Last Saturday I spent the afternoon at the Echoplex for the 826LA Chickens In Love mini-music festival/benefit. I'd been to some of 826's events and writing workshops in the past so I headed over in search of a fun time for a good cause, and was definitely not disappointed.
When I arrived fashionably late at 1:30 there were clumps of people milling about the dark space eating pizza from the bar and chatting -- this was (obviously) a family-friendly affair, and there were a lot of young kids and parents mixed in with the normal twentysomething hipster milieu (not that I have anything against the normal twentysomething hipster milieu, guilty as charged) I moseyed over to the merch table and bought a little zine-type book, Make It Punk, which was written by 826LA students, cause there's nothing cooler than when kids write about punk music.
Although this show featured four local bands who had contributed to the Chickens In Love compilation -- Summer Darling, The Pity Party, Thao Nguyen and The Submarines (love them) -- I have to say that The Bombs were the hands-down highlight. You probably haven't heard of them...because they are a group of elementary school-aged 826LA students, and they took the stage a bunch of times during the show to hang with MC Dianna Agron (of Glee fame, who was an awesome choice for hostess and great with the kids) and just generally entertain us with their alternating enthusiasm and mic-shyness.
At various times, The Bombs sang their own rendition of "Down By The Bay" - with accordion backing provided by Nora Kirkpatrick from Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros' - improvised a story in response to the question "what would you do if you ran away from home?" (fight against Barney and trees made of snakes, obviously), and humored a request for Salt 'n' Peppa's "Push It," after realizing it was a band and not a seasoning. So much for makin' the rest of us feel old, guys. They also read from a book of student-written Valentine's Day poems; looking at love through a 7-year-old's lens puts everything in perspective, I'll tell you that.
The only band I was really looking forward to seeing was The Submarines, and I unfortunately had to leave 3 songs into their set to go to a family dinner. It was my first time seeing Thao Nguyen of Thao with the Get Down Stay Down, and she had a nice Feist thing going on with a little bit of Jenny Owen Youngs thrown in. But nonetheless it was a successful afternoon and I hope they raised a lot of money to keep 826LA going strong. If you live in LA and haven't checked out any of their events I recommend that you do. And you can still sponsor one of the student-written Chickens In Love compilation songs and pre-order a copy of the full-length album here.
(Photographic evidence forthcoming...)
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