Erotic City

Aw, crap. We'd spent too much time at the The Waffle again. But it's not difficult when you've got good company and good food, all at 25% off because of a Facebook promotion. Red velvet waffles, and gluten-free waffles that taste like cake are not a game, and neither are waffle ice cream sandwiches. PB Wolf was due to play at Freak City down the street in 15 minutes, and we hadn't even got our check.

We did our best to hurry to Freak City before midnight, but with so much stuff going on that Saturday night in Hollywood, parking of course was a bitch. I didn't think we'd make it. It was approaching 12:30 when we were finally walking into the venue. The $5 cover charge was a good deal, but shit, had we already missed half his set? Or maybe his entire set if he was only doing a short one! Argh! Dammit!

Whatever... as I was waiting for Lisa and Shimosh to pay, I saw a man wearing a racoon cap suddenly appear behind them. Uh... um... HOLD UP. There is only ONE person in the whole world who can rock that look... and YES, OMG IT WAS PB WOLF!!! Wait! WTF? What the hell was he doing here? Right when we happened to come in? Wasn't he already playing??? Had he already played??? I was so taken by surprise that I only managed a lackluster "hi" when he passed by.

But that's ok, a few minutes later I managed to get a picture with him:



WU-TANG! He was super nice and down to earth. The best part was finding out that he hadn't played yet... I'd seen him play nothing but '90s videos at FYF last year and I caught him at Club Nokia on New Year's Eve, and I was kinda blown away both times, so I was expecting nothing less tonight. It's an '80s night tonight. He HAS to play Prince, I thought.



When he launched into a ton of eclectic '80s shit I'd never heard or saw before, I was impressed. He KNOWS his shit. He doesn't have to rely on hits to rock the party. Some of it sounded familiar, and I know I've heard more than one or two songs on 93.5 KDAY or HOT 92.3 (formerly The Beat). The videos make it so much more engaging and nostalgic. He introduces you to so much new shit while bringing you back to the stuff you already know, and it's so fucking fluid how he does it, you barely notice the songs/videos changing, no matter how many genres he treads...



...LIKE WHEN, WITHOUT WARNING, HE SUDDENLY HIT US WITH RASPBERRY BERET!!!



It felt like pure blissful victory. He chose the right song with the right video for the mood. He could have gone the obvious route and given us something from "Purple Rain", but he's PB Wolf and he knows what the fuck he's doing. Especially when he played what looked like a rehearsal video of Michael Jackson's "Thriller".

There is something undeniably hypnotic about what he does. You have to witness PB Wolf VJ to truly understand the magic. I've suddenly found myself getting more into the '80s lately, bizarrely enough. I've never particularly liked that decade much until pretty recently. Maybe it's too much French electro? Or Prince? But whatever the reason, PB Wolf gave me even more of an appreciation to the ridiculous aesthetics and decadence of that era. Not every DJ has that kind of effect on you.



Freak City is an interesting venue; it's got tons of rooms, it's got a little shop upstairs, and it's full of coked-out hipsters. In fact, I swear I saw an American Apparel model there. It's got a cool intimate vibe but sadly became apparent that most of the people were there to be seen and not really there for the music. I saw so many people just randomly start dancing out of nowhere for a few songs then just completely disappear upstairs or to another room. I couldn't tell if they were even feeling it, and a lot of them weren't even paying attention the videos. But whatever, that's their loss if they're too cool to appreciate PB Wolf but are hip enough to go to Freak City and know when to dance because the '80s are kind of in right now.

But props to the people who were there for real, like this guy, who wins DGAF audience member of the night. He was constantly at the front, feeling every note of every song, dancing his ass off, I mean this is what I am talking about and this is how it should be:



Wow, even Mayer Hawthorne made an appearance:



A dope end to a dope night, yeah, fuck Ed Hardy:



And one more thing: PB Wolf, will you marry me?