6/7/03

Dear Diary,

A brief respite from the June gloom hanging over much of Los Angeles was just what 82 Unlucky fans needed on Friday, June 7, as the band celebrated the anniversary of their first live performance with a gig at the Cat Club on Sunset Boulevard.

Owned by former Stray Cats drummer Slim Jim Phantom, the Cat Club is a dark, intimate venue that allows a group like 82 Unlucky to turn down the volume a bit. The cramped setting also allows musicians to create a more personal connection with fans, who can shimmy right up to the stage when they’re not being crushed into a wall by some beery troglodyte in a “Fuq Iraq” t-shirt. What with the high number of buxom young ladies the Unlucky boys are drawing these days, the setting makes for an energetic evening, and no doubt doubles the sweat content for those fans who like the music, but love the biscuits.

The Cat Club is located on Sunset Boulevard in the heart of L.A.’s music scene, right next door to the venerable Whisky. This doesn’t always make for the happiest marriage, sadly enough: I’ve gone to 82 Unlucky shows at the Cat Club before and searched ad saecula saeculorum for parking, because there’s ten million screaming jackasses outside waiting in line to see Toby Keith at the Whisky. I mean, are you people serious? Toby Fucking Keith? This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper!

What’s worse, I’m laying around getting blazed on some stinky chronic the other night, and tune in for some “Stoner’s Delight,” that being a look-see at the old Country Music Channel, and there I see Toby Keith singing with Willie Nelson! That’s right, the Red-Headed Stranger Himself, lollygagging about with some goateed clown who wouldn’t know a steel-pedal guitar from his momma’s Singer sewing machine! Et tu, Willie? Looks like I’m not the only one getting blazed off that stanky stuff, eh?

Which brings me to a funny story about this Bob Dylan/Willie Nelson concert I went to once with my roommate’s girlfriend when he was out of town, and ended up burning off my own eyelashes by mistake during the…wait, what? Oh, 82 Unlucky! Right, right, the review of their show at the Cat Club! Anyway, moral of the story is, Dylan was awesome, my eyelashes grew back, and Toby Fucking Keith was nowhere to be found. I dunno, maybe he was the roadie for the warmup group, probably wearing a “Fuq Iraq” t-shirt, to boot. Grumble, grumble.

So let’s see…82 Unlucky…the Cat Club. Oh, right! Anyway, the show got off to a disappointing start, on account of the song these boys insist on using as their sound check, “Hero,” by Enrique Iglesias. Now, don’t get me wrong, anyone who engages in public intercourse with Anna Kournikova is all right in my book, but when 82 Unlucky sings this toothless, syrupy ballad, lead singer Kyle Ellefson is making up half the words. This would be less of a concern if there weren’t only about twelve words in the song, all of them easily transcribed into Spanish for the huge Latin market (which, unless my sources are incorrect, has proved impermeable to 82 Unlucky’s sonic assaults thus far). It’s a warmup for the group’s vocals, no doubt, but the only person it seems to reach is that married girl who’s been stalking Ellefson for about six months.

From there, the band launched into some of their old standbys and crowd-pleasers, including “Mr. Just Because” and “Lonely Only,” the latter ratcheting up the emotion with its bittersweet vocals and resigned dismissal of a love gone wrong: “I could make a list of all the things that I should say/ but I don’t think I’ll miss you all that much.”

Other pleasant diversions in the set included an excellent rendition of “Waiting for Mary,” as well as an up-tempo take on “For The Holidays.” The latter was one of the first songs the band wrote together and has been the focus of much musical experimentation since, including a brief and bizarre period that included a guy actually named Holiday playing a fiddle. Man, they must’ve really combed the Ozarks to find that cracker, with his dirty-ass goatee and beady little eyes. Scared the bejeezus out of me, that’s for sure. Bassist Dave Scales takes lead vocals on “For The Holidays,” with Ellefson and guitarist F. Jason Sheppard backing.

The second half of the set gave the crowd a chance to hear “Want Me Now,” featuring keyboardist Joey Aucoin on lead vocals. Aucoin also wrote the song, and a close listen reveals an element of stalker-like intensity in the lyrics, complemented by Aucoin’s heavily arpeggiated play on the keyboard and drummer Eric Wensman’s frenetic skins work. After a few minutes, the crowd was lost in a world of sexual predation and frank, no-holds-barred pleas for fulfillment matched only by the band’s behavior at the post-show party, where the skewed male/female ratio didn’t stop these boys from giving it the old college try.

No one at these parties ever wants a romantic tryst with the reviewer, of course, even when he quotes Baudrillard and once read Gibbon’s Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire just to be able to denigrate it at cocktail parties replete with dry martinis and drier witticisms. Oh no. Probably because they’re all singing along to Toby Fucking Keith.

Daddy Jums