Did You See the Drummer's Hair? The Ettes @ Spaceland and the Scene, Jan. 27th and February 10th 2007

Technically this should be two posts, but I’m rushing and mainly I was only going to talk about this one band, The Ettes anyways, so there.

At Spaceland, January 27^th 2007, I arrived expecting to go sit in the backroom and wait through the usual opening bands (gross generalization here, but wait) until The Black Lips came on. I quite enjoy their mishmash of poppy rocky folky sing-a-longs and shout-a-longs, and I heard one time they pissed on each other on stage. However, once there, we were tipped to go and check out this one band, The Ettes- “Dude, you need to go see the drummer. Crazy.”

Hellfuckingyes.

This three piece female fronted garage band on Sympathy Records puts many a bands to shame right now. They capture the hard distorted sounds common with many bands in this genre, but add some 60’s chick rock to balance it all out. And you can dance to it. (At this point I’ll just mention that The Black Lips played a good set from what I saw, no pissing though, and we ended up leaving before they were done cause it was obvious no stage pranks were going to happen.)

The tip we received about going to see the drummer was dead on too, she’s fucking awesome. Her speed alone makes you hold your breath to see if a) she’ll lose tempo b) she’ll have a heart attack c) the drum kit will just go flying in 4 different directions OR d) all of the above.

They’re pretty consistent too. The second time I saw them, February 10^th at the Scene in Glendale, they were the headlining band that night. This was also the night of my first Burlesque show. I don’t know what I was expecting as far as half naked chicks shaking gold boobie tassels at me, but the bored looks on some of these girls’ faces was not it. Where were the giant bubbles and feathers?

Anyways, the first band to go on, Rocket, was…um. Well, if you pooled a bunch of 13 year old girls and let them run hog wild in Hot Topic and then gave them instruments and said, “Be punky”, then I think you would have this band. The highlight being that a joke was told by a friend that, “This is the type of band that would have a song called ‘Too Cool For School’..” and then shortly after they actually played a song with those words.

The second band, The Affair, were much more tolerable. For some reason I kept being reminded of Interpol, if Interpol was led by a girl. Or maybe I’m completely wrong cause then they switch to sounding kinda like Blondie and 60’s girl pop when I re-listen to them. Whatever, I liked them.

I’m realizing this post is starting to go incredibly long, so I’ll wrap it up. The Ettes played and rocked again. This time the crowd was much more focused on them, as opposed to the Spaceland show. AND there was even an encore.

The only down-ish side to them is the album, which is completely listenable except that when compared to their live set, it seems a bit overproduced, which is sad. To experience them one must go to a show… and they’re massively touring right now so there’s no excuse NOT to see them. They’ll be back in L.A. on March 30^th, I think it might be a retirement party for someone at Sympathy but I’m not sure. Regardless, go see them.