In his second and most awesomely titled column for the site, Mario Lalli of Fatso Jetson illuminates his feelings on the avant garde and discusses a recent performance at his Los Angeles-area restaurant, Cafe 322. Please enjoy:

Avant Guardian Experimental Pizza by the Slice
by Mario Lalli

I have an interesting perspective on people’s takes and response to different kinds of music.

I run a restaurant/club in Sierra Madre, California – a small town about 20 minutes east of Los Angeles. It’s a small venue, seats about 100. We have a neighborhood bar where locals hang and wind down after work.

My family has been in this business for 65 years. My folks were both opera singers and made a nice life for themselves entertaining the customers at their restaurants for decades. When I opened our place here in L.A. after growing up in the SoCal desert (a cultural void), I was excited to dive into booking an eclectic mix of live music ranging from rock shows with bands like Fatso Jetson and Yawning Man, Saccharine Trust, Mike Watt, Spindrift, Totimoshi, Brant Bjork & the Bros – you get the idea – to big band jazz & bebop, blues, bluegrass, roots rock… you name it.

On Sundays it’s opera. My father sings arias and Neapolitan songs with a group of singers that come out every week. I work behind the bar most of the time, running back and forth to the stage to check the sound and dial in the mix. At the bar you get a direct response to whatever is happening on the stage. For instance, the two bikers that roll in for a shot and a beer on a Sunday evening. As these two dudes dismount their Harleys and shake off the road dust, they have no idea that they are about to walk into Opera Night with a three-octave soprano on stage singing the “Doll Song” from The Tales of Hoffman. I wish I had that reaction on video. Needless to say, there are very few places where these two worlds collide and our cafe is one of them.

Being the proprietor/booker, I am pretty sensitive to the various opinions that come at me about the music we feature. I do have to think about catering somewhat to the mainstream, even though it’s very hard to do sometimes. I sometimes forget that my tastes and what I dig might be downright offensive to the average person that tunes in pop radio on the way home from work. A debate that has recently been sparking through the conversation at the bar over the last few days was ignited by a performance I booked featuring members of L.A.’s free music society.

This group of experimental artists and musicians perform mostly improvised pieces, rejecting the traditional components of popular song form. “It’s sound not song. What it does in your head is up to you,” was one comment that I found interesting. The makeup of the band was traditional enough – vocal, sax, piano, bass, drums. The music, however…

Imagine tides of puzzle pieces washing up on your brain just to be incinerated by blasts of gong and saxophone blurts. Improvising vocally was Bonnie Barnett. She is probably the most interesting element of the band, making “wasa wasa” sounds and scatting excorcistic unintelligible bleeps and bloops into the microphone in answer to the chaotic swelling and fractured soundscapes. Keep in mind this is all happening in a pizzeria during dinnertime.

The crowd that night was a very spattered mix of local rockers, aging beatniks, soccer moms and date-nite couples. The reaction was to both extremes, the avant garde that soaked up every flutter and clang with delight, to the foursome of golf buddies that happened to come by for a cold one after the 18th hole and found themselves trapped in a jazz torture chamber.

It was from this end of the spectrum the debate ensued: “What the fuck are they doing??!! That’s not music!” or, “This is bullshit, are they serious??” Some customers were actually outraged that I would subject them to this while they were trying to eat and visit with their friends and demanded an explanation for my choice of entertainment. I might as well have had Venom on stage, or, even better, Celtic Frost or Earth laying down slabs of avant lava to add ambiance to their dining experience.

The debate about the legitimacy of this form of expression/entertainment has been brought up every day since the show two weeks ago. I guess while it’s not the most practical business decision I’ve made, it certainly got people thinking and me asking myself, “Where do I draw the line between expression and entertainment?” I guess after thinking about it probably more than I should have, my answer is to that question is the line does not exist.

To see the menu and upcoming performances at Cafe 322, check out the restaurant’s website.

Tags: Mario Lalli

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 28th, 2012 at 1:38 pm and is filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.