Being met by my friend and drummer
Danny Young at the LAX on a Saturday night. He was wearing
a THOR t-shirt, and it was great to see him again, but wait
a minute, wholy shit! We’ve always had a great time
making jokes about Danny’s not so great beard potential.
This time he had been doing his best for more than five weeks,
he looked hilarious and he knew it. I was having a hard time
making a proper conversation with him without laughing. Imagine
surferdude-goes-beatnik-goes-nowhere, or just take a look
at the picture.
LA has got some really nice beaches. The original plan was
to hang out there as much as possible, read a book and get
the feeling of a nice and healthy vacation. We went there
the very first day, but that was pretty much it.
Unfortunately I spent more time in my hotelroom or at Dannys
place during daytime, than at the nice beaches in Venice and
Malibu. And the nights, well they often ended up like this.
First week I stayed in a hotel close to Dannys place called
the Guesthouse Inn. Pretty decent place being a 65$ on Sunset.
Second week I bought a mattress and moved into Casa del Gomp.
No use wasting more cash than I was already doing.
On Sunset you have a lot of legendary places. Whiskey A Go
Go, Viper room, Cat Club, Rainbow, Key club, the clubs most
people have heard of long before they ever plant their feet
on LA ground.
Every M onday night at the Key club they have MetalSkool,
and what the hell is that? I thought it was gonna be some
really stupid fratkids at a metalparty kind of thing. I’m
not saying the audience didn’t include that kind of
people, but the guys on stage were really amazing. They
made a complete pisstake on the whole LA hair and glam scene,
at the same time as you could see that they had obviously
had been a part of it themselves. Covers like “Again
and again”,“Cherry pie”, “Rock you
like a hurricane”, stupid wigs, filthy language beyond
sexual harassment, guestappearances by the likes of Jani Lane
(Warrant) Dee Snyder (Twisted
sister), Bobby Blotzer (RATT) Joe Walsh (The Eagles), really
talented LA chicks flashing their tits on the bands request,
and a bounch of silly dudes looking for some metal. How can
you make that anything but stupid? Check them out for yourself
every Monday night at the Key club on
Sunset strip.
A couple of days later a friend of ours whos the manager
of Norwegian snowboardicon Terje Haakonsen, took us down to
a party in Orange County. The Party was arranged by Oakley
and held at their headquarters. Wasn't really hard to figure
that the kids who attended that party
didn't have a lot in common with us. These people would actually
wear shit like the green t-shirt on the picture below, and
in general get wasted and act like morons. Really nice hotel
though, and a nice stop at the beach on our way back to LA.
Guess I’m not revealing a secret or anything, but Orange
county sucks compared to LA.
Can’t go to LA without making a trip out to Vegas.
I’d been looking forward to go there a long time, and
finally we were on our way. Four hours drive straight into
the desert and you’re there.
It’s everything you can imagine, the wicked mans work,
the flashiest place ever to be built by human. I guess they
use more power just to keep the lights on in Vegas, than the
power spent by the rest of the entire nation.
Anyway, got there on a Friday night and started looking for
cool stripclubs and good bars.
Stupid jerks, what the hell were we thinking? We are in Vegas,
the home of gambling, the churches of greed, and we start
acting like some stupid kids on our first trip to Hamburg.
We found some places but I have to say they were pretty mediocre.
The Rainbow in Vegas was far from as cool as the one in LA,
and the Double down was just like any typical divebar,
eventhough they had drinks like Bacon Martini and Assjuice
on the menu. The stripclubs (at least the ones we found) sucked,
classic men-in-suits kind of places, shitty music on the stereo,
and 10$ for a bottle of beer. You can easily find places like
that in Oslo too, just ask and I’ll hook you up.
Well, the next night we had way more fun. Went out for some
good Mexican food, had a lot of Margeritas, followed by a
strange watermassage outside the restaurant. Later on we started
playing the slot machines, poker and roulette. I won a few,
Danny lost a few, but it was good fun. I wanna go back, bring
a lot of money, spend a couple of days at the roulette table
and see what happens. I have to admit this stuff really got
me. Another good thing is that they give you free drinks in
the casinos. Which means no matter how much you lose, you’ll
be drunk and
you don’t have to worry about anything until the next
day. N.B. Don't take pictures in the casino, our friend almost
got thrown out for that blurry little shot he took of me and
Danny playing roulette.
Back in LA.
Danny has the funniest neighbours. Even before I moved in,
I had met the guys in his neighbourhood several times. Anre,
Drew, Chattay, Bob and a few other guys were constantly knocking
on Danny’s door looking for company or vice versa.
This night we went out to check out the Swedish band Sahara
Hotnights at the Viper room. Decent show, nothing more nothing
less. Later on we went to the Rainbow. A great place, classic
bar/restaurant kind of, with great food, excellent music and
a good athmosphere.The Rainbow is
always hosting a lot of celebrities, and that night we met
the first guitarplayer from Scorpions, eh,well.
After the Rainbow we went back to Danny’s place for
some more drinks. In LA everything closes at 2am., but it's
not that bad, usually people have parties at their houses
afterwards. On our way back we saw some people sleeping on
the sidewalk, and they were definitely not homeless. We went
up and asked what was going on. “We’re waiting
for Hanson!”, we were like “what the hell are
you talking about?”, “yeah you know those three
brothers who used to have a lot of
hits, don’t you guys remember Doo Wop, and they’re
a great liveband too”. “Yeah right, hahahahahah”
Later on our good Swedish friend Viktor introduced us to
one of his friends. She and Danny bonded immidiently, as they
are both way into excotic dance, personally I think Danny
outstaged her pretty easily. '
I was really hoping that Danny had found some typical Hollywood/Beverly
hills kind of friends. People with great houses, throwing
parties with tons Krystal champagne, and with a lot of silicone
and strippers on the guestlist. Didn't really happen, except
for an afterparty spent at some
girls place. We got in and saw five blonde heads, two of them
sitting in front of a computer looking at each others websites,
while they were discussing the prices on their latest boobjobs.
I was standing there for a while listening as they went on
with a very deep discussion about
plastic surgery in general. Great entertainment. There was
also this guy who tried to look like Nikki Sixx without doing
a great job, saying a lot of amazing stuff. At one point he
took out a
guitar, started playing some really loud, super-fast solos,
claiming "dude this is fucking rad man, haven't been
able to jam out some proper metal in two and a half fucking
months, dude"
Later on when we got really drunk, Danny insisted that we
should take off our t-shirts and sit there barechested, as
the true Vikings we are, and our Swedish buddies Viktor and
Henrik joined in. My great friend was trying to make the siliconebabes
do the same thing, but it didn't
really work. Obsessed with their plastic bodies, yet so prude.
The Nikki Sixx guy told me "dude, you're not wearing
a t-shirt, that's fucking awesome dude". No matter how
stupid it may sound, it was a great party.
Except for just a couple of trips to the beach, daytime was
pretty much filled with either sleeping, or shopping down
at Melrose or Hollywood. As a tourist there are a lot of cool
stuff to find, and I have to admit I was going apeshit with
my creditcard for a while. Well luckily for us, a really good
friend of ours were staying at the Hyatt (or the Riot house)
as Led Zeppelin named it back in the days, which had a really
nice pool on the roof. Got us to see some sun and daylight,
we got a hint of a tan, and we didn’t have to feel like
miserable drunks the whole time.
Danny also took me and some friends up to Griffith Park right
before sunset one night. Great place to go for a walk and
get a full view of LA.
Later on that night, we went to Crazy girls. I had been in
LA for almost two weeks, live d two blocks away, and I still
hadn’t been to Crazy girls,weird. We went there with
a friend of Danny called Janis. She’s the bassplayer
for Pink, and has played with tons of bands a.o. L7 and Fireball
Ministry, and more important than anything else, she's one
of the coolest people I've ever met.
I guess I don’t have to explain a whole lot about what
kind of place Crazy girls is, it’s beyond legendary.
Just wanna say that it’s a fantastic stripclub, totally
laidback, with polite cool strippers. It’s kinda like
a great rockclub where the entertainment is the best a guy
can get. Eventhough the whole place was really soft, I figured
pictures were out of the question.
Last night was spent at the Rainbow once again. We hooked
up with Dannys Swedish friends Linnea and Fredrik, and of
course Viktor who was with us pretty much the whole time.
Saturday night was beyond wannabe night on Sunset. I saw p
eople trying to look like Axl Rose, Marilyn Manson, Tommy
Lee and Eminem. Only met one original (apart from Jami Lane
from Warrant, but shit, that doesn’t really count),
a real Rainbow local, Mr. Lemmy Kilmister. He’s
definitely a guy with a reputation, and eventhough Motorhead
never really went home in the states, the guy doesn’t
really have to spend a lot of money on Jack and coke when
he’s going out.
We went for an afterparty at the Hyatt, and our friend Lemmy
came along.
When I was standing on the balcony at 5am with a drink, great
view of Los Angeles listening to some of his good stories,
I thought it couldn’t be a better way to end my vacation.
I also found out that there was no use going back to Dannys
place to catch some sleep before my early flight back home.
I got to the LAX around 8am, totally drunk, and I guess I
looked beyond stupid. Anyway, I recommend LA to anyone who
hasn't been there yet, fantastic place to hang out.
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