Anti-Monday League Recap: Stellastarr* & Monsters Are Waiting

I was at home all day yesterday with an earache and no decent computer access, but thank goodness, or I might’ve missed the live hearing of Lisa Nowak, the astronaut who allegedly planned on kidnapping a fellow astronaut over a dude. I love the psychologists analyzing her as if something snapped. In my opinion, women are raised to hate one another. Think “Mean Girls”. It’s not even that the guy is worth it, just a mentality of “if I can’t have him, that bitch ain’t getting him.” I’m not defending her, I’m just saying people shouldn’t be so surprised, astronaut or not.

That said, I’ll jump back a couple days to Monday night at the Casbah for Anti-Monday League. I arrived with Jason having just missed Minipop. I was really surprised to see how crowded the bar was for a Monday night, and at $12 at the door. I have no history or knowledge of Stellastarr* but Monsters Are Waiting are mentioned and played on Indie 103, so I wanted to check them out. (Total sidenote: Indie has a version of the Gnarls Barkley song “Crazy” performed by the Kooks that is phenomenal.)

So after hanging out with Jason and Brooke and Troy and Tim for a bit in the patio, finally Monsters Are Waiting started. If you are a fan of MayStar, you would love Monsters Are Waiting. This girls vocals were a bit too baby sweet whispers for me, but her backing band rocked, and either she couldn’t fake the baby thing through the whole set or she felt more comfortable with a stronger voice but it became less whispers and more straight up singing later. The band is a 4 piece: drums, bass, guitar, and vocalist with mini-keyboard for vocal effects. I had to go to the patio to listen but when I heard the bass line of “I wanna be adored” by The Stone Roses, I made my way back into the show. They should’ve ended on that song. Jason should’ve hit the guys yelling “Woo! Pixies!” *ahem*. They played a few more songs and I was tuned out. They lost me. People loved them. Indie loves them, saying they are “one of the best live bands in LA right now.” I just did not. The single on Indie is just as breathy, so I should’ve known that style is not for me.

Stellastarr* played after and I am still kinda surprised by how long their set was. Certain bloggers complain about complacent Casbah crowds and while I’ve never had a problem with it, I know that if this show was at the Beauty Bar, everyone would’ve been dancing. This crowd is probably too cool to admit liking the Killers or Bravery, and in fact, would probably object to the comparison, but Stellastar’s roots are tightly planted in the 1980’s new wave rock arena, as are those other bands, that just jumped on the wave later and got all the credit for it.

I thought they were fun to watch and I liked their sound, but alas, it was a packed house and so I found the smoking patio to be a more comfortable place to enjoy the show. The crowd diminished little by little but there were still a lot of people emptying out after the show finally ended around 1 a.m. I really need to look into sleeping pills because no matter how tired, it is hard as hell to fall asleep right after a raucous show. But eventually I did.

I was hoping to have a review of Julieta Venegas, but between my earache, my sister’s pregnancy sickness, and poor communication with my friend who was hooking up the tickets, I decided I could use a night in. I will post pictures from the evening later.