A RAUCOUS NIGH T IN ROCKVILLE Cast members Andrew J. West, Alexandra Chando, and Jelly Howie take a break on set (left); Little Ones frontman Ed Reyes sings for the camera (above).
The members of sunny indie-pop bands the Little ones and the broken West are no strangers to the stage of Los Angeles’ echoplex, but it’s probably safe to say that neither group has ever played the club while it was still light outside. or, for that matter, when its audience consisted primarily of guys wearing headsets, holding boom mics, and operating $6,000 video cameras. Nonetheless, on a sunny November afternoon, that’s exactly what’s happening, as each band tapes a performance for Rockville, CA, a new Web series from Josh schwartz, creator and co-executive producer of The OC and Gossip Girl.
Debuting march 17 on The Wb.com, Rockville follows the professional and romantic pursuits of a ( preposterously good-looking) group of twentysomethings populating a fictional L.A. nightspot. Among the scenesters are Deb, a Killers-loving A&r scout, and hunter, a mouthy music-marketing guy more or less
indistinguishable from seth Cohen or Dan humphrey. (“he’s really smart, but he’s sort of socially inept,” offers Andrew J. West, who plays hunter.)
schwartz calls the series—which he conceived during writers’-strike downtime last year—an attempt to recapture the considerable portion of his 20s that he spent soaking up the atmosphere at stalwart L.A. venues the Troubadour and spaceland. “I’ve got a lot of nostalgia for that era,” he says. “It’s a pretty romantic life, being free to hang out in clubs all the time.” each four- to six-minute webisode is built around a two-song set by a different band; season one will also feature Travis, Phantom Planet, and the Kooks, among others.
To help book the acts, schwartz turned to his longtime music supervisor Alexandra Patsavas, who says they tried to make rockville feel as much like a real-world venue as possible. “There’s a club like this in every town,” she says. To ensure that level of
authenticity, schwartz and his team shot the entire series inside the echoplex (clearing out several trucks’ worth of filming equipment every day to make room for the venue’s real nightly concerts) and taped the bands playing live. Indeed, when the broken West take the stage to shoot their set at around 11 a.m., the bed-headed hipster-kid extras—who, funnily enough, are practically indiscernible from the crew—do an impressive job creating a swirl of simulated late-night energy.
so what do the musicians get in return for lending the series their vaunted street cred? broken West frontman ross flournoy says that though “it’s hard to gauge the specific impact” an appearance on Rockville, CA will have, it offers a “way for bands who aren’t ever gonna be on mainstream rock radio to get our songs out there.”
That’s a deal that schwartz, the grown-up club rat, is happy to strike. “Initially, with The OC, I was just using music that was on my iPod [for the show],” he says. “At that time there weren’t a lot of places to hear that kind of music—things were kind of drying up for bands. Now we’re able to use our shows to help bands that aren’t as well known.” he laughs the laugh of the hollywood power broker he’s become. “of course, that also means they’re cheaper.” MIKAEL WOOD
The Album
Recipe
Electro maestro
Dan Deacon reveals
how he cooked up
Bromst
3 vegetable paninis
Lots of
reading about
the 2012
apocalypse
24 tracks of player piano
2 noise
complaints
filed by crazy
neighbor
44 square feet of blue tent material
2 weeks mixing in northern Montana
Bromst
WILLIAM GALINDO
“Making this album was the most challenging thing I’ve ever done. My previous records were very party-focused. I don’t want to sound pretentious, but I think there’s a spiritual aspect to the music now, instead of just a ‘Let’s get wasted’ vibe.”
ILLUSTRATION BY OLIVIER KUGLER
LEAVE US A MESSAGE. GO TO SPIN.COM / MARCH 2009 29
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