Rocco DeLuca w/ Marvelous Toy @ Spaceland 01-26-09

Photos in this post courtesy of Benjamin Hoste.

w00t! Spaceland on 01-26-09

To my surprise, the last Monday residency night at Spaceland for January was packed. Certainly we here at Classical Geek Theatre have our finger on a pulse of the LA music world but it never ceases to amaze me how you can go see music every other night and still miss whole swaths of the LA rock cloth...

The most important thing to put here in this post is that THE GALAGA MACHINE AT SPACELAND IS FIXED. At last! It took four months for them to do it but Spaceland finally installed a new mobo into my beloved cabinet. The colors on the monitor are not quite right, but pan-handlers can't be demanders. My skills are rusty and I shan't humiliate myself by reporting the high score from the evening.

And so the CLASSICAL GEEK THEATRE GALAGA CHALLENGE is back on!


Marvelous Toy really elevated their game last Monday night. I still get the sense that this band is finding their identity and I'm not always sure what it is they're going for, but they have a flair for the bombastic and Jordan Hudock writes some good songs.

It was a tough crowd but "This City is a Washing Machine" played well. The middle of their set lagged a little, though they closed with a killer performance of "Waiting for the Fire". This band means business and I would keep an eye on them this year.




Assisted with a bevy of guest musicians that joined and left the stage throughout the set, Rocco DeLuca journey through a wide range of rock genres. He kicked-off the set with a couple of searing blues-rock jams, I mean, real Robert Plant-type stuff. Real-deal music hundreds of miles in the thermosphere above some nerdy indie kids jerking off in a garage. I was decimated. Grinning ear to ear. Typing exclamation points into my iPhone.

And then, he moved into some folky stuff which was pleasant but unremarkable. Further down the line came some equally unmemorable roots rock tunes before closing with more of what he started with. It would have been an uneven set if it hadn't opened well and ended well.

When DeLuca played swampy, riff-heavy rock I was in love. Everything else sent me to the back of the room. Yes, he's a poet and a lyricist, but the loud, technical stuff shows the greater sum of his talents. Why waste that awesome, primal throat on some whispy slow-movers?