Reports from the scene

Locals Only

Since last week’s initial report that ’Canes Bar & Grill will close on Nov. 2, the venue has released an official statement that elaborates further. The statement cites lease negotiations as being “unsuccessful” and that “the current landlord has decided to reclaim the space.” The statement also says the owners of ’Canes are “currently seeking alternative venues to relocate the business in 2011.” A source close to the venue tells CityBeat that the owners tried to persuade the landlord to renegotiate the lease, but neighboring club Wave House will be expanding into the space.

Local punk group Modern Rifles have decided to call it quits. The San Diego Music Award-nominated band is disbanding on good terms, with drummer Brian Garbark already a member of a new band, Boyscout, and the rest of the band already planning new projects. Rifles plan to play three farewell shows: at the Ken Club on Saturday, Oct. 17, a Halloween show at Mister Tiki Mai Tai Lounge and another one to be announced soon.

In release news: Lo-fi popsters Christmas Island will celebrate the release of their debut full-length, Blackout Summer, at The Casbah on Monday, Oct. 12. The Intelligence and Wounded Lion will also perform. Indie duo The Dabbers have released a new 7-inch single for the song “I Was Like, and They Were All,” as well as an accompanying music video that can be seen at the band’s MySpace site. 

Several local benefit shows are scheduled for this week. Voz Alta will hold a benefit fundraiser for musician Nathan Baack at Winston’s on Saturday, Oct. 17. Psydecar, Cookie, Jimmy Lewis and Latanya Lockett are scheduled to perform. Former Casbah employee and bartender Jason Clifton recently injured his ankle and hasn’t been able to work, so The Long and Short of It, Duel of the Century and Hawke Auborn will perform on Monday, Oct. 19, at The Casbah to help him pay his bills.

—Seth Combs

The Enrique Experience

Your standard two dimensions just didn’t cut it last Saturday at U-31, thanks to the “3-D Party” staged by DJs Saul Q, DISC-O and Funky for Skin, Q’s childhood friend (and, coincidentally, my nickname in high school).

Partygoers were greeted with bicolor specs, and inside, an ad hoc laser show, along with the bar’s geometric-embellished walls, supplied the night’s trippy feel. When I asked Saul about the motive behind the theme, he just shook me by the shoulders and yelled, “Because it’s fun, cabrón!”

With a patent dating back to the 1890s, a golden era in the 1950s and its apex in the 1980s—which gave us such gems as Steve Guttenberg’s The Man Who Wasn’t There—many thought that 3-D fun had gone the way of Hammer pants. That is, until a recent resurgence, courtesy of the ADHD generation. For the hipster set, however, it was just another excuse to party.

From Sheena Easton to “She Wolf” and the infectious beat of “Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough” that reminded partygoers of Michael Jackson’s “Captain EO” glory days, the crowd—populated by Navy boys, who slowly but surely are taking over the North Park scene—tore it up on the dance floor as Coraline played on some flat screens and Spy Kids 3D: Game Over, which, apparently, stars every single Hollywood actor available in 2003, was projected elsewhere. The party reached its zenith with a mash-up of “Whoomp! (There it Is)” with the majesty that is Real Housewife of Atlanta Kim Zolciak’s anthem “Don’t Be Tardy for the Party.” The debauchery that followed would have compelled even Hunter S. Thompson to say, “Man, I gotta lay off the bad shit.”

And the scene in the men’s lavatory was straight out of a Frida Kahlo painting. I overheard one 3-D-specs-wearing jarhead tell another: “Dude, I’m not sure if it’s the Red Bull or the glasses, but I swear I just pissed toxic neon green.

—Enrique Limón

View from a Stool

“It’s Friday night in San Diego,” said Eddie Vedder three songs into Pearl Jam’s set at Viejas Arena on Friday night.

“We got a shit-load of amps and guitars and I think we could just blow the roof off this motherfucker.”

Well, they didn’t exactly blow the roof off the motherfucker, but the girl behind me did blow out my eardrums with her perpetual and incessant screams of “I love you, Eddie! Woooooooo!”—way more potent than the shit-load of guitars and amps.

But that’s the nature of things with Pearl Jam. Despite not selling millions of records like they did back in the day, the band still doesn’t have to resort to kitschy things like laser-light shows and pyrotechnics to please the throngs of 30-somethings that go to their shows. Like their idol Neil Young, whom Vedder referenced twice during the show, Pearl Jam are content with letting the music and a sweeping sense of nostalgia do the work for them. “Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town,” off of 1993’s Vs., turned into a campfire sing-along, with nearly the entire arena chanting the song’s chorus. And Vedder still does the crazy-killer-face and random-flailing-about during “Even Flow,” just as he did nearly 20 years ago.

But I was a fan the band lost back in the day. Anyone familiar with PJ remembers that they went years without a full-fledged tour because they were too busy fighting Ticketmaster—not to mention that their music started sucking, a few songs notwithstanding. I’m not sure that seeing the band in the ninth grade would have made me a lifelong fan, but on Friday, I just sat in my seat thinking I’d moved on and never looked back. Sure, hearing “Daughter” had me texting old friends to remind them that I loved them, and “Black” had me recalling the days when I sat in my room trying to decode the song’s cryptic lyrics. But when all a band’s live show can do is conjure up a sense of backwards nostalgia, then that’s just not enough for me.

The songs off of their new album, Backspacer, sounded great (“Amongst the Waves” and “The Fixer,” especially), but I couldn’t help but think that not much has changed and that the band really hasn’t progressed much since their mid-’90s heyday. They haven’t exactly become a facsimile of themselves, but they do seem content in just giving their fans exactly what is expected.

So, fuck it. Give me the pyro and the laser lights.

“All that’s sacred comes from youth,” Vedder sang 15 years ago. Well, not always.

—Seth Combs

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