There was a Saint Motel secret show at the bootleg theater on Saturday night, although it was not that secret because they had announced it on twitter the whole day and on KCRW the previous day where Saint Motel was the musical guest of ‘Morning becomes eclectic’. But it was still called secret show by the media and also it was very late, 11:45pm!
Seeing two shows in the same night is difficult, especially in LA where the distances are always to take into consideration, but when one is early and one is late it becomes possible and driving back from the Crazy Horse where I had just seen Mick Rhodes playing, I decided to stop at the Bootleg to see if I could still buy a ticket! May be the lateness of the show had stopped some people? I was pleasantly surprised to learn it was not sold out, $8 and I was in for the second show of the night.
Red Arrow Messenger, one of the previous acts, was about to get on stage when I came in and they were pretty good, although, you could tell, everyone was anticipating the pop eruption of Saint Motel.
The ambiance was different from that of the Hammer museum, the Bootleg is a tiny place and everyone, or almost, seemed to know intimately the members of the band: A/J said hello to many people, and even danced with two girls before getting on stage; it was familial, like a late night buddy reunion.
When they started the show, people pressed themselves to the stage, and suddenly the small theater was packed to the roof.
Live, Saint Motel is truly a band that releases all the possible energy human beings can produce, and when all this energy is confined in such a small room, it rebounds on the walls and the ceiling and the result flirts with insanity. Hey people, it’s not punk rock why are you behaving like it was some hardcore band! I saw crowd surfing in this tiny, tiny place, and I still don’t know how they did it!
But above everything, these Saint Motel boys just want to have fun, and a lot of it! It’s communicative, it’s unrestrained, and I doubt there was another place in LA where so much energy was enclosed in such a small volume at this time of the night: an explosion of the senses, a big bang creating a whole new universe of sounds.
Of course, they played a lot of songs from their ForPlay EP, they even started with their fireworks-like ‘Eat your heart out’, then they continue with the liberating ‘Do everything now’ and I guess the crowd followed the order to the word.
But they also played a lot of new songs, like ‘Off the wagon’ with its funny guitar effects, the fast guitar ridding ‘Robert’, the catchy and intriguingly titled ‘At least I have nothing’, the hard-rocking-head-banging ‘Funny brain’, which, I think, they had already played at the Sunset junction fair.
The cinematic side was present, they had their usual visual effects behind the stage, as well as the glam rock part as almost everyone got a mask at the entrance (I unfortunately arrived too late to get one).
It was damn dark in the bootleg theater, there was almost no light in this place and it was a pain to take good pictures! But who needs lights, when electricity is generated by human beings!
At the end of the last song, A/J did a little somersault with his guitar, legs in the air, without missing a beat, then tried a crazy crowd bath, which gave the idea to the people to rushed on stage. They just wanted to have fun and they did.
The set list, that I stole from the stage:
Eat your heat out
Do everything now
Skullet
Dear dictator
Off the wagon
At least I have nothing
To my enemies
Funny Brain
Butch
Robert
Stories