Mongo Nation

City turns on Hollywood staple “The Knitting Factory”

By Jeremy Azevedo

In a move that is sure to please no one, the city of Los Angles is cracking down on music venues that they deem in violation of their “Conditional Use Permit”. First to come under fire: popular club “The Knitting Factory” in Hollywood.

The Knitting Factory in it’s short history has not only single handedly brought positive change to its part of the neighborhood (the former slum at Hollywood and Sycamore, now a lucrative business mall), but has become a standard bearer for great live entertainment. Not only is it possibly the best suited venue for all-ages shows, but it’s also perhaps the only good reason for Los Angeles residents to ever venture west of La Brea into a generally touristy area with little else to offer non-tourists.

What purpose or benefit could there possibly be for the city to turn on The Knitting Factory? To make room for more overpriced condos that won’t sell, or maybe a restaurant that will change ownership three times a year at the expense of thousands of musicians, fans and local residents? I’m not sure I can follow the logic, but what I can do is let Knitting Factory VP of National Operations Morgan Margolis tell you in his own words what’s going on and what you can do to help:

“Dear Friends of The Knitting Factory,

I’m writing this letter to garner support for an upcoming public hearing by the LADBS (Los Angeles Bldg. and Safety) against our venue on Thursday July 17th 2008.

The Los Angeles Building Department is aggressively trying to revoke our CUP (Conditional Use Permit), for those of you who don’t know, a CUP is the conditions that all Restaurants, bars, clubs etc must run under in order to keep their doors open, if you lose your CUP, you are essential closed for business. After eight years in a crime riddled Hollywood corridor, the LADBS and vice, states that our venue is a “nuisance” and we do not comply under “upscale restaurant guidelines” (nonsense, food is always served and continues service and will someone please define “upscale” for me). They are also trying to say we do a steady stream of Erotica here, which is absurd, as we’ve only had 3 Adult Entertainment parties over 8 years and 10,000 shows.

Bar owners beware; the city is on a major crack down for what they deem CUP violations.
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A darker & more polished offering from an underground favorite

By Jeremy Azevedo

Alkaline Trio has always been known for combining gothic melodrama with hard-driving punk, a combination that has long pleased the elitist music underground. On their new album, “Agony and Irony”, Alkaline Trio has tipped the scales a little bit further into Smiths territory than their more hardcore punk fans will probably appreciate.

It’s probably a smart decision though, because crust punks aren’t exactly known to purchase a lot of albums, and Alkaline Trio has greater expectations to live up to now that they’re on Epic records, with Josh Abraham (Slayer, Linkin Park, Atreyu, Pink, etc.) producing.

So… Agony and Irony is not a particularly upbeat album, but I’ll be goddamned if it isn’t catchy as hell anyway. Not since The Cure has a band been so adept at making such miserable subject matter sound so poppy. Most of the songs here are real finger-snappers, despite being all about sadness and death. It’s like Alkaline Trio is the evil twin of one of those corny pop punk bands like Angels and Airwaves or whatever band those vapid dorks from Blink 182 are in these days.
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CraveOnline Soundcheck featured Artist!

By Jeremy Azevedo

Simply based upon their appearance alone, it would be easy to write Pierce the Veil off as just another cookie-cutter emo band. Like most people over the age of 25, I see tight pants and scene haircuts and I immediately recoil as a result of being assaulted with a decade’s worth of lame guitar pop and whiny lyrics.

After listening to their new album, A Flair For the Dramatic and meeting the band personally, I can safely say that Pierce the Veil possess a style and spirit that places them head and shoulders above their peers.

Hailing from a generationally musical family, brothers Vic and Mike Fuentes clearly exhibit a wide range of styles that range from screamo and melodic hardcore to punk rock, early Michael Jackson era funk, Spanish guitar/Flamenco and even a little bit of shred metal. Every song on the album is widely varied, not only compared to its neighbors, but within the actual songs themselves. The changes in style and tone are masterfully arranged in technically complicated patterns that mimic the climax and catharsis of life in a way that “emo” music is always expected to and yet often fails to.
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A Billion good reasons to see the new Futurama movie

By Jeremy Azevedo

I never thought I would see the day that Japanese tentacle porn made its way into mainstream American television programming, but here it is before my very eyes…

“Futurama: The Beast With a Billion Backs” is the second feature length episode of a four part series that will in turn be broken up into twelve separate episodes and broadcast on Fox next year. Sounds confusing, I know, but try not burn out your meager attention span trying to think about it and let’s just focus on the matter at hand.

The first installment of the new Futurama series, “Bender’s Big Score” was somewhat plagued by the “Look at me! I’m back on TV!” syndrome that plagues shows that go through lengthy periods of seemingly permanent hiatus. While longtime Futurama fans surely enjoyed it immensely, it maybe tried a little too hard to cram too much self reference, too many cameos and too many inside jokes into it’s meager run time. Plus there were those intolerable musical numbers… But there was a lot of Bender, which is never a bad thing, so we were essentially off to a pretty good start.
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CraveOnline Soundcheck featured artist!

By Jeremy Azevedo

Shapes of Race Cars is an independent indie/glam rock band you and your lady-piece can both agree upon. Lead singer/songwriter Dylan Champion has managed to combine the Sunset Strip cock rock swagger that you probably like with the pretty-boy pop melodies that your girlfriend (and the radio) loves.

The end result is kind of like listening to a mix tape of The Hives most spastic garage rockers mashed together with The Fray’s minimalist ballads. This may sound like an incongruous combination at first, but by the second half of the album it becomes apparent how well the different stylistic approaches compliment one another.

As an album, “Power” starts out strong with the title track, also called “Power”, a clever and catchy rock song about greedy willful women. The next few tracks shift gears into a mellower style before jumping back into rock mode with the crowd-pleasing sing along “Sound the Alarm”. The last song on the album, “Apocalypse Hurts” is a vintage-y John Cougar Mellencamp style rocker that is the polar opposite of the song that started the album out, which just goes to show how versatile the band can be.

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