soft rock as antidote for hard living

I want to tell you about the Taiwanese soft rock show on Friday, but I also want to tell you about the driving I did on the night of the Taiwanese soft rock show. Sometimes in L.A. a night is planned more around the driving one needs to do to get to things, rather than the things itself. This happened in New York too, where the subway rides between parties and bars needed to be as sublime as possible to make everything worth it. Otherwise you're just...commuting.

I had to go drop a baked ziti off at my friends' place before I went to the show. I drove to Hollywood as the sun had already dropped below the horizon. The sunsets and sunrises have been creating a nice clean gradient from orange to blue this week. Freeways were a rush hour mess so I took the streets (Frank Ocean style) and the temperature was nice enough to drive with the windows down. I was in a good mood, because I'd made it through another week. I got a Covid booster and it fucked me all the way up—I guess a vax that hurts is a vax that works? It was the kind of week that had me googling "things to do to promote knee health." I've been doing squats with a wriggling 20+ pound kettlebell (my daughter), tendons are straining.

On the way downtown, I could smell delicious grilled streetmeats in Koreatown. I listened to my friend Matthew's playlist 2020-2025 GOD TIER, his picks for the best songs of the first half of the decade. Technically I was cherry-picking, looking for the ones that matched my contemplative but upbeat mood. The one that really hit was "One More Year" by Tame Impala. A song about getting stuck in a time loop and the futile pursuit of 'figuring out what you're doing with your life', which was released presciently in February 2020. That song never fails to soothe me. You do not need to need to know exactly what you're doing—just do what you're doing for a little longer. A sentiment I need in October, the month that makes me wonder what I've been doing all year.

I went to see Sunset Rollercoaster with my friend Peyton, a writer with great taste in movies. The venue was The Novo, which is part of the L.A. Live complex: Crypto.com Arena, things of that nature. Something L.A. tries to do is create these piazza-like environments, placing together restaurants, bars and entertainment zones in a way that says, "Come here! Convene! Mix and mingle!" but everyone just drives to the place they need to go and then leaves. The only place that really works is the Americana at Brand, a deconstructed mall that is never not full of squads of youths in cozy clothing making it rain at Brandy Melville, and moms decked out in Gucci-Louis-Fendi-Prada, pushing fancy babies in fancy strollers.

I didn't know much going into the show other than I was expecting soft rock. Opener CLOUDRIVER had a nice '80s vibe and varied the tempos well. Their keyboard player was doing some crazy things with some kind of knob. This is where my music knowledge fails and I need a synth nerd to tell me what's happening. All I see is furious twisting, and hear the song wwwwrraaapbrroowwwp.

And Sunset Rollercoaster sounded lush and chill, occasionally breaking into a Latin-esque beat for a dance moment. I was paying particular attention to their multi-instrumentalist Huang Hao-Ting, who broke out a soprano saxophone at key moments. The music was chic, vibe-y adult contemporary (Peyton brought up that it was doing a modern city pop thing, which was apt) and brought up visions of gleaming 1980s hotels, like Los Angeles's own Westin Bonaventure.

From our vantage point at the topmost ring of GA, I had a great people-watching view, and everyone's outfits were as chic as the music. Breezy white linen shirts; insanely pointy flats; long baggy shorts but not long and baggy in a nü-metal way, more like a French flâneur way; well-worn designer tees (not crispy and new—tacky!); long peasant skirts in subtle plaids. Best dressed crowd I have seen at a show in a minute.

I drove Peyton to her train station and put on Woman Worldwide by Justice because she's a Justice fan. Then the freeway was clear all the way home, which allowed me to drive a sensible 5 mph over the speed limit while listening to the WWW "Audio, Video, Disco" remix, one of my favorites. After all the soft rock, I needed to go hard for a second. Another beautiful night of music in Los Angeles.

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