Hipsters on the storm: Spaceland’s baptism by rain
LA
music
SPACELAND IS THE PLACE
THE INFLUENTIAL MECCA OF THE “SILVER LAKE SCENE” TURNS 15
I
BY DREW TEWKSBURY
n the long history of nightclub open-
ings, Spaceland’s introduction to
Los Angeles in 1995 stands out as
particularly troubled. In the pouring
rain, Mitchell Frank — then a 33-year-
old musician, DJ and promoter — moved his
sound system into the venue, where he acted
as booker, doorman and soundman.
“That first day was so chaotic,” Frank says 15
years later, sitting in the comfort of the down-
town offices of his Spaceland Productions and
remembering the wet March evening when
the Silver Lake institution first opened its
doors.
On that first night, L.A. music writer (and
L.A. Weekly contributor) Jeff Miller was just
16, and he almost didn’t get in because he was
underage. “There was that biblical, torrential
rainfall, and we were sitting at some restaurant
across the street just waiting to get in. Rob
Zabrecky [the singer of Possum Dixon] had
called me earlier and left a message saying,
‘Come see the show tonight, we’re opening
for Beck and some band called the Foo Foo
Fighters.’ ”
Back in 1995, Frank was one of many bud-
ding promoters hosting bands. Today, he’s a
successful entrepreneur and the Spaceland
club is one of his many endeavors, which
include El Prado bar, cantina Malo, the twin
Echo and Echoplex venues, and his umbrella
organization, Spaceland Productions. He also
serves as president of the Echo Park Chamber
of Commerce. If you’ve hung out in Silver
Lake or Echo Park, chances are you’ve set foot
somewhere connected to Frank.
“I just never wanted to be that guy with a
gray ponytail sitting at the back of a show — no
offense to guys with gray ponytails,” Frank
jokes. “So I branched out to other businesses.”
Though his canny entrepreneurship would
help redefine the demographics of Silver Lake
and Echo Park, back in 1993 the first inklings
of the concept that would end up becoming
Spaceland stemmed from a stereotypically
slackerish “Eureka!” moment.
“I was watching TV late at night and we were
spacing out and we saw these girls scantily
clad with T-shirts, and [the soundtrack] was
like, ‘Dreams, Dreams, Dreams of L.A.’ Then
this guy came on and hosed them down, very
sensually. Then the address popped up: 1717
Silver Lake.”
Frank lived a few blocks from Dreams of L.A.
and was convinced that this was the perfect
spot for a different kind of club. The goal was
to create a place in his neighborhood where he
and his local friends in bands could hang and
play without having to go to Hollywood. And
the Dreams of L.A. location was central to the
artists and musicians gathered in the hills of
Silver Lake.
Mitchell then approached the venue’s
owner, a German expat named Horst Wol-
fram, with a proposal to host a monthly night
called Pan. Wolfram had owned the build-
ing for decades, first when it was called Red
Chimney in the ’60s or the ’70s (memories are
hazy — it might or might not have been a gay
club), which he then turned into Dreams of
L.A. during the disco era. At some point in the
’80s it mutated into the Top 40 club Frank saw
advertised.
When he and his associates approached
Wolfram with the idea for Pan, the club owner
ILLUSTRATION BY FRED NOLAND
begrudgingly gave them Thursdays. Gradu-
ally, over the next two years, Frank split with
business partner Nancy Whalen, expanded
the club night to three days a week, and even-
tually, after a rebranding as “Spaceland,” took
over the entire operation in 1995.
With the help of talent buyer Liz Garo and
booker Jennifer Tefft, Spaceland developed
a reputation among musicians and fans for
breaking acts before they hit the big time.
Frank readily lists the many legendary nights
he witnessed at his club, including Jenny
Lewis’ first impromptu show, where she just
walked onstage and began to play. “She wasn’t
on the bill, so I was about to throw her out.
Then we heard that voice,” Frank recalls.
They once booked Elliott Smith for a “secret
show,” one so secret that fewer than 100 people
showed up. “This was before text messaging
and the Internet, so I just got on the phone and
called everyone I knew and said, ‘You have to
get down here now!’ ”
But few of those early shows matched that
first rainy night, when Frank made up for the
less than ideal atmospheric conditions with
a now legendary roster. Foo Fighters had just
formed and Dave Grohl was still considered
just the drummer from Nirvana (their last-
minute addition did not even make it to the
commemorative poster).
And the headliner had only recently gradu-
ated from being a folk musician playing Silver
Lake house parties to national attention
through the unexpected hit “Loser.” “Before
the ‘Beck thing’ happened,” Frank laughs, “he
was just the guy who would show up and play
Woody Guthrie songs till early in the morn-
ing.” Beck of course would soon ( 66 >>
| laweekly.com / April 9-15 2010 / LA Weekly
The Beat
by Gustavo Turner
BOSSA
NOVISSIMA
CAETANO VELOSO’S
TROPICAL DISTORTIONS
Caetano Veloso plays the Greek
next Thursday, April 15, marking the
belated U.S. release of his 2009 album,
Zii e Zie, a challenging collection of
new songs co-produced by his son
Moreno.
Veloso is 67, a year younger than
Dylan, four years older than Bowie
and only a few months younger than
that other poet and sonic revolution-
ary Lou Reed. The mention of his
English-speaking peers is not trivial.
Veloso’s towering, game-changing
influence on Brazilian music (both
lyrically and musically) from the late
’60s onward has been compared to
Dylan’s, and his polysexual persona
and sympathy for new sounds have
allowed him to reinvent himself as
many times as the singer of “Ch-Ch-
Ch-Changes” or his American idol
crabby Uncle Lou.
One could say that in the arrange-
ments of Zii e Zie, Veloso is trying to
reshape the world-conquering sounds
of mid–20th century Brazil, the bossa
nova and the samba, for the new mil-
lennium. Using Bowie and Reed as
points of reference, one could also say
that this difficult, rewarding reinven-
tion points back to the angular sounds
of Station to Station, with a healthy
seasoning of sawlike distorted electric
guitar, jarring interventions reminis-
cent of Carlos Alomar or of Reed’s
late-period masterpiece Ecstasy and
his recent live shows.
A lot of attention will be paid to
Veloso’s dirgey experiment in dub
condemning the American aberration
at Guantanamo Bay, but the ostensi-
bly political lyrics are just an excuse
for another of the album’s studies in
discomfort and repetition.
The best track, and perhaps the
least straightforward, is opener
“Perdeu” (“Lost”), which pares the
bossa of Gilberto and Jobim into
something primitive and incantatory
(a minimal beat that recurs in “A Cor
Amarela” and “Incompatibilidade
de Gênios”), punctuated by the metal
machine music of the guitar. Imagine
Dr. John’s “Mama Roux” interpreted
by vintage-era Fripp and Eno and
you might get an idea of the unusual
collision of tropical fever and cold
surfaces Veloso has achieved.
Nobody will ever mistake much of
Zii e Zie for Brazil-ploitation bachelor-
pad music. The man who godfathered
Os Mutantes has created a further
mutation. His U.S. label, Nonesuch, is
very good at selling comfy jams to the
NPR/Starbucks crowd — here’s hop-
ing it figures out how to market this
disturbing little gem.
( 65 )