Play the Techno Song!

The holiday season of 1996 is upon us, and the Dandy Warhols are in town playing at The Bottom of The Hill. Located in desolate outer-Potrero Hill, it’s an area made up of sparse housing and warehouses flanked by networks of disused train tracks and overly used freeway overpasses. Tonight, this south-city zone is serving in my mind’s eye as an urban concrete version of the classic Christmastime countryside. 

As I approach the venue, I can hear probably my favorite Dandys song, “The Coffee and Tea Wrecks,” as it booms muffled through the vibrating glass front windows. This only slightly hurries me, as I’ve racked up many live experiences with the band in the last couple years since we’d met, and instantaneously created a mutual appreciation society with the band I play tambourine and maracas in, The Brian Jonestown Massacre.

Outside the doors, the cold rain-wet streets glisten with the neon reflection of blue rock & roll club facade lights, adding on a type of electric winter holiday fare. Inside, the dim house lights are even lower than usual to showcase the new streamers of X-mas lights along the walls and the large mahogany bar. This glow, along with the incoming smell of beer, is most welcoming, especially having just come in from the cold. I saddle up and gladly wait my turn while watching the twinkling colors refract from the lines of booze bottles and the mirrored wall behind. The varnish on the bar glows warm to the eye yet cold to the touch with fresh polish as I make my first survey of the packed house. 

The vibey song concludes, then the band strikes up the festivities with a personality-infused version of the Christmas carol “The Little Drummer Boy.” It’s then I see the BJM gang’s all here, lined up along the perimeter of the main crowd. In keeping with my evening’s holiday lens, it’s like the rock nightlife’s take on observing from around the ice-skating rink. 

The ox and lamb kept time, pa rum pum pum pum…

Dean, one of our three guitarist, even has a mod Rockefeller Plaza look going, in a herringbone overcoat with side-vents and a velvet scarf, while on his arm, his lady Christina is in crushed velvet under faux-trapper furs.

I played my drum for Him, pa rum pum pum pum…

Bass player Matt’s scrunching up his nose, giggling with bowl cut jiggling, at drummer Brian’s aside delivered in Zen wonderment.

I played my best for Him, pa rum pum pum pum, Rum pum pum pum, rum pum pum pum…

Our very tall manager Dave is leaning down a smile to Miranda — our sometimes-Nico of the band — with his head and long stoner hair shaking slightly in approval, the way it always did when he was speaking from the heart.

Then he smiled at me, pa rum pum pum pum…

Anton is in his parka beaming an energy like something huge is about to be unleashed at any moment. He always had that air at times like these, and as I approach him, it indeed succeeds in adding on excitement.

 “Hey Joel, I think they are going to ask you to play maracas with them. Courtney said he was going to call you up or something.”

“Oh, cool,” I return, excited to learn I’m invited to be a part of the action. 

“Courtney told me they are in meetings with Capitol, man, things are about to explode, it’s all coming together for next year, then if we also decide to sign with Capitol, it’s going to be like Beatles and The Beach Boys all over again.”

“Whaat?! They know about us too?” 

“Of course they do!”

It’s all happening, and my chest fills with the winds of realization and a feeling like I’m in the front car of a rollercoaster ride at its tippy-top teetering over the highest slope — when suddenly from behind, “Plaay the techno song!”

We turn around to see Purple Onion impresario Tom Guido flailing his body around, creating a one-man frenzy in the max capacity sold out room. His thin and purposely-too-small overcoat whipping around like a bird in seizure. 

“Play the techno song!”

The Dandys had given a few new songs, including “Every Day Should Be a Holiday,” their SF premiere last month at the legendary Beat-era North Beach night club — more recently turned into a ‘60s garage rock aficionado’s club by Tom, and his presence tonight comes with a blitzkrieg of eccentric-fueled sarcasm.

It’s loud and now distracting in this, the most crowded part of the club, so I break off to do the rounds. But despite the enormous crowd chatter, no matter where I go, in between every song I can hear Tom’s Cali-whiny accent crying above all else, “Plaay the techno song!” on repeat.

From inside the bathroom stall, Play the techno song! 

Back in the closed-off patio smoking section, Play the techno song! 

At the bar, Play the techno song! 

Outside in the street, Play the techno song! 

I return to my crew. “Hey Joel!” Brian had probably the best “Hey Joel!” out there, in all its bold friendliness. “Look, Matt’s back!”

“Back, back?” I ask excitedly. 

“Yeeaah,” Matt confirms. “I guess I started to feel sorry for you guys,” he jokes, by way of making light of the fact he’s missed being in the band. Again. This is understood, and it’s all good news. I go for another bathroom bump, slap a BJM sticker onto the inside of the stall door, and then return to the bar where I get another beer.

“IS JOEL HERE? JOEL ARE YOU HERE?” Courtney asks from stage. I head over and up the side-of-stage steps onto the small but surprisingly open stage — this four-piece band real estate experience being not at all like the forest of guitar necks that come with BJM. The gin and tonics I’d had before leaving the party warehouse I live in are in a meeting with the beer pints, but the speed is talking over everything.

I half-step over Peter while he fine-tunes a pedal setting and over to a smiling Courtney, where Zia hands over a pair of plastic maracas from behind his back. (It was by now a tradition that Zia and I were the ambassadors to each other’s band stages, a type of unspoken ceremonial celebration that we were the two outfits going to the next level.) I give the maracas a taste shake and they sound like cement inside a mixing truck with a leak. Unlike my preferred wooden Mexican-made maracas from the music store in the Mission district, these were designed more for stage volume than sound quality. Though I’m unaware of it, this brings the competition creepers creeping up onto my shoulder. The band goes into “It’s a Fast Driving Rave Up With The Dandy Warhols” and I go there with. It’s then, when I hear and feel the full reality of these plastic rock sticks shaking in front of me, that it strikes. The intoxo-impassioned realization that the plastic in my hand and the dangling plastic X-mas ornaments hanging all along the ceiling in front of the stage are one in the same. Plastic. Artificial. Maracas are meant to be made of gourds with handles of wood. Made from nature, not fake like these mold-made smiling snowmen and Santas and captive deer. 

I decide to free one of the hanging decorations in front of me, and I do so with a WHACK that sends Rudolph flying into his new role as crowd surfer. Now with that initial inner charge detonated from within, I proceed down the line — WHACK shakeshakeshakeshake WHACK shakeshakeshakeshake WHACK shakeshakeshakeshake WHACK shakeshakeshakeshake WHACK shakeshakeshakeshake — until even the streams of X-mas lights that accompany the ornaments are coming loose and hover-jerk at nose-level. Still lost in my own private frenzy, another WHACK, and Courtney’s chin is almost whipped by the plastic chord of lights. The Dandys are smiling, but it’s that regretful kind that was becoming more regular. I won’t understand why that makes sense until tomorrow.

I follow the band off stage and straight into the intercepting face of one of the venue staff. She is not happy. “Do you have ANY idea how long it took me to go buy all that stuff and decorate that stage today?! ALL DAY! Everything that you just smashed to shit was our holiday decorations for the rest of the year — and you just destroyed ALL of it!”

Play the techno song! 

The Dandys come back onto the stage for the final encore as I assume my deserved position in the back of the crowd, where Tom and his flailing overcoat show have apparently also been confined by security staff. He gives me a coy sideways grin, looking very proud of his own mischief, and then cries out again.

Suddenly, the bouncy intro to “Every Day Should Be a Holiday” begins to bleep its bloops, and with that, they are finally playing “the techno song.” Merry Christmas, Tom.

DiG! XX is in theaters January 17.  

(Photo Credit: Desirée Pfeiffer)