I had a blast at the Wondermints show on Friday, at the Knitting factory. I hadn’t been there since we Sold it out back in May but it was nice to see the souvenir the owner left in the window; a hand made sign that read: I NEED TIX FOR LOVE WITH ARTHUR LEE TONIGHT. CAN YOU HELP???? So I went in, ordered a beer and waiting for the opening act, Kristian Hoffman, to come on. In the meantime, I bumped into Rhino Records Vice-Prez, Gary Stewart. Gary’s a long time HUGE LOVE fan and usually makes it out to see local shows and well as higher profile shows. After a while, Rusty showed up and we took a spot in the back by the bar. After Kristian played his amazing set, another band came on that I can’t remember the name of. It was a performance rock thing ala- Bowie/Mott with a bunch of girls, guys and guitars. Now, if they actually had a song or two they would be dangerous. The singer was very Charismatic and he could sing. But the songs all had the same approach and dynamics and after awhile I began to think they were trying too hard. Songs would definitely do the trick for that lot. And my apologies if I offended anyone.

Also bumped into JIM FREEK. For those of you who don’t know who Mr. Freek is, he writes the weekly music column (and I use the word MUSIC loosely) for the NEW TIMES LA called FREEK OUT! Jim Deliveries the night life happenings and also reviewed our first show of 2002 (April 3, at Spaceland), comparing the singer to that Mc Donald’s character, THE HAMBURGLAR. May be it was the stripes? Doesn’t matter, Jim couldn’t resist a jab at me (you gotta know Jim Freek to appreciate his fine wit) saying, “Dear Diary, today Arthur had soup for lunch…” Of course I laughed cause it was very funny…so, HA, Jim is reading the Diary! I guess he forgave me for calling him the west coast version of Walter Winchell, which,by the way, I meant PURELY as a compliment. ( Anyone not familiar w/ W.W. need only rent THE SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS. Although Jim Freek doesn’t have a mean bone in his body…) So, Rusty and I saw (Wondermints/STEW Mgr.) CHRIS CARTER , AND Snagged (not Snogged!) 2 backstage passes. Although we were able to run from the 2nd band, I rather thought the Gospel-like chick in the front who was dancing her ass off was rather cute, in a Goth kind of way.

So we were chilling and Brian Wilson was backstage but we couldn’t go and hang with the Beach Boy so we chilled and let the 2nd band finish. Brian was there to sing on one of the Wondermints new songs, Motor Ride, which they performed first. I think I had like 5 pints so I was certainly on the rail by the end of their set. But sometimes you just gotts get loose…

Mike Randle