Restavrant at the Silver Lake Jubilee on Saturday, May 21, 2011
Restavrant (yes with a V, a smart spelling, as it would be almost impossible to find anything about a band named restaurant on the web) was not supposed to play on the Sunset Stage, but they must have been filling up for a band that cancelled at the last minute? It does not matter, they were a nice surprise and made quite a sensation at the Silver Lake Jubilee.
The duo gave a complete new meaning to the term garage rock – although they rather play a sort of raw dirty blues – as the drummer was not using any real drum, but rather some DIY percussion made of a bucket, a sort of metallic door, plus a pile of car license plates. He was beating the hell out of these things with wood drumsticks that were constantly chopped in little pieces. He had a full collection of them on the floor as a matter of fact.
Troy Olaf Murrah and J. State are from Texas, where they met before moving to Los Angeles, and they played a ferocious dirty blues, with echoing raucous vocals over a muscular slide guitar. Some of their songs had a country-tempo rhythm, the sort of thing that made people jump in circles, producing exhilarating dances and stomping energetic numbers.
Troy Olaf Murrah was playing his duct-taped guitar straight as an ‘I’ most of the time, playing a sort of British invasion via Texas, the two of them delivering a set full of punk energy and hillbilly attitude.
They made their sound check shouting two celebrity names ‘Halle Berry’, ‘Chuck Berry’ in the mic, and they were drinking at the same bottle of white wine in turns between the songs. ‘It’s the rapture’ yelled Troy ‘and it’s also Jessie’s birthday!’,.. oh yes, the rapture, everyone had forgotten about it anyway.
