anti-aging at the all ages show

My friend Phoebe recently sent me a link to a Rolling Stone piece about the band Kim Theory—a quartet of L.A.-based teenagers making punk music, who named their band after the holy trinity of punk rock Kims of the late 20th century (Deal, Gordon, Shattuck). The thing about getting older is that new people keep getting born and some of them start making music. James Murphy called this phenomenon "the kids are coming up from behind" in "Losing My Edge." But you don't have to lose your edge, so long as you keep participating in the new music made by new people.

"It gives us energy," Poison Ivy Rorschach said of rock and roll music in the biography Journey to the Centre of The Cramps, when asked how she looked younger than her actual age. "There's a myth that rock'n'roll destroys and has to burn up those who use it...the opposite is true. There's life-force energies in the atmosphere you can tap into." I do not need Botox...I need rock and roll music.

Last week I was browsing the music forum/chat zone Freakscene and saw a flyer in the L.A. Scene for a Kim Theory show...that very night. Oh ho ho. I hustled to Oblivion, a venue in Highland Park I'd not yet heard of; looking back in time on Google Maps, it used to be a surf shop/vintage store/event space, and before that a storefront church with a "got prayer?" banner up front. The building next to it used to be a church too, and now it's a HIIT workout place. And next door to Oblivion is a pop-up for the glasses brand Crap Eyewear, a name I could never quite wrap my head around.

I arrived as Androgyny was getting underway—screamo music with some seriously killer bass noodling mixed in. It was an all ages show and other than two other 30+ people, the room was full of teens. I realized that as an elder, I was the one stretching the concept of "all ages." I was being welcomed, conditionally, into the space of the youngers! And some of them were going nuts, windmilling around a pit that had spread to the very edges of the room.

Next was Astatine, playing some classic-style politically-minded hardcore. Vocalist Miles Hemingway had a commanding presence and a raw, raspy scream. I particularly liked their song "Fight Power, Not People," which the frontmost crowd knew all the words to. A guy in a white dress shirt was flailing in a circle, pointedly roundhouse kicking friends who were standing at the edge of the pit. Or at least I hope they were friends. It would be nutty if they were strangers. I wondered how people get good at hardcore dancing. Do you just do it at enough shows that it becomes second nature? Or do you practice at home? I had the same question for the guys who do "showtime" dances on the NYC subway. I imagined them on empty 5am trains, rehearsing.

Between sets I chatted with the non-teens. Two friends, there to support a colleague: Ace, the drummer for Astatine, whose birthday it was that night. One of them taught barre classes and we talked about workout music; I shared a traumatic tale of a spin teacher playing "This Is Me" from The Greatest Showman as the climax of one class back in 2017; he told me he and his friend used to go to a 24 Hour Fitness in the Valley because a guy would be DJing on actual turntables, getting up and down from his bike to mix records.

Kim Theory was great. Lead singer Audrey Cymone commanded the crowd in a genius way–the pit had been extremely open for a long time due to all the windmilling, and she got people to pull back up to the front with tactful participatory instructions. They played a new song (I believe it was called "Absolutely Nothing") that was a standout, and they did a spiky cover of "My Kink Is Karma" to close. I felt energized by everyone's palpable commitment to rocking out. It reminded me of being in high school and going to Oddfellows Temple and seeing my friend's bands play (though Oddfellows didn't have a designer eyewear pop-up next door). Nothing felt more important in those moments than the noise that was coming from the front of the room.

I feel a strong urge to keep turning impersonal experiences into more personal ones. If I read about a band, I want to see them play live. If I watch a cool video, I want to talk to the person who made it. Then I go home and write and turn it back into something someone random might read. The more I try to make connections, the more they loop in on themselves. Eventually we will all know each other and we will all listen to each other's music. Maybe we will all have a blog too.

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