Dive into the night

Walking into a bar, paying a few bucks and seeing a young band play is like buying a lottery ticket. Maybe you’ll see the next Bruce Springsteen. Or maybe you’ll write the night off after a bit of scratching as a low-cost gamble.

There are plenty of well-appointed venues to see live music in the wide asphalt kingdom of Southern California, and this is not to diminish the finely minted music moments offered by the Greek Theatre or the Wiltern LG or the deep resource of the Troubadour, the Whisky and the other “small” names that are writ large in the encyclopedia of music. But sometimes you just want a darker corner and a little chaos, a place where you park your own car and then double-check the locks.

In my mind, I always go back to the tiny bar in Gainesville, Fla., where in 1987 I stepped past broken beer pitchers to get within 10 yards of the Flaming Lips. This year I saw the Lips play to 30,000 people at an outdoor music festival, where I had to step over empty water bottles. Guess which show was better?

The Thomas Guide, curiously, does not circle bars in its pages so I had to rely on friends and bartenders for advice on where to go -- places that have no box seats, no VIP rooms and no corporate sponsors. In the same way a mud bath is cleansing, plunging into a dive bar can be an uplifting experience. In the din and hints of chaos you remember the reasons that dark bars were scary mysteries when you were a kid and what goes better with beer than repressed fear and loud music?

The Scene

The first stop was a Glendale haunt called the Scene. The Scene has a name that suggests velvet rope and supermodels in training but roll up to its bunker of a building at 806 E. Colorado and it’s abundantly clear that this is urban roadhouse, not ritzy penthouse. I asked the doorman to describe the music personality of the place: “Punk rock. Oh, and bluegrass, too.” I couldn’t hand over my $5 fast enough.

The floors inside seem to be an extension of the sidewalk pavement and the paneling on the walls must have cost tens and tens of dollars.

At the door is a handmade sign with “The Scene’s 10 Comandments” (OK, so they can’t spell), which include neighbor-minded admonishments about noise outside and jaywalking or illegal U-turns on the busy street. My favorite rule, though, was No. 7: “No knuckleheads.” The place has booked live music for two years or so, and despite the gritty environs it’s a mellow crowd with lots of regulars, according to the manager, Carl Lofgren: “This place is what I like to think of as a punk-rock ‘Cheers.’ ” The norm here is loud music but no moshing (“There is a little pogo-ing sometimes,” he said) and enough of an open mind to book indie-rock acts and, every other Thursday, the bluegrass acts that arrive with washboards in tow.

The small stage is in a rear corner. A musician who has played there still remembers the electric shocks that zipped through the wiring, her gear and her fingers every half minute or so. A built-in deterrent to long solos -- I’m loving the place more by the minute.

When I walked in last Saturday night there was a trio on stage hammering out a hip-hop rhyme in rock cadence. “I got drunk today. I got drunk yesterday. And I’m gonna get drunk tomorrow!” At least that’s what I think they said. All three were clad head to toe in those shiny haz-mat suits, tucking their microphones under the front flap of their visor hoods. “You guys can hear us right?” one asked between songs.

Stepping outside, Lofgren said the place is enjoying enough success to afford some new amenities. I fearfully asked if the renovations might despoil this beautiful bowery of a bar. “Oh, no, basically we’re bringing it up to code.”

Goldfingers

There was no cover at Goldfingers. In fact the doorman at this low-slung Hollywood cocktail room seemed unsure if the place was actually open. “I think they got something going on in there.” It was Tuesday night and it’s unfair to judge any bar on that, but I was still glum to see the place all but empty. The motif is James Bond and the walls are cushioned with glinting, gold upholstery that seemed more Liberace than 007. Actually, since the place is next to the Pla-Boy liquor store maybe Hugh Hefner is the style imprint for the block.

The performer was a reggae/dub act holding long notes on a keyboard and I was ready to dismiss the place as junk Bond. Then I walked out to the rear patio and found myself talking to some of the musicians who play every week there and heard a lovely sentiment from one of them, a Jamaican-born reggae man named Chris Bonafide.

“This is the place, right, where the people come together, the people who live around here and the people just visiting ... all colors and countries, different kinds of music. In here they find each other and that is a good thing. All walks of life come here and become family.”

Goldfingers has eclectic fare -- Mondays are rock, Tuesdays are hip-hop, Thursdays are reggae, Friday is disco and dance. “Monday is the Hollywood crowd, Tuesdays are all the potheads, on Thursdays people roll in from the hood,” the bartender told me. She shrugged when I asked what night ranked best. “The rock crowd tips the best.”

Walking out I thought that, for a place with metallic upholstery, it was pretty comfortable.

Molly Malone’s

Molly Malone’s is a landmark in Mid-City that has steadily upgraded its offerings without losing its everyman’s pub sensibility. The bar used to be the occasional stamping grounds of Tom Waits in the 1970s and some of the barflies who heard him growl about the heart of Saturday night can still be seen there every evening -- the walls of the place are adorned with oil-paint portraits of patrons from decades past. They were the handiwork of Neal Boyle, a regular who took to paying off his tab with canvas work. Boyle must have put away a lot of Guinness; there are scores of his brush-stroked faces looking down on the bar.

Molly’s is an Irish pub of the first order but it’s a Swedish smorgasbord of corner-bar music. In a 30-day month, there’s an average of 26 nights of music, four acts per night. The cover is $5 most nights. The long, alley-shaped bar has a stout-and-sports-channel crowd during the day mixed with a lot of foot traffic at lunch from the nearby museums and white-collar cubicles down the block on Wilshire. They have a lot of European passports pass through the doors, too, and a Jagermeister dispenser on the bar (it looks like an engine of destruction with pistons and fuel in the form of three inverted bottles). It gets plenty of use.

I’ve seen good shows at Molly’s through the years, and if you spend a week’s worth of nights there you’ll likely catch a band on the rise, such as Flogging Molly, an outfit that is hard-edged and Irish in sound (would that be sham-rock?) and prowled the stage here for months before their current attention from radio.

Until three years ago, some of the chatting drinkers would leave when the music plugged in after 7 p.m. but then the place expanded to add a second room. What had been an Irish import and gift shop next door is now a nifty music space. Molly’s is the same every night, really, which to me is a grand thing, not a slight; the music may veer from curled-cowboy-hat twang to the latest amplified tempest but the vibe resists the rush of the moment, not unlike a traditional Guinness pour or those daffy barflies frozen and framed on the wall like past presidents.

Silverlake Lounge

A place that is not the same every night is the Silverlake Lounge. Like the strange roommate lottery that decides the demographics of Southern California neighborhoods, this modest bar finds its stage given to guitars during the working week and ab-fab drag queens on weekends. No matter the night, the performer sweats in front of one word written out in light bulbs on the wall at center stage: “SALVATION.” I don’t know what it means, but I cannot for a moment deny that it is cool. The cover is around $8 on music nights and don’t bring your plastic here, it’s cash only.

The bar is run by Carlos Nunez, and this is how he explains the place: Monday through Thursday, it’s a mostly white, mostly rock crowd coming to see acts booked by the Fold, which is a rightfully well-known outside promoter. On Friday, Saturday and Sunday, the crowd is very local, gay and Latino, and the show is drag splendor, celebrity impersonators and peacock revelry.

“This is a gay bar but I have the bookings for the rest of the week,” Nunez says. He tells me he was the bartender at the place for 18 years and then found an opportunity to make it his own. I make a reference to the American Dream and he smiles. When I ask if he likes the weekday rock music he winces. “Too loud.” I ask if by chance he himself is gay and his face pinches into purple. “What, do I look gay?” Wow, sorry. Right, ridiculous questions. OK, time to go back in.

Inside there are haphazard cartons of beer along one wall beneath a bench that makes for prime seating. The band on stage is good but I’m more interested in their crowd, which defines a bar more than the amplified voice of the moment. I’d describe them as the young-with-hair-in-the-eyes-and-tattered-sweaters and smart enough to give me side-ways looks.

Back at the bar, I notice there are, in high-visibility areas, collectable and majestic figurines of eagles. I catch the eye of Nunez and, seeing a chance to mend fences, I admire the large statuette of the grand bird locked in battle with a cobra, which is near the “We make strawberry margaritas” and the “Cash only” sign. He nods and I feel much better. “I have seven more at home,” he adds. For me, it was “SALVATION.”

The Silverlake Lounge is a great venue for all of these reasons and more, but it is not custom-made for sound. I chatted with the sound guy, a fellow named Evan Chong, who was leaning over a board about the size of a convenience store’s ATM machine. He told me some fine bands have blown through the place, among them the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and the Breeders. I asked him who was the best of the recent mix and he said something that was as deep as the 1965 Bob Dylan cap he was wearing: “Look, I’m just the sound guy. I don’t listen.”

Little Pedro’s

Little Pedro’s Blue Bongo, at the very least, wins for best name. It’s a Mexican restaurant by day and from the outside it looks exactly like countless other sit-down Mexican restaurants that grease the wheels of local life in every district of the metropolis. The difference here is the huge, iridescent dragonfly that hangs above your head in the atrium and, at night, the whirling lights and pounding beats. Enchiladas by day, bands and DJs at night.

I went by one weeknight about 11 and was told the place doesn’t start hopping until midnight. I came back and they were right. The vibe while I was there was more dance than rock but the place books bands aplenty and, at the foot of the 1st Street bridge, is a downtown enigma and pleasant surprise. Although I wonder how the dragonfly plays out with the lunchtime crowd.

It was a new day outside as I headed to my car and passed by David, a homeless guy who for a buck will keep an eye on your car and cheerfully tell you about the neighborhood he knows better than anyone who merely drives over the bridge.

“This place it’s right here and it’s got this big sign and all and people don’t even know it’s here. Isn’t that funny? That’s life in the big city.”

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Where to hang

L.A.’s street-corner bars and taverns are also some of the great, small corners of the music scene. Here are a few of the favorite haunts of Calendar Weekend’s pop team.

Alex’s Bar, 2913 E. Anaheim St., Long Beach, (562) 434-8292. On weekends this no-nonsense bar becomes one of the premier hubs of the SoCal punk scene.

Cat Club, 8911 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, (310) 657-0888. Hardly a dive, this retro bar has music late into the night and a pedigree: It’s owned by Slim Jim Phantom of the Stray Cats. The Thursday night all-star jam is truly an all-star jam.

Cinema Bar, 3967 Sepulveda Blvd., Culver City, (310) 390-1328. It’s called Cinema because of Culver City’s motion picture roots, and while the glamour of the bar has faded, its charm hasn’t. Call ahead to find out when it’s a live-music night -- and if the attraction is country-flavored singer Mike Stinson, head right over.

Cozy’s Bar & Grill, 10458 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks, (818) 986-6000. If you want your rock smothered in blues, this is the place. And you won’t even have to go over the hill to have a good time.

Goldfingers, 6423 Yucca St., Hollywood, (323) 962-2913. Not as swanky as James Bond would like -- in fact, it’s as greasy and dark as any bar in Hollywood. But it’s utterly and delightfully unpretentious, and the music schedule includes reggae, rock and hip-hop nights, with Coyote Shivers a fixture as DJ on Saturdays.

Little Pedro’s, 901 E. 1st St., Los Angeles, (213) 687-3766. A Mexican restaurant by day, the name expands to Little Pedro’s Blue Bongo and the whirling club lights go on for late-night fare that includes bands, spoken word and DJs.

Marine Room Tavern, 214 Ocean Ave., Laguna Beach, (949) 494-3027. A favorite south Orange County hangout for patrons who like their music (mostly rock and blues) loud and their beer cold.

Molly Malone’s, 575 S. Fairfax Ave., Los Angeles, (310) 578-5591, Ext. 2. A neighborhood pub with an adjoining music room that features a robust schedule of rock, alt country, etc., this venue helped put Irish punkers Flogging Molly on the map.

The Scene, 806 E. Colorado St., Glendale, (818) 241-7029. Its website offers the slogan “a low down dirty rock bar,” but the crowd vibe isn’t as harsh as the setting. Rock and punk music are the core offerings; bluegrass on alternate Thursdays.

Silverlake Lounge, 2906 Sunset Blvd., L.A., (323) 666-2407. A gay bar on weekends, a venue for local promoters the Fold from Monday to Thursday. The narrow, dark room has helped propel many a local band into the spotlight.

Three Clubs, 1123 N. Vine St., Hollywood, (323) 462-6441. Don’t look for a sign, and once you’re in the door, let your eyes adjust to the dark. Then cozy up in the bar area, or poke your head into the adjoining room to see who’s playing.

Geoff Boucher can be reached at [email protected].