The USC Thornton School of Music senior Hailey Wild had the WFNM night at Hotel Ziggy rocking. It was a perfect blend of hard rock anthems and the Sunset Strip. She opened up the set with Nirvana's "Heart-Shaped Box" that solidified her rocker bona fides from the start.
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| Hailey Wild at Hotel Ziggy |
I do enjoy going to Club Tee Gee on occasion. Why? I often don't know anything about the bands or singers on the bill. It is an exploration of the unknown. I seldom even do any preliminary research on who is playing on the bill other than a cursorily look at Instagram pages. And honestly, sometimes the fewer Instagram followers the better, because I'm looking to be one of the first photographers to capture some photos of a band or musician.
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| Wayne Redfern at Club Tee Gee |
I've seen Pom Poms at least 6 times throughout the years. The band has played alongside some of my favorite local bands each of those 6 times. I first came across Pom Poms when they played with The Controversy at one of my previous favorite stomping grounds, The Satellite. It was a shared residency and I saw the pair team-up twice. In regards to The Controversy, it appears that the band is on hiatus though I do know that lead singer Laura Vall and husband / bandmate Thomas Hjorth are still involved in music.
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| Pom Poms at Harvard & Stone |
The band Together Pangea was the special guest headliner for Kills Birds' performance at Gold-Diggers. The Los Angeles based band has been around for north of 10 years. How many times have I seen Together Pangea? Zero times. For as much time as I've spent catching bands across Los Angeles, there are still bands out there that I've never seen. I had to admit this at the venue. A person who knows how long I've hung out in the scene joked that I must have seen the band when they first started out. I responded honestly that I knew of the band, but had never seen them.
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| Together Pangea at Gold-Diggers |
How did I cross paths with Warm Human (Meredith Johnson)? If you've come across my Instagram page or even this blogsite, you know that I enjoy a good Janelane set. Just a few months back, Janelane had a record release party at Zebulon for the album Love Letters. Scanning through Zebulon's website, as I so often do, I noticed that Janelane was once again playing at the venue on November 10th. The band was opening for Warm Human who I had never heard of, but was also having a record release party that night for Hamartia. That was a double reason to head on out.
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| Warm Human at Zebulon |
I came across Moonily while covering one of my favorite Los Angeles based punk bands, The Paranoyds, for Buzzbands. Venues had just started to reopen in mid-2021 and The Paranoyds were playing The Echo. To me, it was one of the first big local nights and the place was packed. I recall during The Paranoyds set fans were having fun crowd surfing. It was such a joyous time to be back listening to live music. The three members of Moonily also joined in the crowd surfing craze of the night, coming to the stage together. Their set had already put them on my list of new favorite bands and their fun stage dives cemented that opinion all the more.
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| Moonily at Harvard & Stone |
I was introduced to Kills Birds via Buzzbands. Back in 2019, Kevin Bronson sent out a monthly list of bands that he wanted his various photographers to cover. He had Kills Birds highlighted as a band he really wanted a photographer to cover. At the time, I'd never heard of them, which is amusing as just a month earlier I had covered Echo Park Day 2 for the site and in the compilation post for the day (that included photos from various photographers) Kills Birds was the highlighted band in both the title and lead photo. I also noticed that the band was playing at the Bootleg Theater, which was one of my favorite venues (since shut down due during the COVID shutdown). That convinced me to do a little research on the band by checking out their music on Youtube. My memory isn't perfect about things that happened five years ago, but I'm pretty sure that their video for "Ow" was the song that got me to put my hat in the ring to shoot the band.
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| Kills Birds at Gold-Diggers |
About every other Monday, The Witching Hours and Safe Travels Presents presents their Alphabet Soup music series. As can be derived from the name, each night is dedicated to an alphabet and the bands / musicians names start with that alphabet. Recently, they got to the letter S. That leaves 7 more letters to go, which will take them into early 2025. Will they re-start the whole series again come 2025? One can only hope. The series used to take place at the Resident, but as the Resident has shifted away from live bands they had to move on to Non Plus Ultra. They mentioned on Instagram that this resulted in their funding getting cut. I'm sure that will play a role in how things go in 2025. Hopefully, the music community comes out to support this labor of love music series.
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| Sarah Once Was at Non Plus Ultra |
I first came across Halo Kitsch at a WFNM in November 2021. I was blown away by the set. Since that time, I've tried to catch a set as often as possible. I've learned that she loves to use parentheses in her song titles such as "i was a virgin (on drugs)" or her current biggest hit on Spotify "All (Your) Fault" and many others. I also learned that she got fascinated with the word daisy cutter and finally was able to include it in her song "i was a virgin (on drugs)."
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| Halo Kitsch at Broadway Night Lights |
You never know what hidden gems you'll discover when you go to a WFNM night at Hotel Ziggy or Bar Lubitsch. Some of my favorite bands and singers were discovered at a WFNM night such as coming across King Mala and Halo Kitsch on the same night at Bar Lubitsch.
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| Kat French at Hotel Ziggy |
I don't get to catch Jesika Von Rabbit all that often. I first came across her in the band Gram Rabbit in 2011. One has to jump to 2019 before I caught her again, now performing under the name Jesika Von Rabbit. That is very infrequent, but throughout my years in the Los Angeles music scene, I've often wondered when I'd get to catch another set. Jump to 2024 and I happened to notice that she was doing a Saturday night residency at Harvard & Stone for the month of October. I knew I had to make it to at least one night of that residency.
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| Jessica Von Rabbit at Harvard & Stone |
Jesika Von Rabbit has a Saturday night residency for the month of October 2024 at Harvard & Stone. I was aiming to go to the October 12th residency, but I happened to notice that Halo Kitsch was playing an outdoor street festival and I decided to catch that set instead and switch to seeing Jesika Von Rabbit on the 19th. That was a good trade off, because I got to catch Essenger. I'm doing a round about way to get to Essenger, but when I first saw the night's line-up, I thought Jesika Von Rabbit was playing with the Los Angeles band Essencer. I took a closer look at the name and realized there was a "g" versus a "c."
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| Essenger at Harvard & Stone |
I've followed Boy Deluxe since 2017. At the time, the band was called Ever So Android and they'd just relocated from Seattle. I was perhaps the first Los Angeles based photographer to catch one of their sets. I was an immediate fan of Hope S and True Murra and have seen them numerous times over the years. This year, I've seen them 3 times. And, hey, those who have a somewhat deep history of the Los Angeles music scene remember the jokes that Hope S and Kimi Recor (Black Flamingo, Draemings, Kevin, etc) were sisters.
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| Boy Deluxe at the Regent Theater |
