The Smell

The Smell

Tickets are only $5 for every show

By David MacNeal

The Harlem Place Alley, bridging Second and Third Street in Downtown L.A., sustains an all-too-familiar cultural chasm.

In one world is the steampunk-inspired nightclub, the Edison, which boasts a no-nonsense dress code (sorry, no kicks or caps allowed) and sells enough cocktails to jumpstart California’s economy. Yet no more than a stone’s throw away is another world.

Yet no more than a stone’s throw away is another world.

A teen, dressed as though ripped from the photographs of a Germs concert, sits among flattened cigarettes and drinks Taaka vodka. His name is Frank. The blinding funk of sour milk emanates from potholes nearby, as he watches Jeff the Brotherhood’s van pull up toward a brick building covered with barbed wire and graffiti. One could walk by this building a dozen times and never realize it was L.A.’s legendary music venue, the Smell.

The space consists of three interconnecting rooms, each more expansive than the last. Together they run half the length of a football field with a width of four bowling lanes. Inside each room are murals either painted or curated by artist Jesse Spears, including a work depicting numerous, interlocking yellow and green arms.

“Took six months of me staring at those arms to realize it spelled out ‘Hope,’” says Jim Smith, a thirtysomething Teamster who moonlights as the Smell’s manager/owner. He originally founded the volunteer-powered venue in the same genealogical vein of extinct undergrounds like the Jabberjaw, the Impala, and the Alligator Lounge. The Smell has since become a launch pad for bands like Abe Vigoda (who toured with Vampire Weekend this spring), as well as bands signed onto the Smell’s own label, olFactory Records.

However, there’s no set theme or sound to the Smell, no designated person to book the bands. One night it might be megaphone-wielding rabble-rousers, the Foot Village, screaming against cacophonous drumbeats. Another night might showcase Fast Forward, a brass marching band procession of pagan robes with arrows patched on them. And yet another night might include Mika Miko screaming bloody murder into a telephone, with her riot girl band knee deep in a dirty trench originally intended for bathroom pipes.

“One side-project band played at our ticket desk, –” Smith stops to correct himself. “Literally on top of our ticket desk.”

That side project was the four-piece ensemble Juice. It included Dean Spunt from No Age, as well as Jarrett Silberman of Young People. Silberman also happens to be one of the three original co-founders of the Smell, which goes as far back as 1998 when it was a small storefront in North Hollywood. They adopted the name “the Smell” as an inside quip about the “yuppie coffeehouse,” the Aroma, just a half-mile away. Smith relocated the venue once he learned the new NoHo subway station was coming in, since it meant a large influx of foot traffic. “As a result, all the landlords jacked up the rents to nearly double, so we found this place. It’s nearly three times the size with a rent considerably close to what we paid there.”

“At the beginning they had almost nothing that was working,” says Christo Anastisio, the volunteer sound technician and former MIT instructor. “All the speakers had been blown out, power amps were hooked up inappropriately – a lot of things didn’t make much sense. So, I set it up in a way that was difficult to break.” Anastisio’s dossier includes freelancing at the Avalon, Hotel Café, and the El Rey, and being production manager at the Spaceland and Echo. However, the work he does at the Smell, he does for free.

“After awhile you realize [Jim Smith] is concerned about human beings and the world they inhabit. You want to participate. Musicians have more latitude here to do whatever they need to do creatively or artistically.”

After Jeff the Brotherhood play their set, Steve McDonalds, bassist for the L.A.-based ’80s pop-punk band Redd Kross, waits in the rotting alleyway as his friends take final drags on their Parliaments. “It not a bar. It’s not a meat market,” says McDonalds.

“The Smell is just about music. And those packets of Sour Patch Kids served at the vegan bar.”

The Smell, 247 S. Main Street. All ages. $5 entrance (unless otherwise stated). Check TheSmell.org for show listings.

ADVERTISEMENT