Live Show Review: Memo PST at Gold Diggers

God, give me a punk venue with recliners, where I can still be cool and be at a show but rest my aching back and sore feet. I’ve been good, Lord. I caught teenage stagedivers in sparse crowds pretty much on my own, I stood up front by the stacks until my ears rang forever, I flushed horrible toilets when no one else would. I showed up early and watched the opening bands and when the cool kids were out in the parking lot. I sold extra tickets at face value when I could have scalped them. I never asked to be on the list unless I truly was that broke. I defended bands who sucked live and I apologized to the people I brought to see such bands. I did everything you asked of me Lord, and now, all I want from you in return is a good place to sit at a show that ends at a reasonable hour.

Nico and I went to see Memo PST at Gold Diggers last Saturday. The venue was a bikini bar back in the day, or maybe a strip club. I don’t really know the history. And this post isn’t about the building, anyway. Point is, it’s a legit music venue now.

Nico’s the one who picks out our live music. She follows a garage/punk scene in LA, and knows when new bands start up and when we can catch them. This band is fronted by the singer of the now defunct Richard Rose, whom we saw several times.

When we walked in, the DJ was playing Gary Numan’s “Metal,” soon after followed by The Screamers’ “Punish or Be Damned.” The playlist was unusual, but welcome. These days, most of the music I hear is pumped through the PA at the supermarket. I thought I had escaped Bryan Adams and Sheryl Crow for the rest of my life, but I have not. Look, I don’t expect the supermarkets to play The Butthole Surfers or Suicide, but there’s a lot of great non-threatening music to play that isn’t absolute garbage. Why not play some Coltrane or Duke Ellington? Can’t we decide between what size of peas we buy while listening to a Max Roach solo? There may not be blue food, but can’t we shop to Blue Note records?

When the band started, Nico went to the front as usual. That’s where she is for both the small shows and the packed out ones. I stayed in the back, but after a few minutes the fatigue of my day shift set in and I went to find a place to sit. Hell, I might have gone for a place to sit anyway. But my lower back and my arches were screaming at me “why are you standing, old man? Haven’t we done enough today?” Yes, yes, you have.

Memo PST’s rhythm section is perfect. If this part of your band is right, you can fix the rest—you can write better songs and perfect your look and find the correct rooms to play (this is an underrated aspect in all of the arts that standup comics know better than anyone else, but, in short, your band will look and sound better in some rooms than others)—but if your drummer and bassist sound like they’ve never met, then you’re fucked. Break up the band and move on. Find a new drummer or new bassist or better yet, find two who play together. It’s like when they say a house has “good bones.” The drummer and bass player for this band look like they told each other’s parents they’re sleeping over at each other’s house and have skipped out for a night. I’m sure they’re of age, but I do like it when bands look like kids. The best part of seeing bands at Gilman Street was watching the bands of high school kids playing like the rest of their lives absolutely sucked, and I wouldn’t doubt if it was the case.

Less than one percent of bands I’ve seen in a small club had discernable lyrics—the prime exception was Fugazi, whom I saw a short distance away at the Anti-Club 35 years ago—and this was no different. The singer’s words are unknown to me but the vocal style was a ‘70s British punk, like Johnny Rotten or whoever sang for the Buzzcocks. It doesn’t matter though, the band is finding a sound and far from a time when they need people to be singing along.

After they played, we went outside to cool down. Across the street from Gold Diggers is a city-block sized hole, fenced off. It’s part of a $450 million dollar project that’s going to be mostly sound stages. I’m not from here. I don’t remember what used to fill that hole. But it reminds me of what happened to San Francisco, how it changed so quickly, not one business at a time, but whole blocks and neighborhoods transforming in a matter of months. This one has been years in the making and will take at least that to complete. A delivery bot came up the sidewalk, plastered with ads for the new Venom movie. It rolled to a stop, paused for a while, then took off down the street.