Photo by Jack GouldThere are personal trainers who give you a gentler workout than the fleet of Virgin Megastore employees who worked the press list at the April 13 No Doubt in-store show at Triangle Square. Guy in the front of the store: “Oh, you need to go see the person at the back of the store.” Person at the back of the store: “Oh, you need to go upstairs and find so-and-so.” Person at the top of the stairs: “I'm going to need to have you go back downstairs and find so-and-so.” Person downstairs: “Okay, you need to find so-and-so upstairs, but I can't let you go upstairs until you have the pass that so-and-so gives you, and he's upstairs. I'm going to need to have you go over there and wait in line.” “Oh, fuck me! Nooo!” I cried as I approached the ravenous, teeming mass of alterna-fans (many of them sporting pink hair, Gwen's current color) waiting to charge the performance area, held back by a metal gate and a few strategically placed security guards. I thought I had it bad until I spoke with the passel of teens/young adults at the front of the line. How true is their No Doubt ardor? They'd been there since 8—8 the night before—which is amazing, but not as amazing as the fact that they slept in the elevator and didn't even look like people who had slept in an elevator. No elevator hair or anything. But a lot of pink hair. Deep pink, fuschia, cotton candy, Easter egg, lavenderesque. All shades of pink were there, bobbing in time with the band, which played an invigorating set featuring more old material than new, including a few tracks from the collector's disk The Beacon Street Collection. As for fans still sporting blue hair, which is Gwen circa 1998: hello! Wake up! Pink is the new blue! (Alison M. Rosen)
NO GUANO: It's a certainty that Saturday's big-boffo Earth Day celebration-cum-music-fest at Fullerton's Hub Cafe will be quite mega, what with Reel Big Fish, Save Ferris and Zebrahead heading a day-and-night-long bill that also includes sets from the Killingtons, 00 Soul, the Moseleys, Square, Busstop Hurricanes, the Autumns, the Relatives and John Easdale, among others. Just so's you know, the Aquabats had to cancel, which is too bad—God knows what shenanigans they would have pulled, as their stage time was billed as “Breakfast With the Aquabats” (we suspect pancakes would have been involved somehow). The turnout should still be huge—it's free, after all—and if you go, we'd like to remind you not to turn yourself into a walking contradiction by leaving a stream of litter in your wake. Earth Day fest organizer Carlo Terranova (that would be Latin for “new earth”) tells us there'll be plenty of trash receptacles on hand. Give a hoot! (Rich Kane)
NOVOCAINE FOR THE CLUELESS: Seen the new KLOS TV commercial? It begins with a tight shot of dental x-rays as the opening chords of Ozzy Osbourne's “Crazy Train” rumble underneath. Then the words of an unseen person begin flashing by, talking about how he—it has to be a he—started picking up radio signals through his tooth fillings. The names of well-worn KLOS rock bands scroll past: “Led Zeppelin, Metallica, AC/DC.” “Then one day,” the text continues, “it began picking up rap. It's amazing how much you bleed when you pull a tooth out yourself.” Snooty, veiled racism? Perhaps, though it is interesting that the ad plugs the same radio station that caused so much controversy last year over its most definitely racist “Black Hoe” promotion—small, dark, plastic gardening tools emblazoned with the words THE BLACK HOE and distributed as gag prizes to listeners of the Mark N Brian morning show. KLOS, along with its parent companies, ABC and Disney, was also the target of a racial-discrimination suit last year brought by Judy Goodwin, the station's traffic manager. Not that the strictly formatted—some would call it segregated—world of contemporary commercial music radio has ever been about bringing the colors together (African-American musicians on KLOS? Sure, there's Jimi Hendrix and . . . Jimi Hendrix), but that's a whooooole other story. (RK)
THIS MEANS YOU: Sign posted by the flier rack at Penny Lane Records in Long Beach—”If any promoters take away any stacks of rival promoters' fliers and replace them with their own, they will be thrown away. Yes, we will notice. Yes, we pay attention. Think of your karma and be cool.” (RK)
