A crazy night at the cool Matt Costa show

I'm usually not into Matt Costa's type of music, that folk-tinged, raspy kind of stuff. But when you're a reporter in my position, open-mindedness comes very handy when you have a prominent OC performing arts center inviting you to his sold out show. So, there I was, Thursday night at the Orange County Performing Artscenter for the Matt Costa show.

I had been to this Costa Mesa venue about a month ago for the Cold War Kids concert, but the vibe in the air was different this time. The lobby surely wasn't buzzing and the lines at the bars weren't snaky either. The demographics, to put it simply, were different. Conversations I overheard in the bathroom consisted of cramming for lab hours in a high school AP class, to older women chit chatting about working with the lead singer from the opening band, Satisfaction, at a nearby skin care corporation in the finance department. Oh, the interesting landscape of random-land.

The vibe, anyway, was enhanced by juicy remix hits from some of my favorite bands—like the Cold War Kids, the Klaxons, Interpol and Peter, Bjorn & John—that played at the break time between the Satisfaction and Matt Costa sets. (I arrived after Satisfaction ended their set, about 20 minutes before Costa took the stage at around 10:05 p.m.) I found my way to the front row, finding a spot to the side of the stage, uncomfortably in front of the loud speakers. I could feel wind coming from those speakers—that’s how close I was.



But the crowds were thick with teens dressed to the nines in their best knee-high gladiator sandals and Newport Beach jewelry. Yes, the front row was lined up with precious young girls hoping to lock deep stares with the singer.

Finally, with my paper Moleskine notebook and pen in hand 10 minutes into Costa’s set, I attracted a few fans of my own. One man brushed his way to my right for a while, and then to my left, at last asking, “What are you writing?” I’m usually quite secretive about my note-taking, and so this kind of question made me so much more self-conscious than ever before. It made me realize something: Matt Costa, or even his band musicians, could possibly see me from the stage and identify me as “the critic.”

This inquisitive stranger didn’t quit, either. He repeated stared at my notebook every time I opened it for more notes and asked me the usual questions—like, Who do you write for? “Cal State Long Beach. Daily student paper,” I said loud enough over a stompy Costa ditty. “Do you know a writer named Sean—?” “Sean Boulger?” “Yeah, I just got through interviewing with him.” “Oh, the Union Weekly.”

Then I started thinking of all that rivalry talk I hear around campus—how the Union has something better. May be. But they weren’t around scooping up all the Behind the Scenes treatment I was just digging into.




For about the next two hours, the lead singer of Satisfaction (yeah, that's who that was), Michael Rosas, and I pretty much stayed on consistent wavelengths. He tamed some wild fan girls, for example, who jumped their way onto the stage, while I shot footage and snapped their glittery wickedness on our side of the stage where we all collected in front of those woofing speakers. Rosas made new friends, while I greeted some old ones (yep, Cassie, the girl from the Cold War Kids show was there this time, too). By now, people knew Michael was someone exclusive, either recognizing him from the previous set, or recognizing his authentic rock star behavior. As for me, I was handling myself with more mystery, but still looking quite “in” with my nice notepad and careful reporter eye.

It turned out that Rosas liked me more than I thought, being completely uninhibited as I snapped candid shots of him having flirty moments with his new admirers. After the show, we even got into the “free fun” photo booth outside where we took some pictures of us two together. There, surprisingly, I also ran into Jonny Bell from the Crystal Antlers and then we took photos in the booth, too.




I’ve got to admit, the music wasn’t the center of attention at this show. (OK, OK... It was actually pretty good and fun and different.) But on top of it all, I felt like I slipped into a new dimension I hadn’t experienced before, concluding that rock shows, or any show/concert/event, is not always about why you ever went, but about who’s there (yourself included) and how they’re going to make things happen.

Photos by Barbara Navarro.

Finding Tina Lai in a good 'somewhere'

This week senior printmaking student Tina Lai is showing "In a Lot of Somewheres," a collection of etchings and lithographs she calls very personal. Emphasizing the personal aspect of this collection, which is at the Merlino gallery space in the south campus, Lai has also placed a few items she considers revealing of her philosophy and personality. These objects include a guitar and its case (which she keeps open for donations), a working typewriter, a vintage record player, a kid's toy dangling from a silkscreen, and then a tower with a few, buzzing blades of green grass.

I found Lai in her gallery space last night, reading a bulky copy of Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged." I asked her, Why Rand? and a whole lot more about her pieces. Her responses are below. And if you'd like to meet her today, or simply stop by to leave her a note, don't walk, run! The show ends at 5 p.m.


Lai's flyers read, "25¢ admission." And though Lai means serious business, she or more less goes on having a Joshua Bell moment as visitors come and go. The fee, Lai says, is more of a donation for the artist—the print (shown above) serves as a reminder, and the accompanying guitar case laying on the floor below it adds more to the request. Lai explains that this set-up came as an inspiration from "Atlas Shrugged." "In the book, people create things and others say 'We need those things, so we should get this for free.' But there's a process (to creating), whether you're a scientist, artist or musician. It requires a vision, then work and going through series of trial and error to have art, a symphony, a new technology. In our world people say art should be free. But why? People pay to go to concerts and theaters, why not art shows and art galleries?"


In this lithograph, a sort of variation of a pointillism drawing (and, moreover, a recreation of Gustave Caillebotte's "Paris Street, Rainy Day"), Lai delves even deeper into the general meaning behind her show. She says, "My pieces deal with people and their identity and their space, and how (when you freeze them) they fit into their surroundings. It's almost a mundane moment." Lai also points out the gay couple and their modern clothes, compared to Caillebotte's late 19th century apparel.


Georges Seurat's "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" gets remade here, too. Lai pointed out the two male ducks and abundance of gay partners. In front of this painting you'll find a tower with a few blades of grass buzzing around at random times. Lai says she added this (and a few other pieces) to her show so that there'd be more than just flat prints to adorn the room.


This is by far Lai's most abstract piece in "In a Lot of Somewheres." "These are all accidents. I had to figure out how the white could come together. It's similar to life, how I find randomness interesting." This piece is made of Lai's postcards made of silkscreen prints. Whereas the usual is to make perfect duplicates (in the silkscreen process), Lai used the imperfect outcomes to make this piece. "The postcards (their pattern) are all imperfect individually, but as a whole they work together. In life, horrible circumstances seem to occur when things don't go together, but I like to think of the different possibilities of all they ways things could happen... Or is happening, you're just not in that space right now."



The portrait here is one of a musician who works at a hospital as a technician. It's an etching with watercolor; the drawing on the record (which is right below this drawing in the gallery) is a silkscreen. Lai says she used a photograph for inspiration to this piece, and hopes this inspires many more viewers to wonder, especially, she notes, with all that space she left on the drawing.




Here, Lai expresses her relationship with her mom, the most personal piece in the show. Lai explains the dual-tone silkscreen: "You see a face and couch, but really, the space is between all these unspoken thoughts. It reflects my philosophy of growing up, how as a daughter, there's less to rely on your parents and grow up and realize they're just people. And still, there is a special bond... My mom gave birth to me, and that means that there will always be a strand of her in me."


"The 'LOST' sign is meant to be whimsical. It's the one piece that most reflects my personality; it's very random. I do things like this." What did she lose? "It's a poster I made with pen and posted them around the art department. For 10 years, I had a (one-of-a-kind) retractable knife. But I lost it, and I never have found it. It's something that's being in different spaces and being in different somewheres."

All artwork by art student Tina Lai!
All photos by Barbara Navarro.

A love note to Tina Lai

4/23/08

Dear Ms. Lai,

Golden dreams and good wishes, like buzzing money in the pocket. 'Tis good, you know, art to relate this is what I like to see... Thank you for such fun...

Sincerely, Daniel Helman (geology dept.)

Tina Lai saves these notes in a special somewhere! Here she is, the artist herself, showing me all the notes admirers have left for her on her typewriter. (And then I get distracted by the that sign that says "LOST." Hmmm... Tina explains that to me, too. My notes coming soon! For now, play the video!)

One night, tangled deep with We Barbarians

Contrary to the sick image I developed of We Barbarians after first hearing their music, this tight-knit indie rock band—simply identified as "Quon, Van Heule and Warkentin" on their MySpace page—came out for a benefit show at Costa Mesa's Detroit Bar last night. That totally softened my views. What this Long Beach, grunge-sounding band was really like: The lead singer is a sliver of a man who belts out huge, fevered screams that ask for gentle attention; the bass player, partial to the right side of the stage, maintained a heavier demeanor, slipping deep into smouldering grooves most of the time; and the drummer, who sported some sexy scruffy facial hair last night, you'll find most likely camouflage behind a cluster of a silvery drum set, banging away like a secret agent. No, these weren't black-stained pouty hipsters from the LBC, even if their songs all seem to be cut from the same bruised fabric. Instead, their following surely seem like the in-the-scene kind, and definitely not moody. Did I mention that We Barbarians' fans also include Long Beach poet Derrick Brown and the Cold War Kids? They were also in the audience (or on stage!).


Photos by Barbara Navarro.

We Barbarians will next play at Spaceland
on Monday, May 12.

A psychedelic night: Crystal Antlers, Thursday

LOVE
WHO: CRYSTAL ANTLERS
WHAT: KBeach Concert Series (second in three-band line-up)
WHEN: Thursday night, on stage from about 8p.m. to 9p.m.

WHERE: Nugget Pub & Grill, somewhere on CSULB

WHY: Oh, they're one of a handful of Long Beach bands next in line to be huge

Here's a snapshot of my notes...

• High energy
• Their sound: can be mellow, droopy, intensely psychedelic, even, and then utterly sparkly at the same glittery moment, especially with the boys' charming on-stage chemistry
• Saw some crazy instruments handled by Sexual Chocolate, the band's percussion man, including a minature baby blue piano he held in his hands and blew into like a whistle
• The keyboards were beautiful, fusing and bridging each song with the next
• "A Thousand Eyes" is a hit; it's so popular, everyone went ooh and ahh over it
• The crowd was at a colorful, voluminous capicity (obviously, they were there for Crystal Antlers... 95% of the crowd left right after the last song)
• For the last two songs, two worshipping audience members stood up to sing along literally face-to-face with the band's singer/bass player Jonny Bell
• The boys ended their set, and everyone was happy
• Crystal Antlers hung out to sell their cool six-track, self-titled EP "Crystal Antlers;" some fans asked for their autographs, others for their pictures
• I spoke to Jonny Bell afterwards, too. I was amazed at how sincere and collected he was after all that sweaty, high-energy rocking

Cyrstal Antlers will next play at the Prospector in Long Beach for the Fidotrust Fest on Saturday night.

Photo by Barbara Navarro.

Other music events going on around town tonight...
{open} bookstore, with bands of the experimental genre for Third Saturday on Retro Row
Fingerprint Records, with Silversun Pickups
Grand Prix, with Pennywise
Detroit Bar, with We Barbarians