Dr. Dre Day with Old Man Markley – Pussy Cow – Horace Weitraub – Stab City – at Blue Star – Los Angeles, CA

For the past three years, my friends and I have celebrated the birth of Dr. Dre at an event known as Dre Day.  The idea was stolen from a club in Minneapolis.  When I first read about it, I thought that it was a damn shame for Los Angeles not to have our own Dre Day celebration.  After all, Dr. Dre is Los Angeles’ native son.

It started off simple enough.  My friends and I just hung out at my house listening to Dre produced music and watching movies starring the great Dr. Dre.  That year we decided that the next year, we would make it even bigger.

The second year was everything we imagined it would be.  We had bands do their own takes on Dr. Dre songs and had The Chronic photo booth where patrons could replace their own heads in the classic album cover.  We passed out several stickers that featured classic lyrics on them.  Our Dre Day show became a much talked about event that year.

This year, Gabe (aka Horace Weintraub) and I decided that we would celebrate Dre Day at a bigger and better venue, The Blue Star Café. The Blue Star Café is always good to us and we knew that they’d work with us.  If you have never been there, you should know that the Blue Star is an outdoor venue.  This left Gabe and I constantly worried that it would rain that night.  There was a light sprinkling as I pulled up to the venue but other than that, it was clear skies.  I didn’t notice it until that night but the combination between the outdoor venue and the barbed wire added something to the general ambiance.

Last year, all the bands we had playing were Punk bands with the exception of the closing hip hop act. This year, our bill had a much more diverse line up.

The opening act, Stab City, usually plays a dirty style of rock n roll.  They started by cueing an ipod up with Dr. Dre instrumentals that they then rapped over.  Guitarist, Sailor, was in all black with his head covered by a Chicago White Sox hat.  Bobby, the drummer, assumed the part of Snoop Dog in their first cover, Deep Cover.  Bobby had the words, “Deez Nuts”, scrawled across his stomach.  Bassist, Dan, was in a bright sparkly yellow shirt which depicted a hip hop version of Nintendo character, Mario.  He was the perfect Dre to Bobby’s Snoop.  The ended the cover portion of their set with, L’il Ghetto Boy.  Sailor picked up his guitar towards the end of that one and added a few licks to the song.  Then they launched into what Stab City was born to do: Rock our pants off.

After Stab City, it was time for our annual Eddie 40-hands competition.  This years contestants were Ryan Scumbag (last year’s loser) and this girl named, Alex.  I made sure they both had a ride home before duct taping their hands to 40 oz bottles of Miller High Life.  The winner was announced following our second act.  Ryan won but Alex was incredibly close to winning herself.  Ryan won a Gangsta Rap Coloring book and Alex won a cassette single of Nuthin but a G Thang.

Next was Horace Weintraub.  In my opinion, Horace stole the show that night.  If you’ve seen Horace before, you sort of knew what to expect but many people there had never heard music like this or seen it performed live.  Think of Horace Weintraub as the silly version of industrial artists, Babyland. Their first Dre cover, Nuthin but a G Thang, was recited by a computer.  Horace would tell the audience to “Stop Talking” in between songs.  3D glasses were passed out and hilarious songs were played.  The second Dre cover, Nigga wit a Gun, had the support of three female back up singers.

Next was my band (Pu$$y Cow). I took some time to recite the lyrics to all of our covers next to my car seconds before it was show time.  As soon as I hit the stage, I realized that I was pretty drunk and nervous.  I was dressed as if I was sponsored by Dickies.  We dedicated our set to Lux Interior.  While Lux probably wasn’t the most avid Dre listener, I felt that Lux was a fan of showmanship and that every band playing that evening had showmanship coming out of their ears.  The songs we covered were Still D.R.E, The Next Episode and California Love.

Luckily I only messed up one lyric in all of those. Chissum changed the lyric in Still D.R.E from, “Representing all the gangstas all across the world, hitting the corners in them lo los girl” to, “Representing all the gangstas all across the land. I’m wiping off boogers down in Disneyland”. It was a classic Chissum move.  We pretended to end our set and then kicked into California Love.  We called out all the neighborhoods of the band and the crowd.

Old Man Markley is a bluegrass band made up of members of some of Los Angeles’ finest Punk bands. They started their set with a corn rowed Annie singing the Eazy E classic, Automobile.  There is nothing more charming than a girl reciting the smutty lyrics of Eazy E.  Every member was dressed to the nines and every song was beautiful.  Their washtub bassist, Joey Balls, led them in a sped up Forgot About Dre ho down.

After the whole thing was over, it started to rain.  A perfect ending to a perfect night.

See ya next year, bitches!

- Joe Dana -

 

More photos of the show can be seen HERE

 

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Video courtesy of Smash