The Love Me Nots at Crescent Ballroom, Scorpion vs. Tarantula at Lost Leaf 11-12-11

2 of Phoenix’s most celebrated garage bands lit up separate downtown venues for a rainy night of rock and roll last Saturday evening, and those intrepid enough to brave the wet weather caught classic performances by both The Love Me Nots and Scorpion vs. Tarantula.

Photo by Karen Walker
In the early show at the sumptuous new Crescent Ballroom, Love Me Nots singer and Farfisist extraordinaire Nicole Laurenne, clad in hot pants and a T-shirt, shared vocals with hot new bassist Sophie O for an hour of the spy-rock and retro go go that has made the band a staple of independent and internet radio from Bakersfield to Bordeaux (the band geared up for another tour of France, their 3rd this year, with a French version of their international hit “The Girl Lights Up”, which will be featured on a soon-to-be-released album of Love Me Nots dance remixes). They kept the hits coming, with dancefloor favorites “Do What You Do”, “Lets Get Wrecked”, and “Give ‘Em What They Want” getting the crowd suitably shaken and stirred.

The Love Me Nots wrapped things up at The Crescent early enough for fans to catch the night’s other downtown garage extravaganza, in the nearby Roosevelt arts district.

There’s nothing quite like a Scorpion vs. Tarantula performance at the intimate Lost Leaf. With at least 60 crazed fans crammed into a living room-size space that wouldn’t comfortably fit 20, it wasn’t long before many spectators were sharing the stage with the band, and the 100 year-old floorboards were set to shakin’, as they were last August when SvT tore the roof off the venue in their Lost Leaf debut.

Babs the belly dancer, seen shimmying in a monkey mask at a Complaniacs show at Cruisin’ 7th last year, was invited onstage by bassist Tana Satana to do her thing with SvT, and the decadence bar was raised to even more scandalous levels. Vocalist L Hotshot and guitar guy Louis Lashes got up close and personal with the crowd, wading into the sea of sweaty humanity and climbing onto the bartop as the band tore through a tight set of rabble-rousing garage punk that turned the area in front of the stage into a melee of pushing and shoving. At set’s end, overheated rockers were glad to step outside into the showery night air for a cooldown.

Scorpion vs. Tarantula will give the big stage at The Crescent a whirl on December 3rd, and both SvT and The Love Me Nots will be opening for X at Club Red on December 9th. Don’t miss it.

--Karl Wentzel