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Sonic Sound Fest at Teragram Ballroom

by on October 4, 2024

On September 6th 2024 Sonic Sound Entertainment took over the Teragram Ballroom in Los Angeles for their first ever half day festival. The group brought out some of the best bands they work with (as well as some special guests) spanning the genres of emo, shoegaze, dreampop, and other adjacent genres to put on a night that was one for the books. Check out this photo reel and linked songs below to get a taste of some of the hottest up and coming bands in LA right now.

The Divines – Photo by Michael Arroyo
The Divines – Photo by Michael Arroyo
Clarion – Photo by Michael Arroyo
Clarion – Photo by Michael Arroyo
Willowake – Photo by Michael Arroyo
Willowake – Photo by Michael Arroyo
Home View – Photo by Israel Hernandez
Home View – Photo by Israel Hernandez
Envitro – Photo by Michael Arroyo
Envitro – Photo by Michael Arroyo
Wayword – Photo by Israel Hernandez
Wayword – Photo by Israel Hernandez
Israel’s Arcade – Photo by Michael Arroyo
Israel’s Arcade – Photo by Michael Arroyo
Mind’s Eye – Photo by Michael Arroyo
Mind’s Eye – Photo by Michael Arroyo

israel hernandez is a photographer and student at CSULB. Besides music he is interested in art, books, cool jackets and the color red. he is local to Montebello but is often in long beach as well.


Michael Arroyo is a concert photographer, who recently began using a camera last year after enduring hardships. Seeking an outlet, finding that photography was that for him. Finding his way doing live photography for concerts due to the authentic nature of concerts.

Live Photos Music Music Review

Julie – My Anti-Aircraft Friend Release Show

by on September 30, 2024

A plain white house in East Hollywood would normally not draw the attention of a passerby, but with a narrow and crowded driveway full of haphazardly parked cars and a long line of chattering young adults, it is now bound to pique curiosity. Lively conversations and cigarette smoke wafted into the air as the setting sun cast a subtle golden hour glow. The distorted cacophony of sound checks blared from within the house as fans waited right outside the door. They were here to have a chance to witness Blimp – a frenetic and at times explosive four-piece act – open for the loud and sonically unbound trio out of Orange County, Julie who would be celebrating the release of their debut album my anti-aircraft friend

As nighttime arrived by 7:30, people were now given entry into the unassuming house. Inside was a light wooden floor, posters of Linkin Park and The Fader hanging on cream colored walls, and an array of bright lights illuminating the space where the bands would perform. A drum kit with a kick drum that seems to have been scrawled with dark colored crayons was set up in front of a rack of electric guitars while tall and dark Sunn cabinet speakers stood menacingly in both corners. Photographers and videographers made their way to the very front as the house rapidly filled to capacity. Soon enough, Blimp took to the stage and played songs from their album Egg. A gritty energy replete with frantic drumming, furious strumming, a three string Ibanez bass, and harsh screaming coupled with a wonderfully chaotic dynamic set the tone for the audience, which they took very well. Blimp’s assault would have been enough for a final headlining act, but this certainly was not the end of the night’s performances. 

Julie quietly set up their instruments as the house cheered upon their arrival. After a quick microphone check, guitarist Keyan Pourzand played one chord and everyone instantly knew what was coming. A dramatic shift in energy could be felt as fans braced themselves for the song that would bellow out of the monstrous Sunn cabinets. Alexandria Elizabeth slowly played the song’s distinctive bassline to create even more tension as the crowd anxiously moved in excitement. The guitar suddenly let out a sustained cry, waiting to be led into what was coming. Dillon Lee then hit the kick and snare drum, and with that, Julie unleashed their first single “flutter.” The crowd jumped and became a joyously writhing mass, freed from the inhibitions of daily life by the sounds of heavy distortion and thick low end. Despite the growing heat and humidity, the band would keep the momentum going as they played new songs from their album without letting up, finishing their set with an encore: an unreleased song titled “twee.” Julie’s performance is a confident step forward into their future as they continue to push their creative boundaries – and the durability of their amplifiers. 

Blimp – Photo by Jeremy Ruiz
Blimp – Photo by Jeremy Ruiz
Blimp – Photo by Jeremy Ruiz
Blimp – Photo by Jeremy Ruiz
Blimp – Photo by Jeremy Ruiz
Blimp – Photo by Jeremy Ruiz
Blimp – Photo by Jeremy Ruiz
Julie – Photo by Jeremy Ruiz
Julie – Photo by Jeremy Ruiz
Julie – Photo by Jeremy Ruiz
Julie – Photo by Jeremy Ruiz
Julie – Photo by Jeremy Ruiz
Julie – Photo by Jeremy Ruiz
Julie – Photo by Jeremy Ruiz
Julie – Photo by Jeremy Ruiz
Julie – Photo by Jeremy Ruiz

Jeremy Ruiz is an independent photographer based in the San Fernando Valley specializing in portraiture and live music photography. He spent three years training as a student photojournalist and photo editor for the Valley Star, the independent student newspaper of Los Angeles Valley College, and has gone on to win multiple awards from the Journalism Association of Community Colleges. In his spare time, he likes to brew coffee and practice bass. IG @itzalku_sfv

Live Photos Music

Sour Sun Fest Patio

by on August 6, 2024

On July 20th, 2024 it was a Saturday summer day. It was another hot summer night when we hit ninety-degree weather. However, Pound Booking had something in store for us to do this Saturday. They were having a festival at the Echoplex, a music venue in Echo Park Los Angeles, California. Showcasing eleven bands in total and the headliner band was Slow Hollows. They had a two-stage system to make everything run smoothly where the main stage was inside the venue and the side stage was their outside patio. This patio is where I stayed most of my time since I appreciate a more intimate stage where I can be face-to-face with the band as they play their set. I just feel more connected with the band and feed off their energy as they play their set. These are the bands that played on the patio stage. 

Dunk Pacino

An L.A.-based punk band fueled by donuts and rage!

Whoremones

Can’t tell from the smiles but this band makes angry music! 

Trash Day

This is an indie/punk band from Santa Cruz, CA delivering unadulterated musical garbage in the best way possible! 

Love letter

This band carried a lot of emotion in their set. Couldn’t help but scream along with them.

FLOATS

These tract suit-wearing Texas boys love to give a great show! I am always astonished at how they travel so much from Texas to LA just to play one night and then go home the next day! They gave one incredible performance leaving us wanting more.

Michael Arroyo is a concert photographer, who recently began using a camera last year after enduring hardships. Seeking an outlet, finding that photography was that for him. Finding his way doing live photography for concerts due to the authentic nature of concerts.

Book Review

The Electric Love Song of Fleischl Berger

by on August 2, 2024

Elusive Love, Loss, and Healing in the Electrifying Story of Psychiatric Treatment

As a writer who suffers from a mental disorder, I was immediately drawn to The Electric Love Song of Fleischl Berger, by David Rocklin, which tells us about the fictionalized life of a Jewish-German psychiatrist born under electrifying circumstances on the shores of the Baltic Sea.

A fascinating reading, The Electric Love Song of Fleischl Berger speaks about a man’s obsession with his own near-death experience, which led him to design the early versions of the Electroencephalogram (EEG). The novel also links EEG to the birth of the motion picture industry at the turn of the century. 

Few historical novels can keep the weight of the facts as the backdrop of the story. David Rocklin masterfully develops an intriguing plot that takes place between the Great War and the rise of the Nazi Germany, while presenting the history of psychiatric treatment in an imaginative love story without overwhelming the reader with historical facts. Instead, the historic events depicted in the story function as catalyst for plot development.

The novel grabs the reader with suspense from the opening line,

“The first time Fleischl Berger almost died…”

With the word “almost” David Rocklin sets a tone of anticipation and commits the reader to the entire story, which delves into each stage of this man’s life his historical backdrop.

Fleischl Berger is raised by a grief ridden father and mentored by the men in his community: a rabbi, a merchant, and a psychiatrist all of whom influenced the young man’s devotion to service. Gifted with the power of attentive listening and empathy, Fleischl discovers that he can help others recover from their emotional wounds, if not actually heal them. In his mentor’s words, 

“…in the end all men of psychiatry do is tend their wounds. We can’t heal anything.”

Eventually young Fleischl Berger falls in love with the merchant’s daughter, but as circumstances will have it, their love is interrupted by Fleischl’s decision to find his father, who is lost at sea. Shortly after, Fleischl nearly dies in an accident during a military exercise.

Fleischl Berger becomes obsessed with the experience in the aftermath of the explosion that almost killed him. Inspired by the creative spirit of his childhood friend and lover, he designs a machine to capture brain activity to explain what happened to him. Thus he creates a scientific instrument that will eventually revolutionize neurological research.

He carries out these extraordinary experiments as movie productions–and his justification to try to observe the human mind more closely.

“To the addled mind,” he said as the audience watched him closely, “illusions are real. They are the world left to them. To us, such people are lost in a world of their own. We try talking to them, but we can’t get through. We try showing them things they ought to know. Their wives, husbands, children, homes, even their own reflections. It’s as if they see something we can’t. Or else they see nothing at all. Our sounds and visions are no longer theirs. How can we reach them?

“I have a way. We give their minds something else. A piece of them that they’ve lost, only at undeniable levels to pry the window of their mind open. I’ve seen it happen – “

“… But this work will help those we think we’ve lost to injury, infirmity, to psychosis. I believe it with all my heart. And I’m here with your kind permission to show you. The louder and brighter the sounds and visions, the wider the window.”

As Fleischl explains his controversial and dramatic experiments with altruistic arguments, he paves the way to unprecedented progress in neuroscience.

Meanwhile, hidden in Berlin’s theatrical scene of the early 1900s, the elusive lover observes Fleischl growing as a scientist and entering the most influential circles of Berlin’s society. As he finds financial support for his experiments, Fleischl gets entangled in social intrigue and power struggles foreign to his personal search, but that will be crucial in his survival.

First the reader must understand that for Fleischl survival means more than beating death. Fleischl’s actions are driven by a sense of loss: the mother who died at his birth, the father who disappeared at sea, the lover who left after he broke her heart,

“I miss home,” he said, because he wasn’t sure what he felt and had nothing else to say that might explain the hole where surely something ought to be.” 

The novel carries this nostalgic tone, a longing for what does not exist anymore.

The setting helps create the nostalgic tone. This is particularly true at the beginning where the laconic landscape of a village on the shores of the Baltic Sea sets the tone with which the young Fleischl will grow. The sea appears first on view, dangerous, dark. It is followed by a row of small, rudimentary buildings, functional for a basic life where the merchants do business near the house where he grows. On top of a hill, sits the asylum that will inspire Fleischl’s vocation for healing. However, the setting also serves as a plot catalyst. Later in the story, the rough sea scenes set the tone for dramatic turns and plot twists. And when Fleischl moves to Berlin, the busy urban landscape of the turn of the century accelerates the action as the social scene moves between small theater venues, ball rooms, mansions, and academic lecture halls.

In The Electric Love Song of Fleischl Berger, David Rocklin gifts us with simple phrases filled with wisdom, like aphorisms,

“You will fail and fail, and with luck one day succeed. Go fail, Fleischl Berger.”

With these phrases, Rocklin offers the reader an opportunity for reflection, enriching the reading experience.

Fleischl Berger’s journey is the story of an extraordinary man, the history of the ECG, and historical fiction of a crucial moment in German history. But ultimately, what held me turning pages is David Rocklin’s ability to weave in the historical facts in fictional narrative using a love story as a thread. In his own words, 

“Do you want to know a secret I learned, Ava? All stories are woven with love. Maybe when all the stories come to have their silences broken, when they come to be heard, they come to those who love them. Who listens just for them.”

Perhaps what I love more about The Electric Love Song of Fleischl Berger is the way this historical novel drew me to learn more about the man, and what is not in the story: the scientific research behind contemporary psychiatric treatment, and the creation of the instrument widely used today in the diagnosis of neurological conditions. By far, The Electric Love Song of Fleischl Berger is one of the best stories I have read in 2024.

The Electric Love Song of Fleischl Berger by David Rocklin is available now through Thane & Prose

Lisbeth Coiman is a bilingual author and an avid reader. Her debut book, I Asked the Blue Heron: A Memoir (2017) explores the intersection between immigration and mental health. Her poetry collection, Uprising / Alzamiento (Finishing Line Press, 2021) raises awareness of the humanitarian crisis in her homeland. Her book reviews have been published in the New York Journal of Books, in Citron Review and The Compulsive Reader, LibroMobile, and Cultural Daily to name a few. She lives in Los Angeles, where she works and hikes.

Live Photos Music

Mexican Slum Rats and En-Vitro at the Glass House 6-22-24

by on July 3, 2024
En-Vitro – Photo by Oscar Celis
En-Vitro – Photo by Oscar Celis
En-Vitro – Photo by Oscar Celis
En-Vitro – Photo by Oscar Celis
En-Vitro – Photo by Oscar Celis
En-Vitro – Photo by Oscar Celis
En-Vitro – Photo by Oscar Celis
Photo by Oscar Celis
Mexican Slum Rats – Photo by Oscar Celis
Mexican Slum Rats – Photo by Oscar Celis
Mexican Slum Rats – Photo by Oscar Celis
Mexican Slum Rats – Photo by Oscar Celis
Mexican Slum Rats – Photo by Oscar Celis
Mexican Slum Rats – Photo by Oscar Celis
Mexican Slum Rats – Photo by Oscar Celis

Oscar Celis is a photographer and founder of First Class Studios based out of SoCal . Growing up in Southern California, he was always part of the music scene his sister use to be a music photographer he often went with her to local shows and concerts of his favorite bands.

Oscar used to think about how great it would have been to have those big shows documented better. That’s what drives him now to capture this era so future fans can appreciate it like he does. He leans towards music photography because, honestly, he’s terrible at making music himself, but he loves being part of the scene.

Album Review Music

Asco by Wazoo

by on June 24, 2024

Put yourself through a staggered cycle of existential dread with Wazoo’s latest, “ASCO”

The music scene is saturated with countless entities, so much so that regardless of narrowing it down to Los Angeles, discovering a distinct band presents its difficulties through an ocean of musicians. Luckily, In the past two years, Wazoo has slowly emerged within the LA DIY underground scene. The four piece has blatantly displayed their individuality through their chaotic onstage energy and noisy hardcore and shoegaze driven instrumentals. Now, with their first full length album (10 tracks), ASCO, released June 7th this year through Fusion LA, Wazoo has exhibited their potential as an upcoming local band. Packed with noise, melodic bass, and harsh vocals, ASCO takes you through the motions of existential dread as perceived by the band. The soft and ambient composition in the opening track, Bugland 01, may misguide new listeners. That is until the second track, Android, crashes in. Starting off with an ear-ringing guitar riff, then slamming into a heavier sound emphasized by blast-beats, we are swarmed by lyrics, “I feel it, I feel it in my head. I don’t want it in my head.” The scorching vocals that follow those statements can hardly be understood, adding to the chaotic and explosive outro which fades into pedal noise. Likewise, Flesh Eater (track 3) and Garbage (Track 6), include hardcore fingerprints primarily established by the drums and/or vocals. Even so, each track sets forth their distinction from traditional hardcore music through their lead guitarist’s experimental pedal usage, creating unique noise compositions evocative of bands like Sonic Youth. To illustrate, at minute 1:32 in Flesh Eater, following the first chorus, a disorderly electric pedal effect escalates and dissolves into a drum break around minute 1:51. This area of the song places a spotlight on their drummer as they slowly roll the track to build toward a faster time signature for the outro. The distinct raw and jungle-esque sound of the drummer’s snare is also accentuated as the other instruments dial down. Throughout the album, Wazoo illustrates their ability to organically blend disorder and allure. This aspect of the band is what makes them particularly inspiring during live performances as their energy and emotion floods into the crowd. Whether it be in small increments like Garbage’s dissonant introduction prior to eruption, or in ASCO’s third track, Comet Buster. Comet Buster highlights Wazoo’s duality, arranging a song packed with nostalgic feeling, making it a personal favorite throughout the album. The bass line in Comet Buster is quite notable, holding a beautiful melody reminiscent of songs E and TZC from their first release, Eat That! (EP, 2023), unveiling the growth the group is capable of. Encapsulating ASCO into words and even narrowing the piece down to a genre is tough as listeners are taken through a sporadic yet beautiful trip. Full of experimental noise, emotional bass/guitar, haunting vocals and animalistic drumming, the album is an auditory experience in itself that demands to be absorbed.

Photo by Bella Villa
Photo by Bella Villa
Photo by Bella Villa
Photo by Bella Villa
Photo by Bella Villa
Photo by Bella Villa

Kate De La Torre: Born and raised in Southeast Los Angeles, is a 21-year-old community oriented and first-generation Chicana artist. Having focused on visual arts and journalism prior to graduating high school in 2021, De La Torre found herself embarking on an unexpected journey after throwing her first DIY house show on June 18, 2022, under DIY Collective, Rosie’s Pad!. The collective formed with a goal to grow a warm and welcoming community within the local music and art scene for young adults within Los Angeles county. Additionally, she is in the LA based band, Sugarhead. De La Torre also holds bilingual art classes for her elementary school community in Downtown Los Angeles.

katerinosteeth (at) gmail.com

Bella Villa is an up and coming photographer in the LA scene. Her signature photography is personal, scintillating, and infused with surrealism that showcases her experimental style. From vibrant editorials to live music shots, each photo is filled with vibe and intimacy. Look out for her work.

Book Review

Paper Birds: Feather by Feather / Pájaros de papel: Pluma por pluma by Sonia Gutiérrez

by on June 11, 2024

Review by Frank Mundo:

When I received “Paper Birds: Feather by Feather / Pájaros de papel: Pluma por pluma,” the latest poetry collection by bilingual writer and poet Sonia Gutiérrez from El Martillo Press (April 2024), I was surprised by its unusual heft. 180 pages is quite a lot these days for a poetry collection by a single artist. Turns out, however, the high page count is a direct result of the book’s unique presentation – at least, it’s a format I’d never seen before. Not only bilingual, some of the poems are also described as “interlingual” in the book’s introduction by Mexican writer Susana Bautista Cruz. Interlingual is the relationship between two languages, which, in this case, refers to the natural, multicultural (and inevitable?) mashup of English and Spanish by Latinos and Chicano Americans into, essentially, a “new” language known as Spanglish.

Divided into three sections, the book presents 14, 12, and 14 bilingual poems, respectively, each one printed side-by-side, first in English and then in Spanish. A smaller selection of Spanglish versions of the poems, translated in this collection by bilingual poet and musician Francisco J. Bustos, are shared after that. Offering these poems in all three languages this way is interesting to me and, I would argue, an empowering poetic exercise and experience for fluent readers and speakers of any of these languages. In the third section, there’s also a single bilingual short story called, “Teresa and the Birds Inside,” which is Gutiérrez’ take on Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s famous short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” except her version takes place at a DMV in San Diego with a broken A/C and which is possibly haunted by what seems to be a flock of horrible screeching birds. Finally, several illustrations and other bonus features help fill out the book’s 180 pages, including the bilingual versions of the introduction, acknowledgments, and a helpful discussion guide for book clubs and educators.

My favorite piece in the book is “The Giver of Poems,” a beautiful and vivid homage to the prolific Chicano poet and educator Francisco X. Alarcón, who, with insight and compassion, explored in his writing important themes in Latino and gay identity, mythology, the Nahuatl language, Mesoamerican history, and American culture. In “The Giver of Poems,” there’s a sense of peace and clarity, but also a playful tone that seems apropos. The speaker of the poem is experiencing an inspiring and lucid or “woken” dream, where the unnamed Giver of Poems, perhaps Alarcón himself, awakens “on white / sheets of paper” in a sky full of “luminous letters.” Using his hands, he “kneads words / forming clouds / made of poems.” Don’t sleep on the wordplay here with knead and need. This joyful little literary moment pays off later when The Giver takes a break, of all things, “and goes up the stairs / of a giant / uppercase A” until “laughing and smiling,” he “goes down its slide” with his arms “wide open.” I can’t help but smile picturing Alarcón, who Gutiérrez calls her Chicano role model and Literary Saint, on a break from making clouds into poems with his bare hands, only to slide down the slope of an upper-case letter A with his arms in the air.

Listen to Sonia Gutiérrez reading the “Poema Giver” para–Francisco X. Alarcón, the Spanglish version of “The Giver of Poems.”

 

I asked Gutiérrez about her homage to Alarcón and how he became such a major influence in her work and her life. “His poetry is medicina,” she told me. His work “allows us to look at the Mexican American (the Chicano) experience through a historical context.” Like so many of us do, Gutierrez got her poetry legs in an Intro to Poetry course in school, unearthing poetry gems from that giant Norton poetry anthology. These excavated poets would serve as her “professors and teachers” at that time, helping her recognize what poetry is, what it looks like, and what it could do and be. She told me that’s why she teaches Alarcón’s work sometimes in her own college classrooms, so her students can discover and experience his work, too. She also said she liked how Alarcón told fellow poets often that he didn’t write poems, “he wrote tattoos,” which was the title of his first poetry collection. She admired the way he composed poetry against convention without capitalizing words and using periods, and the meaning he shared behind this creative choice ‒ that the period, he said, would come at the end.  

In “Bones Speak,” another nod to Alarcón and his multicolumn poem, Gutiérrez offers a “tattoo” of her own. According to the book’s Notes section, Alarcón says the columns of poems are “like copal smoke signals.” And since “Bones Speak” is also one of the works selected for Spanglish translation by Bustos, we get to experience the full power of this triple-column collaborative composition, with all three versions, side-by-side on one page, one in each column – and wow! It’s a stunning example of poetic expression. 

But this collection is more than an homage to Alarcón or to bilingual or even interlingual poetry. Timely stories, histories, narratives, dreams, and testimonies explore subjects in themes of human, environmental, social, and cultural dignity. Before reading the book, I asked Gutiérrez about her writing and what readers might expect. “Ever since I was a child,” she told me, “my way of seeing the world has always been through a lens of social justice.” So, years later, when Gutiérrez discovered poetry and started writing her own poems, it made sense that she would write about the issues that, as a poet, needed to be addressed.

“I’m a poet concerned about humanity,” she said. “I’m a poet concerned

with the environment. A poet that would like for people to have dialogical communication about pressing issues. Anything that needs to be addressed

we should have the ability to discuss.”

In “Testimony of a Tree,” we get just that, a firsthand account of what it’s like to be the trees along Highway 805 in San Diego, who “had wished their lives / on the superhighway / would always be green.” Interestingly, the first three of the four stanzas of this scathing environmental poem are offered in first-person plural: “but nobody asked us / why one day we turned pale, / our bark fell and arms / went bare.” The final stanza, however, switches to first-person singular – a foreman, perhaps? A delegated representative? Maybe the star witness, who knows? Either way, in the final stanza of this testimony, we get our grass absolutely handed to us: “What I do know is we never / dreamed of living next to / burning black asphalt / breathing in the sulfuric waste / of humanity away from the birds / and bees…”

In “Neither Rooster, Nor Bird, Nor Human,” we learn what things are by what they are not – starting and ending with the rooster, the bird, and the human. A very short piece, it’s even shorter on forgiveness – and the last stanza will stay with me for a long time. Looking now in the book, I see that I circled this stanza because I knew I’d need to come back to it later: “A human is not a human; / he is an inhumane animal, / killing the Earth / with his utter will.”

In “An American Landscape,” we visit that “chilly February night / under a star-spangled sky…” where Trayvon Martin “…stayed warm / fastened like a monk…” or what some called a thug, in his hoodie.

“The Indictment of Index Fingers and Thumbs,” is an indictment of our justice system in America. It opens with the poet, standing before “Judge Justice…” who is examining the six index fingers and six thumbs that facilitated the shooting deaths of Charles Smith, John Crawford III, Micheal Brown, Trayvon Martin, Oscar Grant, and India Kager. “Who pulled the trigger?” the Judge asks, and the fingers and thumbs, “Dumbfounded and with white knees…” “…pointed at the firearms…”

In “Bakr Red Petals on a Beach,” Gutiérrez addresses the four children from the Bakr family, ages 9-12, who were killed by a missile from the Israeli naval force on the fishing beach west of Gaza City: “With bull’s-eye precision / on an open shore / Flower Killers came to Gaza…”

“The Colors of Death” personifies Fukushima and grills her about the nuclear accident that poisoned the ocean and displaced at least 164,000 people: “Ask Fukushima / if she drank clean water / this morning.”

Finally, in “Eulogy for Súper Pancho from the Land of Maiz,” one of the longest poems in the collection, the poet responds to Donald Trump’s painful and unfair statements about Mexicans during his presidential announcement speech in 2016. Súper Pancho, our brave hero, with his “corn-tortilla cape” and shovel, “his super weapon,” is paired against Mr. Liberty Mouth, who’s “snarling mouth” spews “torture words.” There’s a nice black-and-white illustration of Súper Pancho whose “tamale arms / and legs don’t hide / from the scorching sun / to sell diamond-faced / watches nor does he build / golden hotel skyscrapers, / reaching for the Green / Dollar God.”

There are so many standout and outstanding poems in this collection that it’s difficult to choose which ones to highlight and which ones to neglect. I had a similar reaction or experience a couple years ago when I read “Dreaming with Mariposas,” Gutiérrez’ debut novel from Flowersong Press. Made up of vignettes (mostly 1-3 pages), we follow the coming-of-age of two sisters, butterflies in a family of dreamers in So-Cal during the late 70s and 80s. For most of the book, I honestly thought I was reading her memoir because the details were so rich and real and accurate.

I asked Gutiérrez if she had a goal or objective when writing poetry. “When my poem is in front of someone and they’re reading it,” she said, “my goal is that they’re moved, that they’re looking at the world through a lens or a perspective they had never contemplated before.”

She also said there was a quote in the letters of Emily Dickinson that really summed up her objective when it comes to writing poetry:

“If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me,
I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken
off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any
other way?”

In English, Spanish, or even Spanglish, I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Paper Birds: Feather by Feather / Pájaros de papel: Pluma por pluma is available now from El Martillo Press.  

Frank Mundo is a poet from Los Angeles. His latest chapbooks are Touched by an Anglo (Kattywompus Press) and Eleven Sundry Flowers (Antrim House).

Music Poetry

Violet isn’t Blue by Timothy Nolan

by on June 5, 2024

You told me it was your favorite Billie Holiday song. I was already hooked but silently swooned. Mine’s been You’ve Changed since the waitress I worked with at the Waldorf Astoria told me it was hers. She was a chanteuse who sang it at clubs I’d never heard of. WNEW’s Make-Believe Ballroom broadcast from the lobby by Peacock Alley once a month as she served tea and I bussed lilac teapots and cups to music from the 30s and 40s. She’d always ask them to play it but they were more of a Glenn Miller and Sinatra affair. One day they let her sing it after the show and I understood. Maybe I could feel a You’ve Changed moment coming for me. But then you came along with the Lady in Satin CD, Billie’s bare shoulder and pulled back hair in quarter-view before a smokey plum seamless. You hit track 6 and handed me the headphones. And all I wanted was your April in that December, the day you brought me Violets for Your Furs.

_

Timothy Nolan (he/him/his) is a writer and visual artist living in Palm Springs, California with his husband and their rescue dog, Scout. He has exhibited extensively for three decades and his work is in the collections of the DeYoung Museum of Art in San Francisco, and the Portland Art Museum in Oregon. He’s been a fellow at Yaddo, Ucross, and Djerassi. His poems appear in The Hudson Review, Fourteen Hills, Puerto del Sol, and Roanoke Review, among others.

Music Music Review

Cold Gawd, Day Aches, Drauve, and Salt+ at Midnight Hour

by on May 31, 2024
Cold Gawd photo by Jeremy Ruiz

The warm, overhead glow of tungsten string lights illuminates the black walls and white tile floor of a small backstage space. Flanked to the left by a wall with large holes and crumbs of plaster, a black wooden platform that is just shy of a foot tall serves as the stage. Colorful guitars and basses stand propped up in front of large amplifier cabinets and a gray Mapex drum set provided by the venue. This nondescript space serves as the secondary stage for a popular record store in the city of San Fernando called the Midnight Hour, and for one Friday night, it turned into one of the best places to experience some of the most exciting new shoegaze bands that the scene has to offer. With a lineup consisting of the bands Drauve, Day Aches, Salt+ and Cold Gawd, the set provided a powerful dynamic of extremely loud, distorted riffs and hazy, atmospheric melodies that the genre is best known for. There was something for every type of shoegaze fan: Drauve interspersing laidback and hopeful sounds with bursts of energy, Day Aches creating dense layers of reverberating sounds with the ferocity of grunge, Salt+ crafting an incredibly noisy and somewhat mysterious atmosphere using the awesome loudness of Sunn amplifiers, and Cold Gawd closing off with intimate, sparkling melodies serving as the backdrop for introspective lyrics that is reminiscent of Cocteau Twins’ best moments. The Midnight Hour typically hosts hardcore and heavy metal acts to partake in its unique DIY ethos, but with the growing presence and success of shoegaze, it may as well consider this excellent show as a contribution to the genre’s growth within the San Fernando Valley and beyond.

Cold Gawd photo by Jeremy Ruiz
Day Aches photo by Jeremy Ruiz
Day Aches photo by Jeremy Ruiz
Drauve photo by Jeremy Ruiz
Drauve photo by Jeremy Ruiz
Salt+ photo by Jeremy Ruiz
Salt+ photo by Jeremy Ruiz

Jeremy Ruiz is an independent photographer based in the San Fernando Valley specializing in portraiture and live music photography. He spent three years training as a student photojournalist and photo editor for the Valley Star, the independent student newspaper of Los Angeles Valley College, and has gone on to win multiple awards from the Journalism Association of Community Colleges. In his spare time, he likes to brew coffee and practice bass. IG @itzalku_sfv

Book Review

I Wore This Dress Today for You, Mom

by on May 1, 2024

 

I Wore This Dress Today for You, Mom by Kim Dower

Review by Brian Sonia-Wallace

There are few things more classically Freudian than autobiographical poems about a poet’s relationship with their mother, and this new collection by prolific former West Hollywood City Poet Laureate Kim Dower takes up the challenge deftly: will she become her mother? Is she already her? What continues after death? (Mail, memories, junk). What is broken by death? (Rituals, memories — junk).

 

The poems in I Wore This Dress Today for You, Mom are casual and conversational in tone, laugh-out-loud funny or tearjerking at their best. A mix of new pieces and motherhood poems from Dower’s former collections, they paint a portrait of urban motherhood rarely seen in verse, a Southern California freeway pastoral blended with a 5th Avenue childhood in New York. Writes Dower:

 

…My mother

 

didn’t know about soil or earth worms.

City mothers, we know about bus routes, restaurants,

Broadway, the people on the eighth floor.

Mine taught me to accessorize…”

 

Tellingly, this poem is entitled, “Different Mothers,” and the whole collection is nuanced by a consistent self-awareness of other possibilities, the “might have beens,” from Dower’s reflections on an imagined daughter to her fear of following in her mother’s footsteps in suffering from dementia. Dower’s mother, a socialite in her day, succumbs to memory loss and helplessness, and many of these poems grapple with the slipperiness of memory, both in childhood and old age.

 

In her poem “Letter to My Son,” Dower imagines herself in her mother’s shoes, and writes instructively to her son: “Tell me everything’s okay / and I will believe you. Tell me there’s a bird on a branch outside my window, even if there is no window, and I will imagine he’s singing to me.” Dower’s poems inhabit a world self-conscious of its own aging and eventual, inevitable collapse, with the thin narrative of what’s passed down in a family holding the discordant pieces together. Through the examination of motherhood from both ends, as a daughter and as a mother, Dower raises questions about the legacy of learned values and behavior, asking the question: what happens when, with time and distance, the memories we inherit decay?

 

The physical world comes into play as a doorway into memory. The materiality of sweaters, jewelry, chairs, and the dress of the collection’s title act as an artifact of human presence (“we bought this together” or “these were your things”) and agency (“you liked this, you chose this”). Part of what is stripped away, alongside memory, with dementia is the ability to make choices, and in an odd and very American way, the ability of Dower’s mother to make conscious choices as a consumer become a stand-in for her wellness. The poetry of illness and of kitsch are intertwined here, as the mass-produced material world interacts with and enacts ensouled human existence. In “The Salvation Army Won’t Take the Futon,” what happens to our stuff as we make the move into nursing care echoes what happens to us. In the “I Lost My Mother at Bloomingdales,” we see shopping as a bond:

 

…what if she vanishes into a refurbished brownstone

stairwell her dress on backwards label showing lost forever after

her last outing shopping with me it’s what we did what we loved until

 

—the poem finishes, achingly, here, with no punctuation, no resolution. Just the terror of losing your mind.

 

The title of the collection becomes a reassurance, in this context. “I Wore This Dress Today for You, Mom” a reminder of who the “I” is, who the “you” is, what day we’re on, and the relationship between the speaker and subject (“Mom”), with the dress serving as an anchor to what was once important in that relationship, even if it has long since stopped mattering. The title poem drips with longing, and the speaker, who we get the sense resented the high society New York life her mother so prized, now mother-less and in Los Angeles, finds herself with “a closet filled / with dresses I need to show you.”

 

These themes of motherhood, framed in an urban pastoral and humanistic materialism, run through these poems, with their attendant anxiety which might also be interpreted as a longing or nostalgia. This is a collection of imagined nature and of the unreliability of memory, pretzels at baseball games and “boiled secrets.” A strong gender commentary pervades the work as well, a through line from women’s’ roles in the 1950’s balanced with writing and bringing up kids, to a visceral set of poems which inhabit and explore Dower’s C-section and her son’s birth as an older woman. Dower returns to earlier themes and motifs from her work as well, in particular the moon, which even here is fragmented, diminished, hanging on too long.

 

The theme of anxiety around memory extends to Dower’s son, who, as he grows up, becomes someone alienated from her memories of him. Even if memory doesn’t fail us, she seems to say, the world will come to fail our memories of it. But it works the other way too — in “After the Rain,” she says, “although the dead / are gone, the way we think of them / can change.” These everyday poems, with titles like “Scrambling Eggs” and “While Washing the Dinner Dishes,” are a testament to how that change occurs, unobtrusively, in everyday life, as our brains make sense of loss through the continual process of living.

 

Southern California is a major player in this collection, situating the poems in geographic and mental space, from a poem entitled “The Things I Do In My Car” to one about earthquakes, “Minor Tremors,” where the shifting, uncertain landscape of California mirrors the mental landscape of a child coping with the loss of a parent. Perhaps my favorite in the collection is the laugh-out-loud funny piece “Bottled Water,” which contains such lines as ‘If I drink smartwater / will I raise my IQ but be less authentic?”

 

Dower is on form in this collection — both smart and authentic, with enough snark and humor to keep things from getting too, well, dour. Don’t let the serious themes fool you, there’s plenty of irrelevance at play here, too. Dower ends the poem “My Mother Bakes Sugar Cookies” with the lines:

 

The people in charge of Heaven

sound so thoughtful, I tell her.

Well, they’re angels,

she says,

 

but not like you’d imagine.

Sure, they wear white,

have wings,

smile sweetly

 

but they all talk way too much

and their asses

are huge.

 

Dower is a master of tonal shifts and irony, and uses dialogue to great effect. In the next poem, “Why We Dream,” her mother tells her, “I’m not dead…/ I’m going to the Opera!” It’s the mark of a great poet that, in speaking about the dead, Dower gives us such a vivid sense of life.

 

I Wore This Dress Today for You, Mom is available now through Red Hen Press

 

Brian Sonia-Wallace is the author of The Poetry of Strangers (Harper Collins), winner of the 2020-23 West Hollywood City Poet Laureateship, and a national 2021 Laureate Fellow for the Academy of American Poets. His work has appeared in The Guardian, Rolling Stone, Poets.org, Rattle, and more. He teaches at the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program and Get Lit – Words Ignite. More at briansoniawallace.com and @rentpoet.

Music Poetry

Bizarre Love Triangle by Daniel Healy

by on April 25, 2024

Piano Photo by Steve Johnson

Block chords before block chords
after block chords, I could write about
the way the infrastructure
carries the light inside itself,
carries it
hands on its hips,        half-hidden polyphony.
I could write about Scarlatti dueling Handel.
Scarlatti by himself,    reaching
substituting forward,   upward,
pulling the dough of substance with
his
hooked hands. I could write about
Debussy on the dancefloor.    Hands hooked
around hips. It’s there half hidden inside.
But I write about this.
I write about falling.
And then? You don’t. I fall on my knees.
It’s not about me but it is.

Daniel John Healy is a PhD student at UConn. His academic work has appeared in Style. His short fiction and poetry have appeared in New Haven Review and Long River Review. He was a 2023 finalist for the Iowa Review Award in poetry.

Book Review

City on the Second Floor

by on March 29, 2022

Poetry by Matt Sedillo
Review by Frank Mundo

I was watching Disney’s “Encanto” with the kids when the mail arrived with Matt Sedillo’s new book of poetry, “City on the Second Floor” from FlowerSong Press, and I thought, how perfect is that? Here’s Matt Sedillo, extremely popular Chicano political poet, essayist, activist (the hardest working poet I know) – and yet somehow he’s become like the Bruno of certain parts of the Los Angeles poetry scene. His poetry superpower is so electric and engaging that most are absolutely dazzled and inspired by his voice, while the rest are left frightened (even triggered) and dismissive of his ostensibly dark and angry premonitions. Plus, he’s a troll, they say. He’s a communist with Das Kapital C. He’s (God forbid) a renegade. Self-taught? He didn’t even go to college.

Maybe that’s why, despite all he’s done for the poetry community in Los Angeles for a dozen years or so, we haven’t seen even a mention of Sedillo (or his three books) in the LA Times since he won the L.A. Grand Slam championship in 2011. Perhaps that’s why, no matter how hard he works and finds success, he’s never been the poet in conversation at Rattle. And, maybe it’s why, like his second book, “Mowing Leaves of Grass,” his newest book will likely never be reviewed or discussed by the Los Angeles Review of Books.

Maybe it’s just me, but, in certain parts of Los Angeles, it seems we don’t talk about Matt Sedillo – at least, not nearly as much as we should. And I just don’t understand why. Many compare him to Amiri Baraka, Jose Montoya, and so many other fiery or political poets. To me, his work is a cross between Allen Ginsberg and Wanda Coleman. So why isn’t everyone in LA talking about his new book, “City on the Second Floor,” which is flying off the shelves, by the way.

One criticism you’ll hear way too often is that Sedillo’s poetry is too angry. This is a lazy and shallow reading (or listening) of his work. Yes, there is anger in his poetry, and a lot of it, but it’s almost always tempered with humor, which can never be done effectively without empathy and compassion. Sedillo’s speaker addresses this idea in “Post,” the very first poem of the 32 poems and one play collected in “City on the Second Floor.” And I can almost guarantee that Sedillo or his publisher placed this piece first in the collection intentionally. There’s no way this was a coincidence.

“Post” begins looking back (even reminiscing, you might say) to a time of the service economy (when what? America was great?) – “…just like yesterday/ Municipalities raised cities/ Built nuclear families/ Associations of sturdy pockets/ A two-car garage, chicken in every pot.” What follows is their broken promise of tomorrow, “…which doesn’t show up all at once,” the speaker tells us, “But when it does…” it’s with liquidated pensions and automated factories – and the resulting gig economy left in a shambles to a generation who “…cannot afford to live in…” the very cities where they must hustle only to get part-time, freelance, contract, and “adjunct” employment. “Promise me the world, then show me the door,” Sedillo’s speaker concludes. “I was not/ Born/ Angry/ I was abandoned.”

Yet, even with that last line, as justifiable as the “anger” might be for this speaker (and Sedillo’s generation), I think a lot of critics who only want to see anger will miss the fabulous punchline at the end of the poem – “Tell me the one/ Where I killed the economy.”

I love this line, not only because it’s hilarious, but because it’s so accurate. Often accused of being whiners and lazy, Millennials are also blamed somehow for ruining the very broken economy they inherited. But I would argue that there’s nothing overly angry in this line. This is not an “OK, Boomer” sarcastic snowflake moment. This is more of a mic-drop moment – a humorous wink and a nod to the “us” in the us-versus-them structure that makes up so much of Sedillo’s poetry.

Even the title “Post” is a funny play on words of old versus new. Is this the postindustrial standard? Is this a letter? A social media post? Is this a signpost? Or is it a warning, like so many other poems in the collection about how consumerism, credit, and debt will ruin us all? Maybe it’s all these things and a hint of what to expect in the following pages of an angry and funny and compassionate collection.
Sedillo reworks this poem later in the book (sort of in reverse) in a poem called, “Hammurabi,” which is laugh-out-loud funny. This one ends with a deadly serious punchline, “Since they from on high/ Convinced us down below/ That we/ Ever/ Needed/ Their/ Code/ Of law/ To tell us/ We were free.” What’s funny is that the lies about the future in this remix of “Post” come from the TV characters we so loved and trusted: Lucy Ricardo, Mr. Belvedere, Homer Simpson, Peter Griffin, and especially Al Bundy (all comedies, mind you) who convinced us that we “…could raise a family/ In a two story/ On the single income/ Of a shoe salesman.” LOL.

I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t the only one who believed Matt Sedillo’s poetry is as funny as it is angry. Maybe I just have a dark sense of humor. So, I called up Mike “the Poet” Sonksen, a poet, scholar, journalist, critic, mentor, and author with an encyclopedic knowledge of the history of poetry in Los Angeles. I respect Mike’s opinion so much because he focuses on poetry of merit, not simply the styles and genres he prefers. If anyone anywhere in LA is writing or “spitting” quality verse, he knows about it, writes about it, talks about – because he’s all about it and has been for 25 years.

“Matt Sedillo is relentless,” Mike told me. “He’s a student of history and skilled at spinning his astute understanding into engaging poetry,” and I couldn’t agree more. He also said, “Sedillo can also be quite funny, satirizing the powers that be with poetic one-liners. His social commentary balances truth and wit to produce a poetic velocity faster than Starsky & Hutch.”

Another poem I loved from the book, “Pope of Broadway,” literally starts as a classic joke: “An Arab, an Italian, a Jew, a Puerto Rican, an Inuit, an American Indian, a Mongolian/ And a Mexican/ Walk into a bar…” and “Anthony Quinn orders a drink.” This is a wonderful and complex poem about the “ethnically ambiguous” actors (the “every” Brown-man) in Hollywood, from Quinn (who was the best) to today’s other “two first-name” actors who continue this unusual tradition today, including Cliff Curtis and Oscar Isaac.

I like this poem also because I spoke about this concept (and the larger and darker meaning behind it) with Matt Sedillo a couple years ago, before he had written the piece. And reading the final product in his new book was a real treat for me.

That day, I also asked Matt what his goal was when writing a poem. “First,” he said, “it’s to satisfy the demands of structure.” Matt often uses a three-act structure that he has developed and refined over the years and made his own. It’s one of the major topics he discusses and often teaches as a highly in-demand speaker/performer at the top colleges and universities in America and at several other major venues in Canada, England, and Cuba. “Second,” Matt continued, “no matter what the theme is, I want to write poems (not every time, but I try) that are calls to action.” It’s not surprising to me that his answer is all about craft. Matt sees craft everywhere. He studies it and looks for patterns and anomalies in everything. He’ll read texts or study videos of fiery speakers, like Hugo Chavez and Michael Parenti, and spend hours breaking down their prose, examining what they say and how they say it. He’ll study the timing of stand-up comics, books, films, commercials, anything that tells stories in an engaging way that gets people to act.

In “Mowing Leaves of Grass,” Sedillo’s first book with FlowerSong Press from 2019, his craft, especially his three-act structure is in full effect. It’s the work that put him on the map as a unique and powerful voice in Los Angeles and beyond. The poems in his latest book, “City on the Second Floor,” however, offer a glimpse, I believe, of where his poetry is headed: even more powerful, political, angry, funny, timely, smart, carefully crafted, and compassionate calls to action.

I also asked Matt Sedillo who influences him and his writing, and I was a little surprised by his answer. An avid student of history, Matt listed artists who are still alive and very active in the community. He said Luis J. Rodriguez, the 2014 Los Angeles Poet Laureate. He also mentioned other poets whose work inspired him: spoken word artist David A. Romero, author of “My Name is Romero,” and Viva Padilla, Publisher/ Editor-in-Chief of Dryland, a literary journal.

Finally, I wanted to know about Matt Sedillo’s publisher, so I contacted Edward Vidaurre, Publisher/Editor-in-Chief of FlowerSong Press, and I asked him straight out why he chose to publish such an outspoken and, perhaps, controversial poet as Matt Sedillo. Without hesitation, Vidaurre answered, “Because, like me, he is fearless about his work. He’s a necessary voice in a world where being an activist is sometimes looked on as trouble.” Finally, he added – and it all made perfect sense to me – “I wanted his collection to make noise and open eyes.”

I suppose the gatekeepers and kingmakers of the Los Angeles literary scene will do what they want to do – and they still might not talk about Matt Sedillo after my little plea here. But, with Sedillo’s incredible work ethic, his determination and dedication to craft, and his fearless and supportive publisher’s commitment to sharing “necessary” voices and books, I know we will definitely be hearing much more “noise” from him.



City on the Second Floor is available now from FlowerSong Press.

Frank Mundo is a poet from Los Angeles. His latest chapbooks are Touched by an Anglo (Kattywompus Press) and Eleven Sundry Flowers (Antrim House).

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