Thursday-night rockabilly and Americana at Linda's Doll Hut, with Russell Scott and His Red Hots headlining all this month, is shaping itself into the closest thing I've seen to a salon in quite a while; on Aug. 6, one drunk local favorite after another sat in with the band, a-screamin' and a-yellin' and feeding the guys beer from a pitcher. What fun! And the OC Weekly rack inside is festooned with stickers for the bands Smear, Loogie and Ten Foot Pole-which, after all, is exactly how we like to see ourselves.Eddie Wilson, the scary-convict-lookin' singer for Hellbound Hayride, joined the band for a rompin' psychobilly version of “Folsom Prison Blues.” Throughout the night, he grabbed the mic from Scott and announced/yelled, “Russell Scott, goddamn it!” I think he was happy they were there. Big Sandy and Scott's voices melded sweetly. They sound great together-much better than Sandy sounded sitting in with Nashville comers (and I think they rock!) BR5-49 on three consecutive nights (yeah, okay, so I was there, too) at the Crazy Horse Steakhouse & Saloon and the Roxy last week. And Gary Gomez lit up Veronica. Scott, who's got a sexy little-girl voice, is the only person i've heard coo Peter, Paul & Mary's “Leaving on a Jet Plane” in the style of Donovan. It was smashing! And, of course, there's Gene, the lead guitarist, who is darling and sang a pretty Little Willie John song about his love being as firm as a mountain, and who actually flutters his eyelashes when he sings-in a good way. We were enthralled. Gene, will you marry me?It was as crowded as a high school triple-kegger party for Drown's (formerly known as Yesterday's Tear) record-release party Friday at Fullerton's cavernous Club 369. Tom the Plumber and I malingered out front and talked about hunting (dove season opens Sept. 1). Drown's new album, Product of a Two Faced World, is (in part) about how much it sucks to get dropped from your label, and it features dark, uneasy internal turmoil. If I could, I would print the band's entire press release in this column; Lauren (no last name needed, I guess), the group's founder and vocalist, has such bitchen things to say throughout the page-long, single-spaced manifesto. On being dropped from Elektra Records: “We're not a pop band. I hate everything to do with pop. I'm not selling out to them or anyone who tries to make me into something I'm not. This music is real, and the underground understands it, period. Fuck Top 40.” On Geffen Records: “Once again, a record company had the bright idea to go Top 40. . . . What a waste of time. They said they would put the record out but not guarantee promotion. We said forget it; we'll find someone who understands this kind of music and the people who listen to it.” On their move to OC from LA: “We decided to move to Marco's home of Orange County to start over and build our new team. We didn't just give up like most people in our position would do. Our level of determination is unstoppable.” On the addition of keyboards and programming: “There's only so much you can do with guitars, and we just wanted to go further.” On the games and fake people they've had to deal with: “We are all tired of the games and the fake people we've had to deal with. I would love to rip the throat out of everyone responsible for the past three years . . . and you know who you are.”And here's the summation (not from Lauren): “It is obvious that the past three years of disappointment and anguish had an impact on the writing of this album. . . . Musically and lyrically, Drown drags us into their world. Sadly enough, as we listen to them, we see it is the same pathetic world we, too, live in. We created Drown. They are a part of us and our two-faced world.” Lauren, will you marry me?My pathetic world included going to the grand opening of Skeith De Wine's Santiago Street performance art/happening space on Saturday night just in time to see the cops leaving, along with most everyone else. De Wine and poet Lob both got tickets ($100 for Lob; $170 for De Wine) for disturbing the peace; they were very sad. I felt disappointment and anguish-until the party moved two doors down to Seth and Chuck's, where everyone looked like Andy Warhol, except for Chuck, who was kind of resembling a mix of Christopher Walken, with his shirtless white suit, and A Clockwork Orange's Alex, with his curlicue eye makeup. You go, sweetheart! And of course, Seth didn't look much like Warhol because he was wearing a cow suit. As for the lovable performance artist Squelch-who recently graduated from CalArts, and are we ever proud! No, I'm serious!-he was walking around with one butt cheek hanging out of his leopard-print bikini briefs. A high-up local arts personage came out of the studio giggling. “Squelch's testicles were just hanging out of his bikini,” he informed me gleefully. “So I fixed them for him, and he started peeing on the floor!” We stepped around the puddle and walked in. Squelch was a trifle foxed; he was running around saying he was looking for his tape. Since we were there, he said, he wanted to do his new piece. We didn't see him again. Squelch, will you marry me?The Comite Colbert press breakfast at Troquet Bistro in South Coast Plaza was amazingly delicious: the omelets were tangy, and I've never tasted such a croissant. The organizers wanted us to know that the importers of French luxury goods-and South Coast Plaza has possibly the largest Comite Colbert contingent in the state-are for culture and against counterfeiting. Things started to get interesting when they brought on a representative from the Artists Rights Foundation, which they support. I figured maybe they were actually backing something slightly edgy. I figured wrong: the Artists Rights Foundation is an umbrella group for all the film guilds. It was started by those bastions of edgy: George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and (okay, he's edgy) Martin Scorsese. Their demands: that the director's vision be preserved-damn it!-in subsequent edits. So scandalous! I may faint! I didn't want to marry anyone.
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