Awkward Press

Poor Vampire Weekend. First everyone said they were the most amazing thing to happen to music since the hollow log. Then your mom bought the album, and everyone said they were overrated garbage. Well, ya’ know what? Your mom was right. I don’t care what it does to my H.Q. (hipster quotient), Vampire Weekend’s first album was an excellent record. Yeah, it was made by a bunch of rich (has that ever been confirmed?) Columbia University students who sing about things like going to college and hanging out on Cape Cod, and yeah, it’s heavily influenced by African music even though none of the members are from Africa, and yeah, they got inordinately successful in a short amount of time. But who really cares, when they do what they do so well? They are not trying to present themselves as anyone other than who they are. And as to the criticism about them appropriating African music, that’s just rock n’ roll. It’s no different to me than Led Zeppelin appropriating the blues or David Lee Roth appropriating being gay.

That having been said, when Eric initially called and told me that Vampire Weekend was playing a free surprise show in a tiny amphitheater in Boyle Heights, I didn’t immediately jump at the chance to go to it. I was getting tired from my Week of Many Shows and I was anticipating having to fight with crowds of people to get a spot. Until Sarah reminded me that we live in Los Angeles, and people don’t do things here. I mean, that’s not exactly true. People in LA do plenty of things. There are lots of things to do here and when I do things, I often see people there. But they don’t do things like rush out the door to hit a last-minute free concert, particularly if that concert starts on time. People in LA don’t like sudden movements. They like to make plans weeks in advance and then skip out on them.

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The night started out with great promise. I met Sarah at the Cha-Cha Lounge, a bar in Silverlake that has a photo booth and a vending machine filled with things like Big League Chew and Growing Pains trading cards. Our friend Mark was having a going away party because he’s moving to Seattle. Mark is one of those people who really makes you doubt the existence of karma. He’s among the nicest guys I know, but he finds himself in the middle of awful, completely unprovoked disasters on an almost daily basis. When his truck was stolen out of his driveway a few weeks ago, he decided it was time that his romance with L.A. come to an end. A week after the truck was stolen, he got a ticket in the mail from the state of California. Whoever stole the truck went through a toll booth without paying. No word yet on what Mark’s going to do about the ticket, but I’m sure it will come back to haunt him somehow.

For Mark’s going away party, he’d asked the bartender if he could play nothing but Chicago and the Doors. Chicago, because he’s from Chicago, and the Doors, because they are the musical equivalent of Los Angeles. The bartender said no at first because he was afraid the regulars would be turned off, but he changed his tune when Mark promised him $30. Mark had decided to add America to the mix as well, because we live in America. He told me that night that America is actually not from America, which I never knew. Actually, I just looked it up on Wikipedia, and they were sort of from America; they met at school in London, where their fathers were stationed in the Air Force. I just spent the last five minutes reading up on America on All Music Guide. You can really fall down a rabbit hole when you start clicking around on All Music Guide. Did you know they released an album in 2007 produced by Fountains of Wayne’s Adam Schlesinger and James Iha from the Smashing Pumpkins? And that it sounds kind of amazing?

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