Jenny Lewis [© Autumn DeWilde]

BOOMERANGST: Rock In A Hard Place

By Roy Trakin

Rock & roll in the ‘50s and ‘60s took place at sock hops in high school gyms or, most memorably, at movie theaters like the Paramount in New York City, where teenagers lined up to see teen idols like Frank Sinatra and later on, group shows featuring the hitmakers of the day, presented by famous radio disc jockeys like Alan Freed or Murray the K.

The first pop music show I ever saw in person was the Four Seasons at the old Westbury Music Fair on Long Island, a venue in the round, with the band facing one way for the first part of the show, then swiveling 180 degrees to play to the other half of the audience, the rest left to stare at their backs.

In fact, there were no venues specifically built for rock & roll until promoter Bill Graham opened his Fillmores East and West, the former on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the latter in San Francisco coinciding with the height of the Summer of Love.

I still remember the first time I saw a show at the Fillmore East, still the most eardrum-splitting I’d ever heard, featuring a little-known rock band from Flint, MI, named Grand Funk Railroad, opening a triple-bill that also featured Fat Mattress, featuring ex-Jimi Hendrix Experience sideman Noel Redding, and headliners Jethro Tull.

At the Fillmore, you felt part of a secret order, something forbidden, apart from the mainstream, a world quite different from the one you left behind outdoors.

Of course, rock & roll has long since gone mainstream, even though concerts are now held in arenas and stadiums that are built for everything else, from basketball and ice hockey to football and baseball.

With the live experience the only thing you can’t just pilfer or download from the Internet, major concert promoters like Live Nation and Philip Anschutz’s AEG have launched several state-of-the-art concert venues in Los Angeles to compete with this city’s wealth of historic landmarks, from the Hollywood Bowl, the Greek Theater, the Avalon (formerly Hollywood Palace) and the Gibson Amphitheatre at Universal City Walk to smaller refurbished sites like the Wiltern, the Orpheum, the El Rey and the Henry Fonda.

Live Nation recently tackled a multi-million-dollar renovation of the legendary Hollywood Palladium, where Frank Sinatra once sang with the Tommy Dorsey Band, while AEG has now added the 2,300-seat Club Nokia as an alternative within the main, 7,000-seat Nokia Theater, all part of the downtown complex surrounding Staples Center.

Sunday night was the grand opening, featuring an open bar and a steady stream of hors d’oeuvres harking back to happier, more robust times, with Beck and Jenny Lewis the first show.

The spanking-new venue, complete with a dance floor below and steep stadium seating that gave everyone a clear view of the stage, was magnificent, the seats, as Ricardo Montalban might say, of rich Corinthian leather, smelling like a new car.

With Coachella creators and alternative mainstays Goldenvoice promoting, the club is clearly upping the ante on the competition, though one begins to wonder if there’s an audience willing to pony up the money to see shows on a consistent basis. It also brings up the argument about what current bands will turn into tomorrow’s headliners, and whether we’re seeing the kind of artist development that would result in a future crop of groups capable of filling an arena.

Of course, the key is giving the average concertgoer a VIP experience, and to this end, Club Nokia fills the bill, offering clear sight lines from every seat, as well as a sound system that’s even better than the one you’re listening to through those ear buds that may even make you deaf in your old age.

As the pipelines for music get ever more sophisticated, both in cyber and real space, the real problem is what goes through those conduits. We need more rock which can capture that primitive excitement like it did in the beginning, something that is hidden from the mainstream and communal, a mutually held secret that connects you to other members of an exclusive club, which gradually accepts everybody who wants to join. Unfortunately, in my experience, that proved way more likely to occur, say, in a rundown one-time biker’s bar on the Bowery, without an amenity in sight, than it was in a shiny new pleasure palace built specifically for that purpose.