Today’s letter is brought to you by Marshall
Happy Wednesday everybody. This is real mixed bag of a letter: some great stuff to read, a little new music to listen to, some thrilling news, and a holy grail skincare product for the 10% of you who care about that sort of thing. Also I think we’re going to start a book club? Maybe? Let’s get on with it:
The most important news of all: Souplantation have confirmed they are reopening in California. Our long national nightmare is over! If anyone at Sweet Tomatoes headquarters is reading this, I am more than available for any activations or ribbon cuttings or attendance at a soft launch dinner etc. Perhaps No Bad Days, the preeminent Southern California newsletter, could put on an event? Just spitballing here. Call me!!!
Speaking of No Bad Days, tasbeeh herwees continues to run one of the best newsletters around. Her latest, an interview with the great Brooks Headley of Superiority Burger (or if you’re me, you think of him first as the great Brooks Headley of Wrangler Brutes), is just a phenomenal read at the intersection of loving Los Angeles and loving food.
I also learned about this compilation, Tehrangeles Vice (Iranian Diaspora Pop 1983-1993) from Tasbeeh’s newsletter because there was a listening session for it at Huntington Rose Garden this past Sunday which I missed (good job me). Still thrilled to know of it - it’s fucking rad.
Bradford Cox, stone cold musical genius and purveyor of two of the greatest bands of my lifetime, Deerhunter and Atlas Sound (both criminally underrated imo) has been on extended hiatus since the release of the 2019 Deerhunter album Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared? However, he seems to be if not so back at least somewhat back: Atlas Sound performed at the Making Time festival in Philadelphia last month and has been announced as part of the Primavera Sound lineup in 2027. Plus! Core Deerhunter players Cox and Lockett Pundt are playing Big Ears Fest together in April of next year. We as a society deeply need this (and also maybe new music? Please?!?).
shaad did a great interview for his magazine with Andrew Savage of Parquet Courts about his new band Iconic Fugues (fab name). I need to hear it yesterday (I quite liked the A. Savage records he put out prior). One thousand years ago my friend Shannon Cornett and I DJed a Parquet Courts show here in LA and I can’t be sure (drunk) but I faintly remember playing my green Gin Blossoms 7” like four times (“Hey Jealousy” naturally). So, sorry about that or you’re welcome, if you were there.
This is a pro Shaad D’Souza newsletter so I would remiss if I didn’t also mention the fantastic long form interview he did with the brilliant, compelling, and complicated Nirosta Steel for Pitchfork. There have been some really great long form features on there lately. I really enjoyed this one on Dinosaur Jr by Grayson Haver Currin, the profiling goat.
sex happens featured me in their POV: I’m Your Girlfriend series and reading over my answers it seems I need to date a chef with a very strong nervous system? Much to consider.
Because he is the coolest, Hua Hsu made me a tape where the a-side is all covers of “Everything Flows” by Teenage Fanclub (one of the best songs of all time). I am now hyperfixated on this Afghan Whigs live version. Is “Everything Flows” the most October ass song of all time?
If you are in London, I’m the guest on the first Talk 90s to me live podcast taping on October 15th at ICMP. The subject is the enduring cultural impact of one Miss Courtney Love. Tickets here.
I finally found a Vitamin C that doesn’t break me out? Because it’s an oil? I’m not a woman in STEM I don’t know why but it’s fabulous. Prakash Organics Brilliant C + E + Ferulic Unrefined Complex. I was put onto it by Jennifer Garace aka the Beverly Hills Skincare Muse (the skin whisperer of Los Angeles). Run don’t walk.
There’s a new daine single. It’s called “Wishing Well” and it’s a totally different speed from the previous singles: jangly acoustic guitar, pretty vocals, textural production. I love it.
I added it and a few other new songs to the F&L October playlist.
Okay so F&L Book Club? Should we? There seemed to be a decent response to this timid proposition in the chat. How do we feel about Chuck Klosterman’s new one, Rock*? It’s speculative fiction based on the following premise: What if The Beatles had only developed a cult following while the Velvet Underground emerged as the most popular band in the world? (Fun!). I’ll let you guys decide (and in the meantime try to figure out what having a book club here actually looks like?):
The Dead Venue Sessions
Marshall (yes, the amp people - I once attended a party they did where Dinosaur Jr performed with like one hundred amps and they had to pass out ear plugs at the door and the sound still removed my arm hair, it was epic) have released a new three part series where they send young bands to play the sites of legendary venues that have since closed, ones that once hosted some of the greatest bands of all time and have since been paved over or turned into something else (they tore down paradise and put up a parking lot fr).
They tapped the absolutely iconic documentary filmmaker and photographer Cheryl Dunn to capture them and released these films as a three part series: Philly gets Sweet Pill playing the old Stalag 13, now a bodybuilding gym. LA gets the Linda Lindas at London Fog, the room that launched the Doors (the first punk band, real ones know) and is now a barbershop. But the first episode, and the one probably nearest to my heart (or at least most destructive to my lungs), is the New York one which features the Bronx duo Planta Industrial, whose music is a fascinating mix of punk, metal, darkwave and Spanglish rap), at what was formerly China Chalet.
If you never went to China Chalet, I’m very sorry because you missed something truly special. Let me try to explain. What’s that place in Denmark? Freetown Christiana? It was kind of like that. A Cantonese banquet hall at 47 Broadway in the Financial District that opened in 1975 that by day served dim sum to finance guys and by night became lawless. You could kind of do whatever the fuck you wanted in China Chalet? You could smoke, you could drink, twenty people could fit in a bathroom stall. The wall was lined with skate decks. The air was murky. It smelled of life being lived. It had floral carpet, pagoda paintings, pink light, and decades of indoor cigarette smoke I’m fairly sure was load-bearing.
It cost $1500 to rent out China Chalet for the night and have an art show, have four bands play, have a high fashion magazine party, whatever you wanted. I saw Danny Brown and Gang Gang Dance play there (separate nights). My friend Rachel swears we also saw The Virgins there but I don’t remember that at all (which does not mean it did not happen). I wasn’t there but there was a legendary Salem show there. Opening Ceremony had their holiday party there every year. It was always one thousand degrees inside no matter the season, and the age range of attendees seemed to span thirty years at minimum.
Later on, it hosted the packed and iconic Club Glam parties, and was frequented by A-list celebs and Supreme employees alike. Like many great things (I’m thinking of you, Souplantation), China Chalet didn’t survive the pandemic. It closed in 2020, and the space is now a food court and an arcade.
What made China Chalet special was not the dim sum or the cool carpet. It was cool because it was cheap enough to rent that people without a lot of money or a fully established scene could build one there, and it became known for parties that were full (always full, though sometimes your friend could sneak you in the side door) of all kinds of people, from every part of the city, skaters and celebrities and graffiti writers and models and even some normies, all types, all ages, a real Benetton-ass ad of a venue.
For their Dead Venue Session, Planta Industrial brought some life back to the space, taking over the food court to debut a new song called “MIA.” You can watch it HERE. To support existing musical locales, Marshall sends 1% of online purchases, plus every dollar from this limited edition t-shirt they released, to independent venues.
If you really really care about this kind of thing, try this: go to a show at a small venue in your city or town. Buy some merch. Maybe tip the sound person (is that weird? Feels nice!). If you’re in LA, I’m partial to the Lodge Room in Highland Park, which has many gorgeous shows coming up. (I’ll probably be at YHWH Nailgun with @ this Friday). China Chalet isn’t coming back but there are probably one hundred sort of China Chalets out there (you probably can’t smoke in any of them which I guess is good) and if people don’t frequent them and make them viable, there won’t be any left in the end and the only shows left to go to will cost you minimum $68 (fees not included) and will provide a much lower chance of creating lifelong memories and friendships just saying.
See you next week xx
The F&L October playlist has been the best curated playlist I've heard all year. The playlists are usually great but this month's has somehow had a spotless, no-skip record. Absolutely fab!
We *need* this book club. Please & thank you.