Sex, Drugs, and Rock N' Roll - A True Hollywood Story
I'm sure most of you have heard some of the sordid tales of Hollywood's Sunset Strip AKA "The Strip." It seems like the heyday of the Strip in my generation (In the infamous Summer of Love era, it was a haven for some of the legendary bands of the time....The Doors were orginally the house band at "The Whiskey.") was in the late 80's/ early 90's, when Southern California was seemingly mass-producing hair metal bands off an assembly line, and young celebrities were getting in fights (or dying) in the Johnny Depp owned "Viper Room."
I admit though, I assumed some of the wild tales of The Strip were exaggerated, the way many places are when there's a mythology and tabloid-fueled hype behind them. But after a show I went to at The Strip this week...I'm not so sure.
Monday night we drove the to the Key Club, a once big-name club where Prince used to play, Magic Johnson had a birthday party, and even Bill Clinton visited. Now it's mostly for C-list mainstream rock bands (Kottonmouth Kings anyone?) and wanna be up-and-comers hoping to get their big break.
We had free complimentary tickets from "Motis Day" (not sure of spelling), a band whose drummer also plays for Kairos, so he invited a bunch of people from Kairos to see his band play. The Key Club is in fact seen as so much of a launching pad for emerging L.A. bands that opening bands have to actually pay to get on the bill. (I think I was told that Motis paid $500 to play 5 or 6 songs. Yikes. Thats like if I had to pay $500 to get an article published in the Sacramento Bee.
Things were fairly normal for the first couple of bands, and really..it seemed to me I was in a souped up Blue Note albeit with having to go through a metal detector and there being roped off VIP sections and a giant 50-foot monitor hanging above the stage.
The second band - Shock Nina (again, I'm guessing the spelling) was apparently trying to appeal to about all demographics possible - they had a hardcore dude that looked like he was from the Deftones or Korn, a crazy spikey-haired drummer, and of course, a blonde Barbie-doll singer (at second glance she looked a lot like Rosanna Arquette.)
Shocknina, hanging out at 7-11
The third band, "The Dreaming" also had that "we're really trying to get on MTV2" look about them. All of them wore black, had tattoos, piercings, and all had different (but still crazy!) hair styles. The guitarist had some sort of pink, spiky thing and the singer had like two feet of bangs hanging in his eyes. To me, it was sort of like a punk/metal boy band...they were just way too contrived with all of their tedious Woe is Us songs about isolation, anger, and dispair.
I wanted to say "Hey wuss boys, you kids are in a band! There are four of you always hanging out together, you all dress alike, you have a pretty good job (Hey I couldn't get away with looking like that at work!), what's there to feel like an outcast about unless you tried to apply for the Beverly Hills Country Club?"
In rebellion of The Dreaming's calculated rebellion I would sing (well, mumble) made-up lyrics to make their songs about ridiculously ordinary things. During a song called "Disconnect" I sang it so it was about being disconnected from the Internet.
I'm disconnected
My IP addresses are in conflict
Baby, I just wanted to Google you
Looks like I'll need a new router
"Let it Burn" became about keeping a Pop Tart in the toaster too long.
Anyway, we probably would of left before that but we wanted to see "Metal Skool" the headlining 80's hair metal cover band extrodinaire. I wanted to reminesce about the party we had in Bobby Sanner's garage when I was in 7th grade- the guys wore silk shirts and slowdanced with girls with big bangs who were vastly more mature than us to "Something to Believe In" by Poison and all the songs now deemed "Monster Ballads."
Instead, we got the seedier side of 80's rock. Before Metal Skool made their appearance, a leering, scruffy middle-aged guy came out with a camera and came on stage and began to film attractive women in the crowd and project the image on the huge movie screen-sized monitor.Perhaps unsurprisingly, Leering Camera Guy begins zooming in on cleavage (we are in a Hollywood club here where modesty is a rumor). Some of the more tipsy girls then begin to flash the camera or begin groping themselves.
Okay, and I forgot to mention one little detail - there was about 10-12 people at the show from Kairos, including the pastor J.R., and Andy (a G.C.M. staffer) and his wife Kim. So you can imagine it became a little awkward hanging out with other Christian when you have Hollywood Girls Gone Wild playing on a 50-foot screen right in front of you.
Some people left (most were already gone anyway by this point) the rest of us were awkwardly looking around waited for Metal Skool to get on stage so Marti Gras could end.
Finally, the curtain drops, the smoke machines churn, and four big-haired guys (in their mid to late 30's maybe?) jump-kick and fist pump their way into "Rock Me Like a Hurricane." Now, there are some obvious postmodern ironic nudges here, the fake-baked bassist keeps peering into a hand mirror and the guitarist is doing some over-the-top guitar wanking.
After the song ends, a girl comes on stage and is goaded into flashing the crowd and the band (ironically or not) strings together about a thousand oral sex jokes. Finally they kick into Bon Jovi's "Livin' on a Prayer" but the debauchery doesn't stop there. Mid-song an Asian girl gets on stage and bends over, revealing dental floss sized thong, and two other girls crawl up on stage and begin exchanging saliva particles (ahem). Instead of going on to another song, the band implores the girl not only to go topless but to show her vagina, too.
That's when we (no doubt way overdue) finally leave the Key Club. Walking in a daze outside the Strip and looking around wild-eyed, the only thing I could think of saying was "It's all true...Everything."
"Welcome to L.A." says J.R. with a sheepish grin.
