So yeah. There is this one band in LA that I have been hanging out to see since we got here, I have been loving some tracks on their myspace and have heard heaps of people rave about them, so how stoked was I when I hear that No Age are playing a show at the public library? Not only that…it was free! And with Mika Miko! Another band I was really keen to see.

The other guys were keen also, so we after packing up all our gear we head to town and find a sweet parking spot…sure it cost $15US for 2 hours…but it was sweet.

We’d talked to a few people in LA and they had never even heard of a show happening at the library, let alone with two of the most buzzed about bands of the day. It was pretty easy to find where the show was happening, a big stream of indie punks was easy to follow. Luckily we managed to be among the first 250 people there and got in and got seats in the auditorium.

After a silly long wait..what for I have no idea since the room was totally full…and with an unbelievable 5! Uniformed officers on duty in the room. Why aren’t they off fighting real crime? Don’t they know indie kids couldn’t even get violent if they tried. After about 30 mins, which was actually pretty cruisy since we all had nice seats, Mika Miko came on, and they were great. Just exactly what you’d expect to hear from a group of young girls on Kill Rock Stars… party disco punk, you know it. They were all great musicians which kinda gave them an edge and their drummer was awesome. They had a double vocal thing going on, a sax and started a conga line around the auditorium for their last song. They were really fun, and everybody in the room was smiling…kids were dancing and a sweet vibe was set.

PIC: Mika Miko (other photo is of No Age)

You could totally feel the anticipation for No Age’s set. Set in a totally unique environment, there were at least half a dozen “official looking” videographers and as many again photographers, you just totally felt we were about to experience something special….and boy did we! We witnessed 30 minutes of the most special boring garage rock crap I’ve ever seen. I couldn’t believe it…its like each song had 20-30 secs of awesomeness just to be killed by 3 minutes of crash heavy drumming and rock riffing, you know…I’m all for bands not sounding like their recordings (haha…Over the Atlantic live are ridiculously different from their recordings) but, man…where was the experimentation? The only thing remotely alternative about their performance was how they had heaps of effects pedals and didn’t use them. A beautiful drumkit…but after about 20-30 minutes staring at the drumkit and debating whether the guitar tone of the average coporate tool fiddling on an electric guitar in a guitar shop was better of worse then the boring band we were watching we decided to bite the bullet and walk out.

You could tell we weren’t the only ones bored out of own minds. Several people had left and the looks on the kids faces said it all. I guess I should take it easy since one of the guys was sick…but man. I’ve seen band members on their deathbed do the business time and time again…

Haha. I have a distinct feeling these guys will prove me wrong…but I saw Death from Above in Sydney a few years back (which was amazing btw), and No Age just seemed like a very average wannabe version of that band.

So after the show, we headed outta town, saying goodbye to LA, we drove through downtown LA, Skid Row (Rhys wanted South Central, but I was too scared, so Downtown was all he got) and boy was it depressing. There were bums and rubbish everywhere, there was a bum actually bent over in the middle of the road tying his shoelace who wouldn’t move, so all the traffic had to go around him.

What did bums use before shopping trolleys?

So, we get the hell outta LA, and head east, towards our next destination BISHOP! This was perhaps the show I had been looking forward to most of the entire US visit, a friend Tricia contacted me a while ago and offered to put on a house party, being all about partys in small towns…I immediately accepted.

An amazing drive through the desert took us to High Sierra (Check Ghostplane song) and the town of Bishop. The house we arrive at was next door to a very ominous looking trailer park and the guys were thinking I had been pulling their legs about having a friend live here, but we arrive on Tricia’s doorstep to find dinner waiting, a box of books donated from the local independent book store, vouchers for coffees from the local Café, a donated PA, staging, lighting, and the makings of a pot luck dinner party before the show the next day!

We could believe our luck! All getting our own queen size bed each, we get down to business sleeping asap.