It's cool, she's with the band(s).

Quote of the week:
Singer: "Dude, I called you twice and you didn't answer your phone, and now I get in here and your phone is sitting right next to you!"
Drums: "Look, you didn't call me, it didn't ring!"
Singer, pulls out phone and flips to recent call list: "RIGHT HERE! Dialed Lucas at 253am!"
Drums: "It's only 130am! What, you're calling me from the future now?"


A guy I have tremendous respect for once told me that I am like "that girl from Almost Famous... you know, what was her name? Penny... yeah, Penny Lane."
I took it as a compliment, and have definitely lived up to that rep this week.

I've never been to so many live shows in one week, except for when I was working for David*Crowder Band. And the craziest part? I didn't pay for one of them!

"She said 'what?' and I told her that I didn't know..."
Saturday night: Laced Confection CD release party. Bouncer let me in free, probably by accident.

"RING THE BELLS!"
Monday night: The Perfect Victim concert at on Sunset Strip. I know the band; got in for free. The Perfect Victim opened for Metal Skool, an 80's cover band that plays notoriously wild shows every Monday night at the Key Club. We went to the Rainbow Room for dinner with the band before the show. The cool thing about the Rainbow Room is that despite the fact that it is one of the most well-known restaurants in LA with an A-list clientele, it is also some of the cheapest food I have found in Southern California. While sitting at our huge red leather booth noshing on their famous raisin nut bread, I looked up to see a man walking toward our table dressed all in black with a Jared Leto hat on... I recognized the jawline immediately, causing mine to drop to the floor as he made eye contact. Oh, yes, my celebrity sighting status has gone up three notches: it was Dave Navarro, of Jane's Addiction fame.

I've never really listened to any of Dave Navarro's music, but I did know that he has had the most ridiculously rock star life of pretty much anyone ever, including a murdered mother, a non-English-speaking father, three marriages, a heroin addiction, and an autobiography written before the age of 35. He sat down at the table next to us with a huge case marked Fragile, looking exactly like a rock star ought to look when eating dinner at the Rainbow Room at 7:30 in the evening.

Anyway, we walked next door to the Key Club and made our way to the pit as the band slipped backstage to do their set. Their set was awesome, which was great since several label scouts were watching. After they left the stage, we met them at the bar and the guitarist, who I had never met, threw his arm around me and yelled into my ear "MY NAME IS PRIESTLEY, I LOVE YOU, AND I AM A GUITAR GOD!" Then later on: "Me and Jake [the other guitarist] are such guitar gods that they are putting us on the cover of Guitar World!" I've set up ads in Guitar World before, and I knew the chances of an unsigned band making it to the cover were slim, but Priestley was so convinced that I decided to ask Jake, who had already consumed the exact amount of alcohol you would expect a 21-year-old lead guitarist to have consumed after playing a flawless set to Capitol, Hopeless, and Universal Records reps.
"Jake!" I yelled in his ear. He turned toward me and put one of the extra straws in his drink into my mouth.
"Are you and Priestly really going to be on the cover of Guitar World?"
"Someday..." he responded dreamily.

Metal Skool, the headlining band, took the stage and we made our way to the back of the pit to watch. They played all the amazing 80's covers-- Ratt, Whitesnake, Guns n Roses, Kansas, and, most importantly, "Don't Stop Believin'" by Journey. I ran into a guy who I think might have been Shannon Leto, the drummer of my favorite band, but I'm not sure... After the show we stood on the side of Sunset Boulevard, did the emo rally call, and eventually made our way back to the other intern's apartment, where we both spent the night, showing up for work the next morning still unshowered and vaguely dirty.
Bedtime: 4am.

"The sky resembles a backlit canopy..."
Tuesday night: Sold-out opening night of Incubus' Light Grenades tour at the Greek Theatre; I had an all-access pass and my name on Incubus' list.

There was a problem with getting the list to guest services, so the other two Immortal interns and I were stuck waiting with the rest of Incubus' friends outside the venue until a few minutes before the opening act, but it didn't matter because I SAW INCUBUS (with an all-access pass!) for free in their hometown! Of all the shows I've ever been to (and that's alot), I can honestly say they put on the best concert I have ever seen. Despite the lead singer's lack of the theatrics so popular in his genre, the band got along better than any I have ever seen play together-- they clearly enjoy what they do, and that ALWAYS comes through in a performance, no matter the music style. It also helps that they're on their sixth album, so the selection of songs they have to pull from is unbelievable, but they still played all three of the songs that I "couldn't live without" hearing live, including an acoustic version of "Earth To Bella," one of those songs that, ever since the first time I heard it, I have wished was about me. AND they played for almost two hours, forgetting the intro to one of the songs from their first album, which always makes me laugh. (They even found a June bug onstage "In July, how odd!", which the lead singer threw at the drummer, who jumped off of his stool and refused to sit back down till they found the bug and got rid of it.) Post-show we hung out in hospitality, watching out for Brandon Boyd, and I randomly ended up meeting a guy who works for Billboard (that's why I LOVE this town-- I do music, and everywhere I go, music people collect and it's wonderful!). The venue was a little too big to be really phenomenal, BUT it's set against one of the Hollywood Hills, surrounded by tall pines, and the stars shining down... awesome. Best part of the night (SLASH perhaps highlight of the summer) was the post-encore song, an extended version of "Wish You Were Here," one of my all-time favorite songs. Amazing. Lyrics to come. Post-show we went to House Of Pies. If you can't tell by the name that it was OBVIOUSLY made for post-concert eats, then I don't know... I had pecan pie with ice cream, which we ate sitting at the counter in the diner.
Bedtime: 130am.

"You are the bluest light..."

Wednesday night: Sky Eats Airplane/Odd Project/Emarosa show at the Knitting Factory. I was on the band's list, got in for free again.


"Ok, ok," you may be saying, "you were on the list on Monday because you knew the band, on Tuesday because they're signed to your label, but this? How did you pull that off?"

Kasey, the other intern, and I decided to go to this show over the weekend. I had heard and liked Sky Eats Airplane, so I checked out their opener (Emarosa) and found out they are from Lexington, KY, one of the [many] places I consider some form of home. So I sent them an email, said I was from Kentucky and excited to see them live. I got an email back, and before I knew it Kasey and I were on the phone with the band, who had no place to stay the night of the show, which we found out early in the afternoon on the day of. But Kasey has her own apartment, and I always stay there after concerts anyway... and Kentucky boys just rock anyway... So we went to the show, windmilled with the best of 'em, and then drove circles on Hollywood Blvd until the band's equipment was loaded up, at which point we went to IHOP (where else would you take a band after a concert?) and chowed down. After introductions had been made, without thinking about how awkward it would be, I accidentally blurted "You don't have any Ale8 in your van, do you?" All jaws dropped; all eyes turned to me.

"Nnnnooo, but you get MAJOR props for knowing what that is," the guitarist replied. They followed us back to Kasey's apartment where we watched Johnny Knoxville's movie (you know which one), drank orange juice, and one by one fell asleep. Luckily they had sleeping bags, so it wasn't a problem that all they had to sleep on was the living room floor. The next morning Kasey left for work at 8, but I didn't have to leave till 1030. I got up, got dressed, and tiptoed through the gauntlet of sleeping emo boys in the front room. That afternoon, their show for that night got cancelled, so they asked if they could stay with us again. Which meant I was staying with Kasey again. She and I got off work, met back at their apartment, and waited for them to get back home. Because we were all kind of exhausted, we decided to go to Venice Beach, wander around and get dinner. We rode there in the band's van (all kinds of madness-- I felt like Mark Wahlberg in Rock Star, especially when the Talking Heads came on). We got to the beach and it was closed (surprise surprise; it was at least 10 by the time we got there), but we jumped the fence (Dashboard Confessional, anyone?) and played around on the sand for a couple hours. Eventually we got too hungry to hang out any longer, so we left and drove from Venice to the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica. We wandered up and down the Promenade, listening to the street performers, which boggled the band. ("Why do they come out here to play? Do they think someone will recognize them HERE and decide to sign them? Maybe we should give them some money...") Pretty soon I ended up in Urban Outfitters, the only store on the promenade still open, with two of the guys shopping for new girl pants and cheap sale t-shirts. ("I love this place, cuz everyone that works here looks like me and they never stare like we're weird.") We got dinner at a Mexican place somewhere where the server asked "are you guys in a band?" and we just laughed, eventually riding in the band's dirty stickered van back to Kasey's place in West Hollywood, where we hung out some more, did laundry, and all around had a blast, especially after the lead singer returned from a food run to the gas station with a roll of Oreos and a half gallon of milk to drink out of a 64 oz. Big Gulp cup. The best part of the whole night was that they didn't stop being a band just because we were there... And hanging out with them for that long was awesome; I grilled them about being in a band, management, etc., and they grilled me back about working for a label, post-college plans, etc. I felt kind of bad for them-- they're trailer blew up halfway through the tour and they had to buy a new one, now they're all completely broke. Glimpses of my post-college days? Perhaps. Among the six guys in the band, there were six flat-irons (I had never even met a guy who knew what a hair straightener was) and more pairs of girl pants than I could count. All I can say is that I would trade wardrobes with any of them in a heartbeat, and probably I'd be able to fit in all of it.

Oh, and then on Friday at work I called the guys from my favorite band signed to our label-- how's this for awkward, though: I thought I was calling their manager, so when the 17-year-old drummer answered the phone I was so thrown off neither of us knew what to say.

As glam as it gets...,
Live from Los Angeles,
Penny Lane's replacement,
Sugar High.


P.S. This week the other intern from Immortal and I went to Sprinkles Cupcakes for a snack. Sprinkles, in case you didn't know, is Pete Wentz's preferred snack of choice. Pete Wentz is the mouthpiece of Fall Out Boy, and all he ever talks about is those cupcakes... so we went to try them for ourselves. They were good, but an hour later Kasey and I both felt so sick we swore never to go back. Not only that, but we also didn't even see Pete there (which means we'll probably troll the place again even though the cupcakes weren't that good; Oh, the pains of being a groupie).