[photo of penne arrabiata and bottle of Stella Artois]
There’s no photo to this post because the place I had dinner, the LA music club Largo, has a strict “no electronics” policy, i.e. check your phone for a text, get booted.
That the pasta was unremarkable was made up for by the music. It was a show by Jon Brion (producer to Fiona Apple and Aimee Mann, does the music for Paul Thomas Andersen’s movies), who’s literally a one-man-band. For his first set he live-looped himself playing drums, then piano, then bass, then finally sang and played guitar leads over top of it. He also took requests, obliging on Billy Preston’s “Nothing from Nothing” and an art-noise version of “Girl from Ipanema.”
For the second set he brought up some other Largo regulars to fill out a full band, which led to the surreal moment of the piano player from Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers singing a rockabilly cover of “I Wanna Be Sedated” while backed by John Paul Jones on bass. Delicious.