All that is night

Music is like food

The Sess has been around since 2005, but you probably didn’t start hearing about the local band (nor did you figure out that it’s pronounced “The Sesh”) until late last year. The reason behind the recent buzz is pretty straight-forward—the band is touring and playing more gigs lately, bringing their angsty, high-energy riffs to more and more ears. Drummer Andrew Montoya likes to talk about the band—Jeremy Rojas, guitar and vocals; Sam Rivera, bass and vocals; Mark Rivera, bass and vocals; and Aldo Bustos, organ and keyboard—with the help of analogies. Food metaphors, more precisely, are his preferred mode of expression.

“I don’t know if you’ve ever made pancakes,” Montoya said, “but you cook one side and then you flip it over and cook the other side. And it isn’t until you finish cooking the second side that you can put it on a plate and poor delicious syrup and butter on it. We’re not to that point yet, but I think we’re cooking the second side.”

Um, OK. What Montoya’s trying to say is the band is young. They just recently recorded their first LP, Agendumb, and Montoya, who’s been working in sound engineering since he was 16, recorded it himself under his side project, Pandemonium Recorders.

Montoya went for another food analogy when explaining the relatively long wait for the debut album. “We were letting our fruit ripen,” he said. “Until now, we never felt like there was a whole album’s worth of material.”

Agendumb is a mix of new and old songs and is being distributed by Single Screen Records, a San Diego company run by Craig Barclift of The Power Chords, and “Action” Jackson Milgaten of Vision of a Dying World and PaddleBoat. The Sess will celebrate the album’s release at an all-ages show at Planet Rooth Studios, 3811 Ray St. in North Park, on Friday, May 9, and a 21-and-up show at The Casbah on Saturday, May 10. The new album will be for sale at the all-ages for $8, and the $8 admission at The Casbah comes with a free CD.
“There’s a lot of anticipation behind these shows,” Montoya said. “I can just taste it.”
—Kinsee Morlan

Toning down Downtown

We all know the Gaslamp Quarter has gone progressively upscale in the past few years. And by all means, feel free to spend your hard-earned money on $12 cocktails at the Hard Rock Hotel, but if you’re looking for something a little more low-key, local-centric and inexpensive, the Stage Saloon has opened up on the corner of Fifth Avenue and F Street, occupying the space left by the recently closed Heat Supper Club.

The Saloon has a capacity of 300, which isn’t huge by rock-club standards, but its unpretentious atmosphere is drawing strong crowds only five weeks after its opening. Sure, it has the requisite downtown V.I.P. lounge—in this case, it’s called the Penthouse Skyy Bar—but one look at the menu (pulled pork sandy, anyone?) ensures that this place has toned the snootiness way down.

After years touring the Southwest with his band The Disco Pimps, owner Eric Storch is happy to be able to open up the kind of venue he’s always wanted to play. And who can blame him? It’s tough to make a living as a musician, much less deal with crummy P.A. systems and indifferent promoters night after night.

Bands shouldn’t have those problems at The Stage, where Storch has set up a top-of-the-line sound system, complete with Line 6 amplifiers and a full drum set. On Tuesday nights, local bands are welcome to drop by and perform two songs apiece on The Saloon’s house gear, which gives them the convenience of not having to tote their equipment to the Gaslamp. It’s a great idea, and even though it’s a potentially disastrous forum for dudes to practice their Sublime and Dave Matthews covers, Storch seems genuine about wanting to give something back to the music scene that has supported his band for years.

The Disco Pimps have held weekly residencies at Buffalo Joe’s, Winston’s and Moondoggies in addition to several clubs in Phoenix and Vegas. But now Storch’s focus is on The Stage, where his band performs on Saturday nights. Playing on Thursdays are local reggae group The Devastators, whose latest album got positive marks in CityBeat’s Great Demo Review in the March 26 issue, and Trainwreck, who, um, wreck Friday nights with their arsenal of metal covers.
A metal band performing in the Gaslamp? Things are looking up!
—Todd Kroviak

The Enrique experience

Trannies, cross-dressers and drag queens were out in full feather-and-sequin pomp at The Center in Hillcrest for the Imperial Court de San Diego’s crowning of the 10th annual Mr. and Miss Cinco de Mayo. Part Renaissance fair, part gay-pride festival, the Court, which is one of the city’s oldest LGBT social-services organizations, pulled out all the stops for the gala, including pollo con mole and tres leches cake in their Mexican-food buffet. The most sought-after prize in a rather unique silent auction was a vintage wig package composed of a blonde-chunk highlighted mane, brush, wig cap, neon-green plastic face protector (’cause Aqua Net stings like a bitch, girl) and a set of premium fake eye lashes—Black No. 102, to be exact.

The night included a Celia Cruz-inspired lip-sync performance by the reigning empress, Chantal, who came in through the back of the room, Elvis-style.

“Is the gel in that spotlight red?” the emcee asked the lighting technician. “I can’t do red, girl. It will show my 5 o’ clock shadow.”

The shenanigans came to an end when Alana Diamond was crowned Miss Cinco de Mayo 2008.

I capped off my night at Downtown’s Manchester Grand Hyatt, where a frozen-faced crowd (seems there was a plastic-surgery conference in town—no, really, there was) had taken over the hotel’s lobby bar.

Plastic surgeons apparently keep to themselves in social environments, so I cornered a conference attendee in the bathroom and asked him what sort of cosmetic enhancement I’d benefit from.

“Botox,” he said, before scurrying away without washing his hands.

Damn that lighting!

I wonder what he would have suggested for the glammed-out honeys I’d been hanging out with earlier.
Back at the bar, I ordered a beer and totally got ID’d.

Botox my ass.
—Enrique Limon

Hombres minutos

When Minutemen go to sleep at night, they have nightmares about Manic Hispanic.

The seven-piece super group from Orange County is notorious for their covers of punk-rock classics with a Mexican twist. The Clash’s “Garage Land” is transformed into “Barrio Land” and TSOL’s “Code Blue” becomes “Code Brown.”

The Ramones are a favorite source, with “Tijuana Affair,” “Mexican Tar” and “The INS Took My Novia Away.”

But don’t call them a tribute band. They’ve appropriated the music of rebellious white youth and put their own stamp on it in a way that celebrates everything from drug use to prison sex through the filter of the Mexican-American experience in Southern California. They even poke fun at the kind of cheap sloganeering (“We’re down, we’re brown, and we’re coming to your town!”) that makes activism so cartoonishly compelling.

As the unofficial house band for the BYO Punk Rock Bowling Tournament in Las Vegas, they have something of a reputation as a joke band in cholo clothes. But when the vatos took the stage at The Casbah last Friday night dressed as a Norteño band, they signaled that they’d upped the ante. A raucous set was filled with comedy sketches on the stage, thrashing in the pit and the security staff doing their best impersonation of prison guards, and a little on-stage ganja smoking followed.

While it might not be the start of a brown revolution, it was the perfect way to kick-off Cinco de Mayo festivities.

Watch out Minutemen, there’s no telling what might happen if, as one of the Hispanic’s songs says, the vatos are united.
—Jim Ruland

Weekend eavesdroppings

“The lounge chairs are cool, and that skinny little Audrey Hepburn is smokin’ hot. You have to go.” —CityBeat’s Dave Rolland on Cinema Under the Stars, which opened its season last week. Check www.topspresents.com for the schedule.

“Don’t eat the pot brownies!” —CityBeat’s Kinsee Morlan on a two-day, outdoor rave between Rosarito and Ensenada featuring DJ Goa Gil and his wife, Ariane. Check www.goagil.com for touring info.

“It was amazing.” —Tijuana artist Jorge Tellaeche on the CD-release performance and party for Madame Ur y Sus Hombres’ new album, Men & Pearl Necklaces, at The Lobby. www.myspace.com/madameur.

“The Rain House! Can we go in the Rain House, Mommy?!” —A 9-year-old on The New Children’s Museum San Diego, which opened last weekend and is actually pretty damn hip. www.thinkplaycreate.org.

“Old people were basically crying, outraged because it’s this nice quiet little steakhouse and this band was going, waaaaaaaaaa.” —CityBeat’s Adam Vieyra on Café La Maze Steakhouse in National City, which is experimenting with a live-music night. www.cafelamaze.com.