[Eliza Hodgkins 1812]

I met Jesse at The Scene in Glendale last night, and I will let him tell you all about the two very talented Japanese bands that played first. I will say they were awesome and adorable punk rockers, and their sets were solid.

And then:

A group of drunken audience members took the stage and began to set up their equipment. Three men (bass, guitar and drums) and two women (lead singer, tambourine/maracas). Meet Punk Jungle.

Jesse leaned in to say something along the lines of, “Garage band…heard them on MySpace…not terribly impressed.”

They were all a bit worse for the wear, but the lead singer (who Jesse and I pegged as a “not old enough to be in a bar” 19-year-old) was a mess. She’d been stumbling around on stilettos for the last hour. During a sound check that went on for about ten painful minutes, she managed to slur every directive.

And then:

They start to play. No. Wait. More sound check.

They start to play, this time for real, but it basically sounds like more sound check with yelling, and to get ahead of myself, all of the songs sounded the same. The Japanese band members, probably just happy to be rocking in the States, danced along enthusiastically. Of course, they’d been drinking too.

During the first song, the lead singer did a lot of crouching and lying down on the stage floor, probably giving herself a staff infection. Soon after, she stepped into the audience (an audience of about 5 people who were not actually affiliated with the bands) and proceeded to do a lot of crouching and lying down there, as well. She does have one thing going for her. If ever there is a staged version of A Christmas Story, she could star as the lamp. She has some seriously carved out, awesome looking stems, and her stilettos were very cool.

Mostly we watched in horror and dismay at the spectacle, anticipating a terrible accident. Sometimes the microphone wire would wrap around her ankle. Sometimes it seemed like she might fall walking up and down the stairs. Her dress was so little and short, I was half expecting an indecent ping-pong show for a finale. Jesse was gripped with fatherly feeling and wanted to cover her up. Me, I wanted to throw her in a potato sack and drag her home.

It felt like we were watching a straight-to-video sequel to The Accused.

I can’t say much for the band. The tambourine / maracas player was just, well, lame. And drunk. The bass player was madly in love with himself and his terrible playing. And drunk. The guitar player may have been sober, but was also paying homage to Corey Hart: he put on sunglasses just before he started to play. The drummer was probably drunk and maybe 18. None of them thought to drag their little sister off the floor, so apparently we were watching different straight-to-video movies.

The best part, the part that left Jesse and I feeling chilled and filthy, was the 30 to 40-something drunkard who was there for most of the evening but only took to the dance floor when Little Miss Show & Tell took the stage. I will attempt to patchwork together an image of this gentleman for your brain viewing pleasure:

He was part Mr. Bean (with blonde hair), part Olive Oil, part marionette with malfunctioning arms. He would sidle up to the girl folk dancing and then move his body in a way that would occasionally allow his to press against theirs, seemingly on accident. Half the time his arms weren’t moving, which is why he looked like a marionette. The overall way in which he moved, and his placid and inebriated expression, was very much Mr. Bean. His crooked sloping posture was all Olive Oil. The overall effect: Pederast escaped from a mental hospital.

The lead singer actually started groping him. Sometimes, in a fit of false punk rock aggression, she’d sort of smack him away before coquettishly drawing him back in. Hence, The Accused 2: The Seduction.

I kept saying, “Maybe he’s her boyfriend.”

Jesse would then look at me with a sort of wry, “silly Audra” smile.

“Maybe he’s her math teacher. AND her boyfriend,” I concluded, which would be much more likely.

Ah, the music scene. So much goodness and so much badness. But almost never a dull moment.