She Wants Revenge/Living Things/Great Northern/Rocco DeLucca/the Honorary Title/Nico Stai, July 2 at the Echo & Echoplex

As I've said before, L.A. is a great place for unordinary shows, shows put on for benefits being common, with one-off performances by usually local bands. I don't know the person that this show was put on for to help but it had some great bands, mostly local, and I hope the person benefited. Vanessa and I just knew that we liked the bands that were playing and it would be a night out, which I reckon is all you need. We started out at happy hour at the French place nearby, knowing that it was close to the place but not realizing it was a short walking distance from the Echo/Echoplex, a place that somehow both of us had missed going to (though I dimly recall maybe going there once, maybe maybe). The place was confusing since there's an entrance on Sunset Blvd. for the Echo and another on Glendale Blvd. for the Echoplex, two clubs in the same building which are usually separate but as it happened, for this show, it was free to pass between the two, for two stages, one upstairs (the tinier Echo) and the downstairs (the Echoplex, a decent size). Both excellent, fairly intimate venues, once you figured out how to get there.

Vanessa didn't love Great Northern last time but I dug them, so we saw only part of their set, enough to see that it was a bit more solid and maybe just better in a space larger than the Roxy; The Honorary Title apparently was/is one guy and a guitar and nothing more notable than that; Vanessa went mostly to see Nico Stai, who she lusted after the last time we saw him; I don't know what Rocco DeLuca was about. This guy opened for U2?; The Living Things are one of the best live bands going, if not overall best bands, touring today. These guys' live shows put most headliners to shame. You want rock n' roll, well here it is. This band was who I came to see and even though they were playing to only about 50 people, they acted like they were putting on the heaviest set of their their career and they didn't disappoint. You get the feeling they're putting every ounce of their beings into the performance, whether it's for two people or an arena (where they should be). It's ferocious and dirty and has a message, all of it colored by monster riffs, a confident swagger, and a performance so tight that it can go as loose as they want because they can spare it; She Wants Revenge have worked their hometown of L.A. hard, enough to headline over Placebo for the local date on their joint tour and probably enough to make everyone in town sick of them but they were still big enough to play last at this one and in a space small enough that the place got packed by then. They closed the show, and with enough material from their first album to mostly forgive playing more from their second. But I've missed most of their other shows (sometimes purposely) so this was mostly new to me. I don't even care that they sound just like Interpol (who sound just like Joy Division. Hey, the similarity actually helps). By that time we were done with the extended show and for Vanessa to get home in time to go to work the next morning. We were even there early enough to get street-parking, which surely would have been impossible if we had gotten there after the show started.