Nellie Mckay, March 14 at Largo

One of the best things about living in the Los Angeles areas is the kind of special shows you can get to. Nearly every band comes through town (or at least close enough), as well as the secret shows, warm-up dates, beginning or ending a tour (sometimes both), and big acts doing shows in small places. Nellie McKay isn’t a big name but she should be. She also doesn’t tour (though she toured enough a few years ago to open for Alanis Morrissette, I recall reading) and she’s not well-known (though she had a short article in Rolling Stone and they rated Get Away from Me, her first album four stars (still underrated)) but she does shows here and there, usually a few in L.A. every few months, and usually at Largo, when it was at the old location on Fairfax, which at least used to be a small restaurant/bar that hosts low-key acts (often Jon Brion and sometimes Aimee Mann) and comedy (Sarah Silverman and David Cross are there so much you’d think they live there). Vanessa had never been there (though she’s lived about two blocks away from there for years) so I made dinner reservations for the show (having dinner there is how you reserve a place for the show). At a small place like that, any seat is near the stage but we were only a few feet away. Ms. McKay came out and played a charming set, mostly on piano but also some ukulele and she worked the crowd until there couldn’t have been even one person who wasn’t under her spell. I told Vanessa that she didn’t need to know the songs since it was more about the show than hearing familiar songs and McKay played a few songs even I hadn’t heard (including feminist anthem "Mother of Pearl" and "Zombie"), surely some new songs she’d been working on, and probably some old ones I just hadn’t heard. Between songs she told jokes and it was hard to tell what was practiced and what was just coming to her at the time. I don’t know if the loopy blonde is a character that McKay is playing or if that’s really her (the ditzy genius) but whoever she really is, she puts on a fun show. She probably isn’t playing anywhere near you but if she is, you really ought to go. She’ll probably be playing somewhere small.