CLUB SCENE
Variety is the spice of night at Avant Pop
By Derek Paiva
Advertiser Staff Writer
Eugene tanner • The Honolulu Advertiser
Avant Pop has a couple of very cool things going for it.
Iso Kishimoto and friend Lynneanne Stromberg enjoy the live music during Avant Pop, a monthly showcase for indie pop musicians, at Club Pauahi.
First off, it's a wonderfully loose, comfortable and irreverent monthly showcase for young indie pop musicians still exploring their skills — compositionally and instrumentally — in front of an audience.
Second, it's hosted in a lived-in downtown bar complete with requisite chatty barflies, excellent and friendly customer attention, and caretakers who seem to believe in a greater sense of purpose for the place other than just a lived-in downtown bar.
At Avant Pop, a handful of older mu'umu'u and aloha shirt-and-corduroy-clad regulars mixed comfortably with a larger crowd of teens and twentysomethings there to hang out and watch their friends perform.
The event itself is often staged as a monthly benefit to help local indie bands pay for brief Mainland tours. This month's beneficiaries were the Sundays reminiscent (and quite accomplished) electro-pop combo Teradactyl.
The music and vocals at Avant Pop were rarely polished; the songs mostly simple paeans to the joy and pain of life. Still, only an unrepentant curmudgeon would not admire the performers' passion for their work and their joy in performing it.
Eugene Tanner • The Honolulu Advertiser
Sets were short, so I was able to see three performances in my two hours there. Paul and Gwen offered up simple tandem acoustic guitar and personal, plaintive lyrics. Baby Microphone's church-organ synth and bossa-nova drumbeats were cranked up a bit too high to hear her poppy lyrics and sweetly off-pitch voice. My personal faves for the evening, Postmodern, barely got through any of its four very loud three-chord anthems without cutting midway to complain about something.
A group of young women including (clockwise from lower left) Natalie Edwards, Kim Amber, Ginger Orsi and Janice Querido toast each other with shots of tequila.
The barflies, bless 'em, must've enjoyed it all as much as I did. None of them — and believe me, I was watching — left for fresh air and neglected to come back while I was there. The fiftysomething guy next to me, Iso, actually danced a bit. Bartender and promotions manager Clayton made the best whiskey sour I've had in a long time and invited me to check out Club Pauahi's monthly drag show by the "Fabulous Fakes." And Jason (his sister owns the place, and he was behind the bar, too) gave me a tour of a future expanded Club Pauahi, housing a larger performance area for DJs and musicians, a sports bar, a karaoke room and a hostess bar.
"You gotta have variety," Clayton said later, watching Teradactyl set up, after proudly guessing another regular's preferred drink for the umpteenth time. "Otherwise, you can't survive."
I couldn't agree more.
Got a nightspot or club event we should check out? Reach Derek Paiva at dpaiva@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8005.
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| What: Avant Pop.
Where: Club Pauahi, 80 S. Pauahi St., 521-7252. When: 8 p.m.-1 a.m., one Saturday a month Cover: $5. Younger than 21 OK? Yes. Age of crowd: Teens to sixtysomethings. Dress code: None. Attire we saw: On men: jeans, polos, tees, sweaters, aloha shirts, nylon and leather jackets, baseball caps, skull caps. On women: tees, baby tees, low-rise and loose jeans, peasant blouses, tanks, dresses. Our arrival/departure: 9:15 p.m./ 11:15 p.m. What we drank: Whiskey sour ($4). Peak crowd while there: About 50. Queue?: No. The music: Original compositions by Paul and Gwen, Postmodern, Baby Microphone and Teradactyl. Dancing? No. The next one: April 25 with Commonplace, Battle Royal, Less Than Zero, Little Moments and Walks Among Us |
