance style favoured by Ska groups of the time vaguely resembling jogging on the spot.
In Humann terms (or, as the saying goes, ‘As the Humann Flies’), as soon as the punks realised they could ‘inadvertantly’ hit and kick crowd members and claim they were only dancing (in some versions of the story, this was also the origin of the Bowie classic “John I’m only dancing”, the gay overtones added to embellish the story later when it became fashionable once again to be gay), it took off and spread like a California wildfire through the 80’s and has disappeared and reappeared in one guise or another throughout the decades since.
I must say the latest incarnation to me had a sense of ‘slothiness’ to it which perhaps does the high-energy music which it often accompanies a disservice in that the performer will often build more of a sweat than the audience.
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jolly hockey-sticks. Looks like you are having fun.