Jul 28, 2015 Dengue Fever at Alex’s Bar
The folks in Dengue Fever are longtime friends of mine and the band has been all over this Imprint blog. Zac and Nimol represented Cambodia Town and independent music as part of Imprint’s conference about Long Beach. The band recently played on of my benefits for the school that my daughter attends in Chinatown. So how could I miss last week’s show at Alex’s Bar in Imprint’s home town?
I love the venue–a bona-fide punk dive bar without irony or poseurs–and it’s even better that it’s in the middle of Cambodia Town. You can get banh mi, iced coffee, and badass rock ‘n’ roll right across the street from each other! And so the sold-out show was packed with underground music lovers as well as locals who knew Nimol from when she sang at Dragon House. Cool!
I’ve probably seen the band a dozen times but this was the first show that didn’t feature David Ralicke on horns. Of course I missed his additions and embellishments to the songs but it was cool to see Zac and Ethan fill the space with on the axe and keys. Senon and Paul on the rhythm end, too. On the tight, sweaty stage the red-hot set recalled the alien-yet-familiar garage rock genre that mutated out of G.I. bars across Southeast Asia in the ’60s and ’70s and inspired the band.
Dengue Fever didn’t go on until 11:30 and when they finished the raging 90-minute set they didn’t need to come back for an encore. They were fried and the crowd was, too. Kind of a relief because it was already 1:00 a.m. when we started hanging out, catching up with the band (Wendy and Nimol before the show, above), and then saying hi to other friends (that’s Fredo from Bongoloidz/Gogol Bordello/Beastie Boys and Bradley and Armon from Flattbush being bookends after the show, below) before finally heading back up to L.A.
There will be more chances to see Dengue Fever this year. Echo Park Rising sounds pretty good to me., and then in September they’re going on a proper tour to the East Coast before flying away to Europe. Check out tour dates (and music and gear) at denguefevermusic.com!
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